🤔What to do if you experience dissociation?

🔹Keep a journal
Write down thoughts, emotions & situations that have triggered you during the day. Try a gratitude journal.

🔹Grounding
Use your 5 senses. Use movement & body posture to feel grounded. Use positive affirmations. Use imagery & visualization. Create a soothing box.

🔹Mindfulness
Focus on the present moment through breathwork. Pay attention to your surroundings. Use meditation & relaxation techniques.

🔹Sleep & diet & exercise
Have a routine. Wake up and go to sleep at the same time. Eat healthy foods, avoid caffeine & alcohol. Exercise regularly

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❇️ Did you know that Dissociation is a protective reaction and occurs on a spectrum?

👉 There are various areas to the dissociative spectrum between what is normal and what is quite extreme levels. Some people may mostly have one of these but some have a mixture of many depending on the severity of the event.

🧠 Our brain uses different levels of dissociation to protect us from feeling pain when feelings and sensations are too overwhelming that take all the resources of the person to cope.

🔹Experiencing dissociation is part of the parasympathetic nervous system 'freeze - collapse' response.

⚡The spectrum of Dissociation from Low to Extreme
- autopilot mode in routine tasks
- daydreaming
- zoning out
- PTSD- trauma
- amnesia & memory problems
- depersonalization & derealization
- identity alteration
- dissociative identity disorder (DID)

🛸Sometimes it is described as the experience of being a “passenger” in one’s body, rather than the driver.

Check the graph here

Based on the ACT book, the Happiness Trap)

🧘🏽‍♀️Whatever the urge, the first step is to notice it. (It often helps to acknowledge silently, ‘I’m having the urge to do X.’) The second step is to check in with your values: ‘Will acting on this urge help me be the person I want to be? Will it help me take my life in the direction I want?’ If the answer is yes, then go ahead and act, using that urge to guide you and give you momentum. But if the answer is no, then instead take some action that’s more in line with your values.

🌸Mindfulness is connection🌸

🔹Connection is the process of making full contact with your experience in this moment.

🔹Connection means being fully aware of your here & now experience, being interested, open & receptive to that experience.

🔹Connection is about waking up, noticing what’s happening, engaging with the world & appreciating the fullness of every moment.

🔹Connection happens through the observing self.

👉the observing self is by nature non-judgemental.

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​(Based on the ACT book The Happiness Trap)

🧘🏽‍♀️Close your eyes for one minute and simply notice what your mind does.Stay on the lookout for any thoughts or images, as if you were a wildlife photographer waiting for an exotic animal to emerge from the undergrowth.
If no thoughts or images appear, keep watching; sooner or later they will show themselves. Notice where those thoughts or images seem to be located: in front of you, above you, behind you, to one side of you, or within you? Once you’ve done this for a minute, open your eyes again.

❇️ What you experienced were two distinct processes going on. First there was the process of thinking —in other words, some thoughts or images appeared. Then there was the process of observing; that is, you were able to notice or observe those thoughts and images. It’s important to experience the distinction between thinking and observing.

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❇️Boundaries❇️

Setting boundaries doesn’t come easily or naturally to a lot of people, but we can learn to set healthy boundaries.

Setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not okay, and why.

We often feel like we need to apologize or justify when setting a boundary, but We don’t.

We need to find a way of staying true to ourselves and grounded while also feeling compassion towards others
 
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🔆We all experience internal voices that could be nurturing ("you can do this") or invalidating ("you are a failure")

Both coexist and play an important role on our daily functioning.

👉These voices influence how much we dare to take risks, to believe in ourselves, to engage in relationships, to pursue certain careers, etc.

🤔How different would your life be if instead of an inner critic, you had an Inner Advocate? .
🧘🏽‍♀️How can I do it?

1️⃣ be aware & curious about the voice.

2️⃣ identify how, when, where & why the inner critic shows up.

3️⃣ allow the tension to exist in you. this could be transformative (grow & challenge).

4️⃣ the inner critic could, sometimes, help you see gaps you may have missed. use it to make yourself feel better not worse.

5️⃣ visualize what the inner critic tells you cannot do.

6️⃣ write down, or hold onto, those feelings & thoughts of success. 
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👉tell yourself you are able of doing whatever you set your mind to.

👉 bring up some positive affirmations & be compassionate to yourself.

Check my post here

❇️3 inner critics that all of us have to face❇️

👉SHAME
🔹universal human emotion, typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self; "I am not enough"

👉SCARCITY
🔹never feeling safe, certain & sure enough; "too good to be true", "it is never enough", "don't get so happy, something bad is going to happen"

👉COMPARISON
🔹measuring the self against others. Comparison kills creativity and joy; "X is better than me"

Do you want to know more? Here

❇️ Many of us are told things such as, “don’t cry,” "stay quiet, don't be annoying" “there’s nothing to be sad about.” 

🔹As a culture, we are often taught that we should try to avoid unpleasant emotions at all costs. This leads to an impulse to escape / hide / bury the experience of unpleasant emotions.

