Ctrl Shift Grounding
Grounding Techniques to Reduce Stress during COVID-19
Grounding yourself in times of Stress during COVID-19.
During this time of uncertainty, people are experiencing increased stress relating to fear of illness, quarantine routine, job layoffs, milestones events being cancelled or loss of your ideal imagine of how events will be happen. These factors may have a lasting effects on during the years to come on ones financial, physical, emotional and mental health. I wanted to share one of my most use skills that I share with clients that I work with to reduce their stress levels not just in times of uncertainty but throughout other stressors in life.
Grounding Techniques are things that you can do to help you feel solid, soothed and connected to yours surroundings. It involves you deliberating using your attention to an experience that you are having that is not threatening. Incorporating grounding strategies are good for people who have a hard time staying mindful. Using grounding strategies incorporates your whole brain oppose to using only one side which could lead us to missing key information.
Incorporating grounding strategies can help you feel calm when you feel your stress is overwhelming you and break your “fight, flight or freeze” response that you may experience. During COVID, you may have already experienced these responses. I will share some tips with you that you can incorporate immediately to work towards stress relief.
Imagine yourself as big tree. Stretch your arms up to the sky and imagine branches and leaves. Dig your feet into the floor and imagine them growing roots.
Take off your shoes and walk slowly around the room, feeling connection between your feet and the carpet with each step Feel your toes, your sole, and your heel connecting with the carpet.
Describe three things in the room in terms of sensory qualities (color, shape, texture, size, smell, etc.)
Shake your body. Begin my wiggling your toes, then your ankles, your lower legs and them move to your upper legs. Then do the same with your arms, hands and fingers.
Breathe in for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, breathe out for a count of 4, and then pause for a count of 4. Try to slow your breathing down with each time that your practice.
Imagine being a peaceful place, close to nature. Visualize yourself at the beach or overlooking the bay or in the forest or hiking on a trail or in a park or garden.
THERAPIST FAVORITE : Drink a cup of tea slowly. First feel the warmth of the cup. Then smell the aroma. Notice the color and texture of the tea Take a small sip and swirl it around your mouth. Now swallow. Notice the taste and feeling of the tea as it flow down your throat.
Suck on a peppermint (a sunday classic) or smell eucalyptus.
Draw, paint or color.
Rub your pet, hold them in your lap, notice their breathing and feel their warmth.
Take a warm bath or showing, cuddle in blanket and slip on fuzzy socks.
Listen to soothing music
Go for a walk in the neighborhood.
Once you start to feel grounded and solid, you can look at the stressful situation and your emotions about COVID-19 without feeling so overwhelming and chaotic. Grounding signal to particular part of your brain (the amygdala to be exact) that you are safe in the present moment, allowing it put a pause on your “fight, flight or freeze” response.
I hope that you find these grounding strategies help as we continue to face this crisis. Email me at shayla@ctrlshiftbalance.com and let me know which one has been helpful for you. If you would to work through to addressing your “Fight, Flight or Freeze” during a pandemic, schedule a free 15 minute consultation.
Be Balanced & Grounded,
Shayla Peterson, LCSW
Ctrl Shift De-Stress
4 Tips to De-stressing During Life’s Most Trying Times
Difficult situations can leave you feeling worked up and hopeless all at the same time. Sometimes staying positive and calm may seem beyond tough. But in reality, it possible with a little effort.
You can confront your challenges head on, without breaking under pressure.
Developing your inner strength take practice. If you implement factor listed below, you can get a head start on journey towards building your resiliency to handle anything that comes your way.
Embrace your worth. Do you tend to come down hard on yourself as the reason for challenging experiences. Yet, truthfully, they may not be your fault at all of you have little to no control over it.
Embracing your own worth is extremely important so you do not wrongly persecute yourself and cause even more stress. We may have a role in some of trying situation, but some we may not. Letting yourself off the hook for the parts that are not yours is important also.
