Mastodawn

in what happened, and if when you're being pulled into what happened, you can quickly come back into the now and you know how to do that and it's become a second nature to you, then those flashbacks, those panic attacks and triggers are less frightening and will happen less often

(2/15)

and will have a hold over you for less time and happen less often.

And I really recommend that we practice this as often as possible so that it becomes second nature so that when we start to feel that we're not in the present, and that can be in two ways, that can be when we're

(3/15)

Audubon Ballroon (he/him)

disassociating from the present and just kind of numbing ourselves to what's happening around us and it can happen when we are being pulled back into a flashback experience. But, when we practice being in the now, both of those things will happen less and whilst I know

(4/15)

disassociating can feel like a safe, a safe place to be, my psychiatrist said that I had war zone levels of disassociation. She could hardly believe it. I was so practiced in the art of not being in my body, not being in the now, that that can be dangerous as well because it

(5/15)

means that we don't, we're not enabling our brains to be in a place to recover.

So I really want for you to practice this grounding exercise, like several times a day, maybe do it when you first wake up, lying in bed, look up and sort of say, okay, what can I see,

(6/15)

my eyes are a bit bleary, it's all a bit kind of foggy. Oh, it feels a bit cold, maybe I want to put the heating on a little bit earlier so that when I wake up it's not so cold. What can I hear, can I hear the morning chorus? So, when you're waking up, think about

(7/15)

what can you hear, what can you see, what's it feel like, maybe your teeth taste a bit bad and do it again as you're going to bed at night, maybe, just to ground yourself into the now before going to sleep, and like, and that's a great part to be part of the sleep ritual as well.

(8/15)

And see if you can throw in another couple of practice sessions during the day because the more this can become second nature, the less you're going to get flashbacks, the less you're going to be dissociated and the more you're going to have,

(9/15)

be creating the environment for healing and we, sort of, those neurological pathways to find their way back to not being so triggered and not being so on edge.

And as you're doing the grounding, the other benefit is because you're really focusing on your senses,

(10/15)

you can't help but be in your body, so whilst it feels like it might be a conscious mind exercise, it's actually very much a conscious body exercise and that's really important to start to get our mind and body speaking to each other again.

Certainly for me, grounding was,

(11/15)

as I said, something that really kept me going when I was being pulled back. There were many, many times when I was in a work situation feeling like I was about to get pulled into something where I was able to just rescue myself sitting in my office chair and

(12/15)

just start to ground my bottom into the chair, noticing how it felt, feeling how I felt, how I could feel the skin prickling on my arms, looking around and seeing my colleagues and actually starting to come back into the present. There was one time we were actually

(13/15)

in a big corporate meeting, all hands, everyone in their, you know, in their chairs, about 100 people all gathered around the central part of the open plan office and something was said that, it was a very inane comment, it shouldn't have been anything that was triggering, but

(14/15)

it was triggering to me and I was suddenly really, really triggered and felt also a huge panic that I was about to embarrass myself in front of 100 of my colleagues and it was grounding myself into my chair, looking at a point on the wall, and then feeling safer to look around

(15/16)