Today is Therapeutic Thursday at Aortic Hope.
🤔We bet if you looked in your medicine cabinet, you have a first-aid kit to help with any cuts or scrapes. What do you have in your emotional medicine cabinet to help with any trauma?
Since we can't see emotional issues, many tend to ignore having an emotional first-aid kit.
🤕In this article titled Emotional First Aid Kit by Emma Cameron, MA, Emma explains that when we become overwhelmed by any type of stress including health related trauma, "you might go into a hyper-alert state, perhaps first freezing, then feeling intense energy flooding your body as the fight-or-flight response kicks in. Fearful or blaming thoughts might arise, perhaps along with an urgent ‘I must fix this NOW!’
When the fight-or-flight energy can’t get you away or remove the problem, your body may go into a kind of shut-down slump. Your mind may feel like it’s gone elsewhere, and you may feel numb and flat, or like you’re shrinking or collapsing.
You need an emotional first-aid kit, fast! (And after that, of course, different kinds of responses and help may be needed)."
🩹Here is a list of 22 tips to be put into your Emotional First-Aid Kit:
1. Breathe
2. Hands on chest and belly
3. Move
4. Push against a wall
5. Connect face-to-face
6. Soothe a pet
7. Attend to your feet and legs
8. Name your body sensations and emotions
9. "This too shall pass"
10. Hum or sing
11. Chew gum
12. Five senses grounding
13. Be warm
14. Add some gentle pressure
15. Imagine your larger, wiser self comforting and holding and comforting your scared overwhelmed self
16. Basic self-care: eat, sleep, movement
17. Connect to nature
18. Remember that it's normal for life to have shocks and difficulties sometimes
19. Allow space for all of your feelings, preferably with someone alongside you
20. Use music to reset
21. Reach out
22. Join together and work for change
👉If you would like to read the 22 tips in greater detail, click here.