How to use mindfulness to cope with trauma by Kathleen Chandler, LMSW PMH-C

If you are coping with trauma, mindfulness can help. Establishing a mindfulness practice can slow down reactivity, increase your attention (and connection) to your body, and change the structure of your brain by building more connections and pathways. Eventually, you will have greater emotional regulation and the capacity to better tolerate triggers and life stressors.

It should be mentioned that mindfulness, if not used carefully, can exacerbate trauma symptoms. The following advice is meant to help guide you through a trauma-sensitive mindfulness practice.

Know your Coping Tools

Before you begin practicing mindfulness make sure you know what coping tools soothe you best. Square breathing, tapping, safe-calm place, listening to music, going for a walk, or noticing your five senses? Be ready to do whatever works for you!

Make sure you feel safe.

Find a physical location that feels safe to you and only practice mindfulness with people that you feel safe with.

Stay within your Window of Tolerance

Stay within your ideal emotional zone. Pay attention to your body and your emotions. Make sure you aren’t pushing it! Don’t begin mindfulness if you are already outside of your Window of Tolerance. Stop immediately if you feel you are starting to venture outside the window: racing heart, intense anxiety, dissociation, have blurry vision, start sweating, or feel like you can’t catch your breath.

Apply the Brakes when needed!

Open your eyes, change your posture, take slow deep belly breaths, structure breaks for yourself, make physical contact with your body (touch your legs, tap on your temples), and engage in self soothing.

Remember that mindfulness may look a bit different for you. You may need to practice with your eyes open and stay aware of your surroundings. That is fine! You can use guided meditation if you feel you need to ease into it.

It may be best for you to start with an informal mindfulness practice. That means you bring awareness to daily tasks such as eating, exercising, doing chores, or any other daily action. For example, you could start with brushing your teeth. As you brush, try to bring all your attention, awareness, and senses to the task. What does the handle feel like, what is the texture of the bristles, what sounds do you hear, what does it smell and taste like, etc.

When you have identified your coping tools, have a safe space, know your window of tolerance, and understand how to apply the brakes, you may be ready to begin your mindfulness practice. Here’s how to start:

Take a few moments to center yourself and enter the zone of “just being”.

Begin by drawing your attention to your breath. Feel your body and notice whatever comes up. Allow any thought, emotion, or physical sensation to be exactly as it is.

Just notice. This is not a time to analyze, judge, or solve problems. Just notice whatever comes up.

In the beginning, short sessions are best. 30 seconds to 2 minutes is plenty.

If you find that you would like to explore mindfulness with a professional, therapists at Niyyah Counseling are available to help!

Identifying and Coping with Birth Trauma By Nabiha Hasan, LMSW

Becoming a mother is potentially the most life changing thing that a woman can go through, and becoming a father serves a similar feeling. From the start of finding out that one is pregnant to Googling every single symptom there is in the books, to experiencing childbirth, motherhood is something many women look forward to and can be very exciting. Birth trauma, however, is not something that anyone can anticipate or prepare for - and can leave a lasting impact on parents. Identifying and coping with birth trauma will be the focus in this article, as well as how to do your best in moving on from the trauma going forward. 

The past does not define the future. This is possibly one of the most powerful things you can tell yourself. What your previous birth trauma was, whether that was an emergency c-section, shoulder dystocia, stillborn, miscarriage, brain damage, infertility, hearing of someone else who experienced a child having a physical/intellectual disability, or any other birth trauma not mentioned, you have valid and justifiable reasons to be traumatized and worry for your next birth, should you decide to have any more children. Yes, it was scary, and you are fearful of it happening again, but just because it did happen in the past doesn’t mean that it will happen again.

Meditate. Utilize a combination of birth affirmations, journaling exercises, and coach yourself into positive self-talk to prepare for the upcoming birth. You can search the web for endless resources and recordings of birth affirmations, for example, which when replayed, will leave a lasting impact on your mind and body. Your body was made for this, and although you did experience an occurrence of birth trauma, you are working toward helping yourself overcome it to work on moving forward.