Face the situation on what it truly is and have the courage to believe, “it is not my fault.”
Believe in your ability to overcome the circumstances.
Be Optimistic. This too shall pass. Regardless of the seriousness of the situation you are confronted with, it will not last forever! It might be really rough right now. In fact, it might even be extreme. But focus on the end of the tunnel- where these is always light.
Take brief moments to put plans in plan for when the storm finally passes.
Lean on support from loved ones. Family and friends can keep you afloat during crises. Passing through life’s trying situations calmly and optimistically can seem tough as if you are going through it alone. But it may not feel that way when you keep you loved ones close.
Give the details of the situation, both the good and the bad.
Trust that you will get a unbiased Point of View from your supportive loved one, even if you do not life everything they say.
Acknowledging various strengths display from your supportive loved one is the past will help you build your strength to deal with the situation calmly.
Breathe Deeply. Deep breathing on a regular basis can really help to relax you! Staying calm and positive is as much about mental toughness as it is about being a physically at ease. Give it try and feel the difference both mentally and physically.
During stressful times, you strengths lies within you. Try practicing these tips and you will trust that you have the ability to overcome whatever you face even long after COVID-19 passes. Day by day, you will start to resolve your challenges head on with confidence, regardless of how bad they may seem. You will start to feel stronger and be better emotionally prepared for life and manifest balance. De-stressing is not hard when you have the know of how to prevent stress and the skills to dissolve it as it occurs.
If you find it hard to resolve some of your current stress, let’s connect for a PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN Mental Wellness Check at today. April is Stress Awareness Month, visit my instagram page for tips and tools all month long.
Be Balance & Well,
Shayla Peterson, LCSW
Ctrl Shift Worry (Pandemic Edition)
8 Tips to Overcome Worry and Rumination during a Crisis.
Our world is in a Public Health Crisis. Our minds are running with some many thoughts, it can be hard to begin to name them and its stressing you out. On top of that it can be difficult to recognize and express helpful ways of thinking about your current stressors. Your thoughts may try to tell you that you are helping yourself by worrying & rumination but, on some level we know that it is not helpful. Often we become stuck because we are not sure what to do next. Your worrying magnifies your stressor by bring up more negative possibilities. Negative thoughts lead to another negative thought and then you start to feel stressed. To take it a step further, rumination is a persistent and repetitive worry that is often associated with increase depression and anxiety over time. Please note that if you are ruminating when you are down, you may begin to feel worse. It is important now than ever to gain some type of understanding of thoughts and move them in a new direction. Below are some tools to move you in the direction of recognizing your worry and rumination and started moving towards more helpful thoughts during this time.
1. The purpose of WORRY is to PLAN. Begin by asking yourself, how helpful is the worry. Are you actually finding solutions when you worry or finding concrete plan to implement? Are seeing solutions in a new light or after thinking about the problem you feel, worst. If you are unable to find new solutions and new perspective and actually feeling worst, then your worrying is considered unhelpful and it is time to focus on somethings else.
2. Practice thought Stopping. As soon as you notice yourself worrying or ruminating, begin to visualize a big red STOP sign. Yell STOP aloud in your and even raise your hand to signal you to STOP. Or visualize a detour sign, directing you unto a new mental track.
3. Create a WORRY Corner. Designate a place in your home or work. Identify which chair/space will be your worry corner. Give yourself 5 to 10 minutes 2-3 times a day. Write down the worry in the area. Leave them there. Soon your brain will learn to associate your worry corner with worries and all other activities will be associate with the absent of worry. This activity allow you worry about the pandemic, finance, work, family, health during a control, timed limited way.
4. Picture it. Picture your worries as bubbles popping in the air, as leaves floating down the stream or a car driving away into the sunset getting smaller. This mindfulness technique that can give you distance from your worries.
5. Find an alternative thought. Focus on a funny image every time you start worrying. Find a funny image like a Green Horse driving a car. As soon as start to worry or ruminate, think of your green horse drinking in spotted car.
