In every person, there is the natural ability to cope with life’s stressors. It is a built-in resilience, which helps us to deal with stress. The Trauma Resource Model (TRM), created by Elaine Miller-Karas explains this resiliency as an individual’s ability to identify and use strengths to live fully in the present moment and to thrive while managing the activities of daily life. When a person recognizes, develops and uses this resilience, they are able to handle the stresses of life without being weighed down.
In my private practice, Wellness Based Therapy, I teach my clients skills to improve this resilience inside of them. The training imbues them with skills that regulate their nervous system when daily situations become the stimuli for body stress.
The reason I teach my clients these skills is so they can widen their resilient zone, which in turn makes it easier for them to deal with their stressors. Using these skills, they are able to reset the nervous system and get it back into balance after a particularly stressful or traumatic event. Using these skills well does not mean a person cannot get sad or angry. The most important thing is that the person will not lose it. People that are out of their resilience zone easily get stuck in the high zone, where they are irritable, edgy, anxious, panicky and feel pain. The low zone can also catch up with them, making them feel isolated, abandoned, exhausted, fatigued and numb.
Some of these wellness skills are:
Tracking: Learn how to read the nervous system by noticing what is going on in the body. Don’t always be absentminded, observe yourself. If for example you get cut off in traffic you might notice your breathing getting more shallow and clinging to the steering wheel. By tracking you learn to tell the difference between distress and normality. You will know when situations start affecting you.
Resourcing: Use a positive experience or memory that can include people, places, activities, skills, hobbies or spiritual guides and animals that give one peace, joy or calm. It is true, when you think of something pleasant in the middle of an unpleasant situation, it brightens things. Pleasant and/or neutral sensations connected to these memories can bring a direct experience of well-being that helps stabilize the nervous system.
Grounding: It is the direct contact of the body or part of the body with something that provides support in the present moment such as standing against a wall or hard surface, lying on the floor or pushing your hands against a wall. If you have a pet, touching it will give you the support you seek.
Gesturing and spontaneous movement: There are gestures or movements that can instill peace and a sense of power, such as hugging oneself or giving the peace sign.
Help Now: This incorporates ten things you can do in the moment to bring yourself back into a resilient zone. They are: drinking a glass of water, counting backwards from 20, naming six colors you see around the room, observing the temperature of the room, noticing the sounds in the room, closing and opening your eyes to look around the room, pushing your hands against the wall or the door slowly and noticing the muscles in your arms and or legs, and standing with your back against the wall. They seem simple, but they have a great effect on our neural system.
Check out and download the ichill.com app, which is free and has all these skills at your fingertips.
– Barbara Allyn Barry, M.S.Ed.,LFMT