Stay in the present moment. Acknowledge that in the here and now, you are alright, you made it this far, and you will continue to work on staying in the present while preparing for the future the best you can. Dwelling in the past will exacerbate your trauma, and as difficult as it sounds, it is crucial to help your mind and body move past whatever happened. It is easier said than done, yes, but it is not impossible.

Dads. Fathers and males don’t get as much attention with issues related to birth trauma, but dads are very worthy of validation. Yes, the birth trauma is different for fathers as they aren’t the main carriers, but can still leave a lasting impact on their emotions and fear for the future. Dads may feel powerless, invalidated, or try to focus more on the trauma of their partner.

Talk it out. Talk through your emotions, feelings, and fears. At Niyyah Counseling, we have a wide range of therapists who specialize in various forms of trauma, and are happy to pair you up with someone who will be a good match. You are welcome to reach out and schedule an appointment or consult with a therapist to get a feel for the process and ask any questions you may have. Additionally, you can check out our other blogs to read about topics related to birth trauma, infertility, and parenting. Your mental health and past experiences deserve to be validated, treated, and healed - help is just moments away.

Coping with War Anxiety by Connor Cohen, LMSW

War is scary. There's nothing simple about it. Unlike the pandemic, war is about man versus man. It can bring up a variety of different feelings. On a global scale we have gone from this environmental stressor...this environmental anxiety to one that is very much human in nature. I think it's the human element of war that is so anxiety-provoking. In cases of war, it is man against man. There is loss of life because of us in a sense. Naturally we can cope with the idea that Mother Nature has it out for us a lot differently than we cope with the idea of danger because of our own doing. The pandemic brought people together, it brought countries together, it was humanity versus this virus. War is very different from that. With war it's man against man and country against country. One of the most anxiety-inducing aspects of it is that as human beings we understand what it is like to be a human being. We understand and can put ourselves in the shoes of the victims of war and to some degree we can even put ourselves in the shoes of those who are the aggressors. As a human being coping with war, it is also important to point out that some of this anxiety comes from the fact that we know that human beings are not always logical actors, especially in the state of war and crisis. While this may feel lost and we may feel defeated, there are things we can do to cope with the global geopolitical landscape that we find ourselves in.

Step one: find a news source that you trust. There's a lot of misinformation in today's day and age, a lot of opinions floating around social media and a lot of words being thrown back and forth. It can make it difficult to really understand what's going on, especially when we find ourselves on the other side of the world.

Step 2: only check that news source a few times a day, perhaps once in the morning, once around  lunch and once around dinner. Try to reduce the amount of time you spend reading the news, especially around time before bed.

Step 3: if you are inclined to do so, find a way to help. Maybe that means finding a way to donate to refugees, perhaps that means advocating your local lawmakers on what you believe is the right course of action. Anxiety can be increasingly difficult when we feel helpless. In an effort to feel less helpless we can find small ways to do something, to act.

Step four: look to history. Some say that history is our greatest teacher, I believe that there is truth in that statement. While it can be easy  to see the atrocities that man has created in the past, it's also important to note that despite the atrocities, despite the wars, we have survived.  It can be easy to try and match up current events with past events in history as if we're trying to fill in a puzzle that has been done before. But for all the history we've been through, the wars of yesterday are not this war. To steal a popular phrase, history teaches us to be alert and not anxious. The purpose of looking back at history is to inform the present, not run from the future. So we can look back on wars of the past as a preventative measure not as a blueprint to follow.

The truth of the matter is war is difficult,  it's okay to be scared. We are living in a time that essentially jumped from one global scale historical event to another. This can bring up a lot of different feelings and a lot of different emotions.

Step five: honor your feelings by allowing them to be. Write out your feelings, draw your emotions, speak to loved ones about what's on your mind, nobody said this had to be easy nobody would blame you if it isn't. If you or a loved one are having difficulty coping with anxiety due to the geopolitical nature of this war, I feel free to reach out to us and our team and schedule an appointment.