Trauma Support Community Check In: Thursday-Friday 3-4 December 2020

Hi everyone. The snow has started in my neck of the woods and the image outside my window makes me feel so at peace. Speaking of which, I thought we would talk about some visualization techniques today! Visualization is a coping strategy to help calm us down, control our emotions, or help with meditation. The key to visualization is practise. The more often you create your visualizations when you're in a decent headspace, the easier it will be to call on when you're in a worse or destructive headspace. Here are two visualizations I like, feel free to try them out now or save them for another time. I will also provide links for some other visualization exercises.

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Relaxing 'Safe Place' Imagery

Imagine a place where you can feel calm, peaceful and safe. It may be a place you've been to before, somewhere you've dreamt about going to, or maybe somewhere you've seen a picture of.

Focus on the colours in your peaceful safe place. Now notice the sounds that are around you, or perhaps the silence.

Think about any smells you notice there.

Then focus on any skin sensations - the earth beneath you, the temperature, any movement of air, anything else you can touch.

Now whilst you're in your peaceful and safe place, you might choose to give it a name, whether one word or a phrase that you can use to bring that image back, anytime you need to.

You can choose to linger there a while, just enjoying the peacefulness and serenity. You can leave whenever you want to, just by opening your eyes and being aware of where you are now.

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How do you feel about safe space imagery? What is your safe space (if you feel comfortable sharing)?

Mine is the library in the neighborhood where I grew up :3

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Containment Exercise

Some of you may remember this exercise from 1-1s with me. It is one of my favourite for putting overwhelming emotions away either after a difficult chat or honestly just whenever it needs to be done. First, make sure you are comfortable and breathing normally.

Picture a container. It can be any container, but you need to be able to close it in some way securely.

Do a slow and controlled body scan. Starting at your head, muscles in the face, neck, chest, heart, back, stomach, hips, thighs, knees, calves, feet. Find where you can feel the negative or overwhelming feelings in your body and slowly, carefully, put them in your container. Take any aches and pains and put them in your container. If something feels especially sticky, feel free to sit with it until you've gotten as much as possible into your container. Put away all negative emotions, any fear, anger, anxiety, sadness... put it all in your container.

Take as long as you need to do this.

When you feel you've put what you can in your container, close it securely, lock it if you can. Now put your container away in a safe place where you can still acess it if you need to.

Take a deep breath and come back to the room you're in. Squidge your toes a bit, touch your surroundings. How do you feel?

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If you feel comfortable, what was your container? I love hearing the answers to this question. Remember your container can also change over time, so don't be concerned if one day your container is something new, this is normal.

How do you feel about visualization? Do you see it as a coping strategy you could add to your toolbox?

Here is a helpful link with more visualization exercises!

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If visualization isn't for you, that's ok! Thank you for checking in, how are you feeling today?

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