Trauma In Adults

Pay Attention to Your Responses

Identify the Responses You Experience

Identify the Cause

  Learn Techniques to Re-ground Yourself

 

We will  look at how your trauma may affect you, for you to understand that your feelings, thoughts, and your behaviours are normal for someone who has experienced a trauma.

 

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Emotional Regulation and Re-grounding Techniques

 

Recognising your triggers and responses such as physical and emotional dysregulation will promote your ability to regulate emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Here are a few self-regulating techniques which you can try:

 

​​Drinking from a sports bottle, this soothes the brain and will calm you down  ​Star jumps count as you jump. Counting uses the cognitive brain, this pulls you from the survival response  ​Any form of exercise, use counting with exercise as this willre-boot the cognitive brain  ​Anything sensory will enable you to re-regulate, the movement the sensory material between your hands, regulates the brain. Warm water or soap  ​If angry, use your pillow as a punch bag, this is a safe way of punching out your anger    ​Colouring, choosing colours and the task of drawing requires the cognitive brain  ​Tumble dry sheets/wet wipes, the smell is sensory and will remind you of nurture  ​Foam soap, this again is sensory. Use the sink or a large bowl, let them squeeze the foam soap and mould it in their hands  ​Emotion cards, they can point to how you feel if you are unable to find the words  ​Relaxation and yoga on YouTube  ​Puzzles, such as dot to dot or mazes. These use the cognitive brain so puts the brain back online and pulling you from the stress response  ​Games, play any game with your family, your closeness to others who signify trust and safety will re-regulate  ​Soothing, cuddle into a blanket which helps you to feel warm and safe  ​A place that you can use as a safe place that you will use when you feel things are tough  ​Breathing, which will reduce the effects of a stress response. This also helps when experiencing a panic attack. Deep breathe in, hold, and count for 3, release blowing out for a count of 10, keep repeating until you can feel your head feeling fuzzy. Counting requires the cognitive brain (cortex) so you are putting your brain back online.  ​Mindfulness  ​Meditation  ​Building your awareness to your environment, where are you? What can you see? What can you hear?  ​Warm shower or bath  ​Write down what is happening and explore why  ​Use your imagination with construction bricks such as Lego  ​Go for a walk and pay attention to the nature that you can see and hear around you

 

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Breathing Techniques

 

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Deep breathing is a relaxation technique which helps us by relieving feelings of stress and anxiety. Being in a stress response or experiencing an anxiety attack, our heart rates increases as described in the fight/flight response. Breathing slows down the heart and we move from a stress position to a place of relaxation.

 

Try and find a comfortable place to sit, if you can, close your eyes. Place your hand on your heart so that you can feel your breathing:

 

1. Breathe in through your nose and count 1,2,3,4

2. Hold your breath and count 1,2,3,4

3. Breath out through your mouth, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 continue for as long as you can

4. Repeat until you can feel your body relaxing, some people report that their head becomes fuzzy and light

 

This technique helps by combating the bodies stressful response in two ways. Deep breathing increases the supply of oxygen to the brain which promotes calmness. By counting, you are using your pre-frontal cortex – your thinking brain. This pulls you out of the limbic brain where you were in a stress response and unable to make rational decisions to the cortex whereby you are able to rationalise what has just happened and to then use your learnt regulation techniques.

 

Here are links to other breathing techniques – use what you find is most helpful to you.

 

Relieve Stress and Anxiety with Simple Breathing Techniques - Dr Jo

 

Box Breathing Technique - simple strategy to calm anxiety - Pooky Knightsmith

 

 

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Mindfulness

 

What is mindfulness?

 

Being caught in your difficult thoughts and feelings of the past and worrying is really tough, Mindfulness helps by moving to a sense of calmness and being present in the here and now.

Colouring mandalas helps you focus on the task in front of you, your brain becomes relaxed and away from difficult thoughts and feelings. Here is a link to downloadable free mandalas:

 

https://www.teachingideas.co.uk/2d-art/mindfulness-colouring-images-animals

 

 

Here are links to books of mandalas:

https://www.theworks.co.uk/p/adult-colouring-books/art-and-soul-calming-colouring-book/9781912754502.html

https://www.theworks.co.uk/p/adult-colouring-books/magnificent-animals-kaleidoscope-colouring/9781488911521.html

https://www.theworks.co.uk/p/adult-colouring-books/the-art-of-mindfulness-peace-and-calm-colouring/9781782434931.html

 

Meditation Music, to re-regulate, relax and to aid sleep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLJqUipWRWk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zqKJBxRyuoandlist=RD4zqKJBxRyuoandindex=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndAnfVoUjBM

 

Safe Place Technique

This is a guided meditation technique which will help you visualise yourself in a safe place, taking you away from present difficult thoughts and feelings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4lw3zjjL-g

 

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Grounding Techniques

 

After a trauma, it is normal to experience difficult thoughts, feelings, and behaviours such as flashbacks, bad dreams and feeling worried and anxious. Grounding techniques help you control the symptoms which we have discussed in the flight/fight/freeze section. These techniques turn our attention from the past to the present moment.

