 |
| pic credit |
Over the next few weeks, I hope to help myself and others construct something of their own rocket to help them fly to a safer place of optimism and balance. Before diving into the nuts and bolts of some technical things and how neglect and my ignorance of them has contributed to my revisitng of Stage One of trauma recovery, I thought I'd hit on some positive, practical, basic, and concrete things that I have found to be very helpful in the past.
Self
Care to Start
Perhaps
the most important and effective thing that a person can do to boost
their spirits flows from self care. I'd reinjured an old back injury
a few months ago, and the pain was so terrible that I neglected
myself. A friend of mine asked me when I'd last bathed after I was
able to walk a bit better, and I couldn't remember. She made me
promise that I would take a bath, and she said it was the first step
towards feeling better. I found that she was quite right, but I'd
spent a good chunk of time ignoring my body because of physical pain.
My first step forward out of that blue fog came through basic
efforts to care for myself. I was amazed at how much better I felt
afterwards and how nice it felt to indulge myself in a leisurely bath
instead of my sickbed.
Some
people need to be reminded to slow down, and some need to be urged to
be more active, depending on their patterns of responding to stress.
In my case, I needed to be inspired to be active. I'd retreated from
the pain through inactivity, but I also retreated from my friends.
My neglect of self points to the importance of staying connected to
others instead of retreating in isolation. I remember an
acquaintance of mine who often admitted that “isolation was his
drug.” When we're in pain, we tend to avoid social contact. Do it
anyway! It will help if you surround yourself and stay in contact
with people who encourage you to be healthy and optimistic. They can
loan their optimism to you if you're lacking your own from time to
time.
Goal
Setting
Another
way of nurturing positive thoughts can come through setting simple
goals. If we think of ourselves as ineffective, pursing a
measurable goal and tracking our work as well as our progress can
show us that we do have choice which gives us a sense of
accomplishment. There's that old joke about how one goes about
eating an elephant. We do it a bite at a time, and all we need to do
sometimes involves planning realistic steps which allow us to tackle
something that seems to great for us to fathom.
If we
have a bank of bad experiences, setting manageable goals and achieving
them gives us evidence to the contrary. We tend to believe that we are powerless when we're
overwhelmed, but setting goals helps ground us in reality and lets us see more objectively that we are not as powerless as we feel. Tracking our achievement also
can serve to help us be accountable to ourselves which is always
easier and less uncomfortable than having others impose it on us.
Visualization
as an Adjunct to Goal Setting
Psychology Today recently published an article about the “Best Possible Self”
visualization as a means of significantly boosting optimism. The more often that we engage in the
practice, the more benefit we will glean, but even just following
through with it once can yield much help to us in the short term. I
am reminded of how certain therapies take advantage of the part of
the mind that can't distinguish what is real from what is imagined,
so it does not surprise me that research supports the effectiveness
of this mental exercise which nurtures the soul.
From the
article entitled A
Simple Exercise to Boost Optimism (And Improve Health):
When
you have at least 10 minutes of free time or more, envision yourself
in a future that has turned out to be the rosiest that is possible
(and feasible). It may help to pick a particular time-point in the
future, say 10 years from now.
In
this future, you have reached all the goals you had set for yourself,
you have climbed the pinnacle of your dream career, you have found
the soul-mate and love of your life, you are in peak physical shape,
you have friends who are trustworthy and caring, and so on. You get
the picture. Visualize what such a future will be like and feel like
to you in as much detail as possible.
This
practice differs from mediation because it is guided and purposeful,
where as meditation aims at calming the self and the mind. While the
best possible self visualization exercise might draw on similar
skills, it draws on creativity and problem solving and goal setting
skills. Mediation also focuses on the present moment, and this kind
of visualization focuses entirely on a bright future. The article
cites several research studies that demonstrate the many desirable
benefits of the exercise on mood, outlook and even on pain tolerance.
And optimism brings many subtle but powerful health benefits.
Until
the next post, don't give up! Don't let the dream squashers get the
best of you! They don't deserve the satisfaction.
For
further reading until the next post:
- Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Francine
Shapiro's
Getting
Past Your Past
