When we are feeling “too much” (red/ 10-8 / hyperarousal) or “not enough” (blue/ 3-1/ hypoarousal) we need to get “out” of the feeling and either into the body or into the mind.
To get “into the mind” we use either mindfulness or what I’m going to call “mental gymnastics”.
Some people prefer using “body”-skills because “mind”-skills take some practice, but they work really well and they are especially helpful after a flashback and when you are in a public setting and don’t want to draw attention.
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Mindfulness
In mindfulness we connect with our senses without adding more stimulation. Instead we put our focussed attention on what is already there. The idea is to create a neutral position in your mind that is dispassionate without being dissociated.
If you have DID, you might find that while one of you is busy doing a mindfulness exercise, others are still “in the feeling”. It helps to either get everyone involved in one mindfulness exercise or split and give everyone their own exercise, possibly covering different senses as well.
Mindfulness is a form of guided attention. The basic rules:
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notice and observe,
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describe (without evaluation or emotion), choose a name or headline,
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don’t judge,
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no need to react, let it pass.
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Exercises:
See: pick a small item that is at hand and start to look at it in detail, describe the material, the surface, color, shape etc. Go into great detail and be as specific as you can.
Taste: put some kind of food in your mouth, move it around slowly, describe what it feels like when it touches your tongue, the size, shape , texture and describe the taste before and after you chew on it and how it might change over time
Smell: maybe use food or spices or essential oils for this. Try to get a good nose full and describe the smell as detailed as possible
Touch: pick a small item or any surface and touch it with your hands, describe what it feels like, texture, maybe material, shape, temperature and differences you can sense.
Hear: listen, notice every noise you can hear and put a name or label on it. Focus on hearing alone and when there is a constant noise, see if you can move on to other things you can hear as well. Hearing is especially helpful as it is always available.
You can become a distant observer of your body, emotions and thoughts as well. That takes a little more practice and I will explain it here
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Mental Gymnastics
What I like to call „mental gymnastics“ are little games you can play in your mind, some easy, some can get really hard.
Numbers: count things in the room or outside. That could be windows of a house, cars, pictures on the wall, lamps, chairs, tiles, panels, spots, pretty much anything really. Just look around and find something to count.
If counting is too easy for you, you can also do some easy maths problems. Start with a random number, like 23, then add a fixed number, maybe a 4, to it and keep adding it. (23+4=27 27+4=31…)
If that is still too easy, start with a random number and add a number x to it that increases +1 every time you add it. (4+3=7 7+4=13 13+5=18)
Feel free to go into multiplication and higher numbers if that feels right or throw in a subtraction every other time.
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Colors: there are different games with colors you can play.
Maybe you can imagine a paintbox, with
yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, light blue, dark blue, light green, dark green, brown, black and white.
Look around and find EVERYTHING in the room that is yellow, then continue with orange, red and so on.
For a short version of this: find one item for each color
It also helps to say the name of every item.
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Letters: choose a category, maybe animals or cities or something else that you are familiar with. Find something from that category starting with the letter A, then B, C, D and so on.
Word-chains: again choose a category you are familiar with. Start with one word, the next word has to start with the last letter of the previous one
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advanced versions: mix and combine!
Find something yellow, name a city starting with A, find something orange, name a city with B….
Name an animal with A, add a number x, name an animal that starts with the last letter of the first animal, add a number x+1
Find something yellow, name a food starting with z (y,x…), multiply with 3 and if you happen to be near stairs: move up 2 stairs, next time move down one stair
If THAT is not keeping your mind fully involved, I don’t know what could.
Caution: If your brain is already shutting down your ability to speak and name things, please move to body skills instead.
You can find some over here:
Some Skills for Hyper/Hypoarousal: the body
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