1. Focus on 5 things you can see, notice their size, any patterns, colours

2. Focus on 4 things you can feel, the texture of your clothes, your hair, the furniture that is close to you, how your feet feel either inside your shoes or on the ground you are standing on, touch your phone or keyboard

3. Focus on 3 things that you can hear, a clock ticking, the rain outside, bird song, noises outside the room – what are they?

4. Focus on 2 things you can smell, flowers, a candle, a drink you may have close by,

5. Focus on something you can eat which is close by, crisps, gum, a drink that maybe close by

 

Here is a guided video to help you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHV2J8Gp5c4

 

Name as many items in each category:

Fruits

Animals

Films

Countries

Create your own categories.

 

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Mental Exercises

Puzzles, word search, sudoku, all of these use your cognitive brain and keep you focused away from the memories of the past or help you re-ground if you have experienced a difficult image from the past. Other helpful techniques are:

 

Counting back from 100, if that is too easy, count back from 1,000

Play a game on your phone.

Tip:

When you have experienced a stress episode, you will feel tired afterwards. Do not worry, this is a normal response.

Go with it, take time to relax even if this means taking a nap, cuddle up in a blanket, and use some of the relaxation techniques.

 

Task:

Create your own first aid box. Think about what you can have in this box, draw this on a piece of paper. Suggestions:

A book to read, a jigsaw puzzle, phone/text a friend, watch your favourite film, cuddle into a snuggly blanket, or go for a walk and notice the temperature, noises and smells.

Being prepared is helpful, have a notebook with all of the strategies that help you. Note down what was helpful and what was not.

 

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Understanding Emotions

 

Your emotions will be all over the place which is normal. These feelings are scary and confusing. It is normal to feel many of these feelings for a long time after the event until you have taken control of the impact with the use of the strategies we will look at in the following pages. Use this time to identify what feelings you feel and when.

 

On paper, write down feelings you have at certain times during your week, then why you feel like this ending with how you respond. This will help you link feelings to thoughts and then how your behaviours are affected which will begin to help you move from a place of helplessness, to a place of beginning to understand and regain your life back, this is just an example:

 

​FEELING = ANGRY    THOUGHT = YOU HAVE BEEN HURT     BEHAVIOUR = AGGRESSION

 

 

Use the wheel to link your emotions to how your body responds (click to download). As well as different feelings, your body will also seem different to you which can feel really tough for you to deal with. You can share this with a parent, a friend, or a teacher to help them understand what you are going through.

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click on image above to see larger version

 

Emotions can be experienced as difficult and may cause distress. You may have ruminating thoughts. For some, risky behaviours are adopted as a copying strategy.

Link to Risky Behaviours Page

 

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Trauma Reminders and Relapse Prevention

 

It is important for you to acknowledge, that although you have learnt about what is trauma as well as learning strategies to help you with the impact of trauma, in the future you may experience moments when you may be reminded of the trauma. This is normal, you may have been re-triggered. We have already discussed triggers; we have encouraged you to identify what your triggers are so that you are better skilled at overcoming then. Something in the present that reminds you of the past such as visual cues, special dates, Birthdays, holidays, or an experience such as a car journey which may then trigger thoughts, feelings, or snapshots of your trauma. This is you not going backwards, it is a small moment in time when you are feeling as if you are back in the place where the trauma was experienced. When this happens, review what you have previously learnt and the strategies that helped you. We term this ‘relapse prevention’. Think of yourself as a detective, think about what you have been doing, write down a log of your day, try to look for what may have triggered your trauma reminder. As described earlier, this will empower you to logically think it through, you can then plan to avoid or prepare yourself for future reminders.

 

“The lightning strike reminded me of the day it happened. It seems strange to me now that I can remember the

weather when something so awful was happening to me, but I remember the noise so vividly”.

 

From this point, you can rationalise that even though it was lightening when you experienced the trauma event, the trauma is not in the present, it is left in the past and that you are ‘SAFE’.

 

Think of this as having a little ‘wobble’ or a ‘hiccup’.

 

Recently, we have all learnt the new skill of communicating on zoom.

Think of a time when you experienced a glitch, you froze, you are stuck, frozen.

You decide to pull yourself out of the meeting and re-enter.

There you go, you are back!

This is the same as when you experience a reminder, you freeze.

Reboot your frontal cortex so that you can process that you are safe and that this is merely a reminder.

 

This section is to help you understand how trauma may impact you and to then support you with techniques to enable you to feel safe, emotionally regulated, relaxed and to feel a sense of calmness and control.

Whilst this page is helpful and progressive in your journey towards healing, for some, further support maybe helpful.

Please follow the link to the help directory