👉However, what really happens when we suppress uncomfortable emotions is that, over time, the pleasant emotions are also not felt. When we numb one part of us, there is an impact on ourselves as a whole. Therefore, when you numb sadness, you also numb happiness and joy.

🌊It is helpful to think of our feelings as waves in the ocean. They come and go, rise and fall. No feeling lasts forever and all emotions have a purpose. Anger and sadness are necessary, helpful parts of the human experience, as well as joy and happiness.

🧘🏽‍♀️Struggling with our emotions often leads to more suffering and anxiety. Practicing expansion can help to tolerate emotions, both comfortable and uncomfortable ones.

More in this post

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🔆EXPANSION🔆

It means making room for our feelings.

🌬️If we give unpleasant feelings enough space, they no longer strain us. With expansion, instead of tensing up or contracting, we are opening up.

💥Fighting or avoiding our feelings does not create room for them, expansion does.

🧘🏽‍♀️As long as we make room they will move.

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🧘‍♀️Mind-body connection

The mind & the body are not two separate entities, although they are often treated that way.

Chemistry & biology 🔁 mood, emotions, behaviour, thoughts & beliefs.
➡️Communication happens via chemical & physical messengers, such as hormones & neurotransmitters

🏵️If you’ve ever felt your stomach tighten up when you were anxious, you’ve experienced the mind-body connection

💛Befriending the body💛

Physical self-awareness is often the first step in mental health treatments.
in therapy, one way of exploring emotions is by noticing sensations in the body such as pressure, heat, breathing, tension, tingling, pain, hollowness, etc.

🏵️Have you ever noticed a gnawing pain in the stomach when thinking about a negative event.

✳️Our body reproduces the mental content of events✳️

⚠️When these events are traumatic, noticing the physical sensations can be very distressing. This process needs professional guidance.

Instagram post here for more visual information.

🏵️Irrational beliefs

Albert Ellis chose the term irrational as a euphemism for unhelpful, illogical and inconsistent with our social reality.

The four types of Irrational Beliefs

✳️Demands: These are the primary Irrational belief. They often feature phrases such as must, absolute shoulds, have to, need and ought. Example: I would love to succeed and therefore I have to!

✳️Awfulising: awful is defined as anything that is evaluated as being worse than 100% bad. Example: If I don't succeed in my presentation is will be awful!

✳️Low Frustration Tolerance (LFT): Otherwise known as I-can't-stand-it., LFT beliefs feature an acknowledgement of a struggle and an assertion that the struggle is truly unbearable or cannot be stood. Example: If people are rude to me I cannot stand it!

✳️Conditional Self (other, life) Acceptance: Otherwise known as self-downing and generalization, this is where we define our self based on one aspect. Example: If I fail at something important to me then I am a failure

Irrational beliefs list by Albert Ellis:
"It is a dire necessity for an adult human being to be loved or approved by virtually every significant other person in his community"

"One should be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving in all possible respects if one is to consider oneself worthwhile"

"Certain people are bad, wicked, or villainous and that they should be severely blamed and punished for their villainy"

"It is awful and catastrophic when things are not the way one would very much like them to be"

"Human unhappiness is externally caused and that people have little or no ability to control their sorrows and disturbances"

"If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome one should be terribly concerned about it and should keep dwelling on the possibility of its occurring"

"It is easier to avoid than to face certain life difficulties and self-responsibilities"

"One should be dependent on others and needs someone stronger than oneself on whom to rely"

"One’s past history is an all-important determiner of one’s present behavior and that because something once strongly affected one’s life, it should indefinitely have a similar effect"

"One should become quite upset over other people’s problems and disturbances"

"There is invariably a right, precise, and perfect solution to human problems and that It is catastrophic if this perfect solution is not found"

"You can give people (including yourself) a global rating as a human and that their general worth depends upon the goodness of their performances"

Check the Instagram post.

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🏵️The human brain is always seeking to find meaning from the information of our environment. Once it has constructed a belief, it rationalizes it with explanations after the event. The brain then becomes invested in the beliefs and reinforces them by looking for supporting evidence while blinding itself to anything contrary.

🧠Irrational beliefs, in particular, are those about us that we have heard and internalized in our childhood, or that have been self-generated through difficult and/or traumatic experiences. These limiting beliefs constrain us in some way and are constantly brought into play and appear in our minds through automatic thoughts. Without realizing it, they are part of our day-to-day. How much attention do we give them? How much do we listen to and believe them? We get trapped in mental loops where we selectively pay attention to everything in our environment that reinforces that limiting thought-belief. We dismiss alternative options and positive evidence making the loop more intense.

✳️Learning to accept these thoughts as a product of our mind while paying attention to our external reality with curiosity (e.g by practicing mindfulness) could be helpful.

✳️Noticing our body sensations can also help to differentiate our thoughts (internal) from our body & environment (external) to put them in perspective.

​✳️One way to start breaking mental loops is to detect those negative vicious cycles and accept them without fighting.

✳️Another way is to know that they are just thoughts, and cannot hurt us, and redirect our attention to the present moment by tuning into our personal values.

🔅Self-compassion and talking gently to ourselves can be a positive change if you practice it regularly. Try it and tell me how it goes.