6. Playback. Imagine hearing your worries in an annoying voice of not so favorite character. I would be highly annoyed hearing my stressors called out by Yosemite Sam from Hannah Barbera Cartoons.
7. Look for patterns. For one week, notice and record triggers that make you worry or ruminate (such as talking to anxious person, lying awake in bed, or watching certain TV shows). Now, develop alternative positive things to do and way to avoid those triggers. Avoid the person who response negatively to your problems. If you start to feel negative while lying in bed, get up in 15 minutes and get active versus watching TV.
8. Interrupt the worry cycle. This can be done walking around or mindfully checking in with what is happening in your body. If you notice areas of tension, send some breathe in the area. Then also label that tension such as “fear,” “anger,” “sadness.” This can overcome that avoidance with being “in your head” about the pandemic.
I understand that there are somethings that we don’t have control over at this time. Watching the media, talking to friends, fears about employment or your business, the state of your families health can naturally increase your worry. Understand the anxious thoughts about it may around for weeks or months to come, but by increase our awareness and implement of tools we can improve our mental wellness during this public health crisis.
Be Balanced and Well,
Shayla Peterson
Ctrl Shift Lies
You're Lying to Yourself: Don't Believe Everything You Think.
Have you become a master at fooling yourself. Your brain knows what to tell you so you can justify to yourself taking the comfortable path through life. Your capacity to deceive yourself is almost unlimited. Unfortunately, these lies come home to roost eventually. There's a price to be paid for believing a lie. You've been paying it for years.
FREE yourself from the lies you tell yourself. Check out the top 8 lies that you may be telling yourself on a regular basis.
1. I must wait for the perfect moment to act. This is just an excuse to procrastinate. When this lie runs through your head, ask yourself what you're afraid of. You can be certain you're avoiding something. It may be the fear of failure or the fear of hard work. Ask yourself what you're avoiding and why.
2. I don't feel like it. This one might be the truth, but it's irrelevant. If it needs to be done, it needs to be done. If you only do things when you feel like doing them, many things will never be completed properly. If you wait until the eventual time crunch forces you to act, your results will be poorer than if you had acted sooner.
3. I lack the right personality to do what I want to do. Perhaps your dream is to be a standup comedian but you feel you're too introverted. There are successful people in every possible field you can imagine with completely different personalities. You can be an extroverted librarian or an introverted politician. It's easy to find successful people with the "wrong" personality for their field.
4. I'll do it tomorrow. How many times have you told yourself that one? How many times were you wrong? In most cases, you're putting it off because the thought of doing it now makes you uncomfortable. That's unlikely to change tomorrow. Have the courage to tackle it right now and get it off your back. Think about how much better you'll feel after it's done.
5. I must follow the rules. There's a difference between laws and rules. Breaking a law can land you in jail. Breaking a rule might make someone upset. The most successful people have managed to break the rules in a positive way. When everyone follows the rules, nothing changes.
6. People that care about me should agree with me. Do you always agree with them? You should be able to expect the people that care about you to support you. There's no reason why they should always agree with you. Be confident in your decisions.
7. Being busy means I'm getting things done. We've all lived days full of activity where little was accomplished. Accomplishing a lot requires spending time and effort on the right activities. It's easy to spin your wheels and wear yourself out with little to show for it.
8. I should always be able to enjoy my life. This might be possible in theory, but most of us aren't enlightened enough live this reality today. Bad things happen and must be managed. Enjoying your life doesn't excuse the need to take care of your business. You'll have days without enough time to enjoy yourself. You might have to give the dog a bath even though you'd rather watch the ball game. Everyone lies to themselves. Fooling yourself is one of the easier things you do each day, but when you deny your own truth, you limit your potential. Recognize the damage done by the lies you tell yourself. They might bring you comfort today, but you'll pay for them tomorrow with your discomfort.
Be Well and Balance,
Shayla Peterson