#recovery tools

[coachingandinspirationsfornow]

LIFE COACH / GRIEF AND LOSS COACH Available - Let's Talk!

(Listening ~ Encouraging ~ Supporting ~ Advising ~ Companionship Services For You.)

For Assistance With:

Grief And Loss Counseling.

Discovering What You Really Want In Life.

Couples / Relationships Counseling.

Finding Fulfillment / Being Happy, Living Passionately.

Maintaining Accountability.

Making Decisions And Prioritizing.

Managing Transitions, i.e.: Changes In Employment, Relationship Status, Living Circumstances, And More.

Communicating Effectively.

Developing A Career Which Includes Resume And Cover Letter Preparation.

Personal Fitness Training.

Time Management Analysis.

CONTACT:

GAYLE SIMPSON Life Coach Email:  gaysmps@aol.com Telephone:  310-849-7972 / 424-259-1164      (EMAIL / TELEPHONIC COACHING)

REASONABLE RATES!

[mbishiri]

Active@ LiveCD is a high-end toolset consisting of a wide range of disk and data applications accessible through a fully self-contained operating environment that works independently of your everyday operating system.

[uncanny-tranny]

I recently had to do a project in one of my psych classes, and man, I knew that CBT was used for every little thing, but seeing over and over, "do CBT! CBT is the best for every mental illness!" was so jarring. I'm absolutely biased because of my own experiences, but I just don't think it's as universal a treatment model as it's touted.

If you didn't benefit from CBT, it's not because you're lazy or didn't try hard enough or lacked intelligence or foresight into your own needs. Frankly, it's a therapy model that (I think) shouldn't be the only readily-accessible model and among the only therapy models covered by insurance. Some of us should not be treated in a CBT model and that's okay. It's not a sign of poor character or unreasonable demands, and if you don't think it's a model that works for you, then it's your right to express that!

[positivelyadhd]

please don't blame yourself not knowing you were neurodivergent sooner.

please don't blame yourself if you did know you were neurodivergent but your support needs weren't met for whatever reason.

everyone deserves to have access to disability aids and support if they need it.

you are not an inconvenience for wanting to be understood or supported. you are not broken.

it is not your fault that the systems you needed weren't there when you needed them.

no matter what anyone says, you deserve to live in a world where you can be happy and do the things that you want to do and exist how you want to.

I am so sorry that it's so difficult to get that sometimes, but it is not your fault. and you still deserve support now even if you *got by" without.

[panharmonium]

for @keepyourpantsongohan‘s “happy naruto thoughts” request: yamato weaponizing his weirdness to mess with the kids 🌳❤️🌳

[system-of-a-feather]

Alternative System Mind Mapping Method for Communication

[DISCLAIMER: This is not a professional or scientifically or anything really backed method, this is something coming solely from peer / personal experience.]

In regards to an anon ask earlier, I was thinking about it and one of the ways we've approached improving communication - particularly internal - in a way that is a lot less prone to flooding or dealing with trauma or anything too overwhelming - is by approaching it following the concept of Memory Webs

I haven't read up on them recently, but "Memory Webs" were a thing that our AP Psychology teacher in highschool made us do because the AP Psych test was term / jargon heavy. Memory in the human brain has been shown to be HEAVILY associative and the ability to remember and connect things tends to rely on following a "web" of connected topics, ideas, concepts etc from one idea to the next.

So in our AP Psych class, she gave us these GIANT books for Vocabulary Webs that we had to slowly work on, each of which required 6 other vocab words / related concepts, a summarized definition, and an image to represent it. By doing this, you added 6 cues to recall the word (increasing the chance you'd remember it), a visual cue, an episodic memory of working on it, and a definition - all in all improving how connected the word is to other concepts in your brain and making it easier to recall it.

I personally like to look at DID and our parts in a similar manner sometimes where the large issue is that a lot of the nodes in the web of associations are either disconnected or connected through a hard-to-find and/or small chain. In that sense, parts struggle to be held together because they are not associated concepts. It's hard to reach other parts because the dissociative walls (which in our unsubstantiated opinion is less a 'wall' and more so a lack of reinforced neural connections, so I would call them dissociative caverns) keep associations from forming

As a result, alternative to more traditional ways of mapping your system and parts, a method I've liked to internally visualize systems and navigating system dynamics is through a memory web manner. (I actually have never done it physically cause the Ray part of my brain - also the most prominent part writing this rn - rarely liked to front if he didn't have to and did a lot of stuff internally)

Here's a bit of a breakdown using six of our parts if any of you want to try it out.

We personally like it because it strips a lot of trauma and stress off of it and makes it a lot more of a positive and present engaging activity. For the purposes of this, I'll be using the free online app of Milanote cause we've used it before for OC associative webs and I think it'll do fine enough. (Honestly it actually might just be a good way to log alter information now that I'm looking at it if you are at a place in recovery where keeping track of that physically helpful)

So we can start by dropping down the parts we want to include in the form of boards

So from here, we have a bunch of disconnected parts. However, we find that a lot of these parts have things that mean a lot to them, that illicit a strong emotion or reaction from them.

Some parts may lack it more than others (often in our case trauma holders and/or trauma locked parts) and that's okay and to be expected. This is a visualization method and if there isn't much connecting a part that is 100% okay.

For demonstration sake, I will now add bubbles around each part of things that were pretty early apparent that each individual liked.

Also for the purposes of how I know our system works and how I plan to do this, I am actually moving Riku to the center and you will all see why Riku is such an S tier center point with this model

So you can see some connections forming.

Some key things you can take from this visual that also applied to earlier stags of how we connected

Lucille and Riku are and have always been pretty darn connected, they go back as one of the longest duos and were split almost as a pair to deal with academics

Chunn and Ray have a very shared interest of "I don't want to do anything leave me alone"

XIV literally was just a piece of shit early on and didn't have any immediate HARD connections with anyone largely because he never was interested in actually engaging in things he liked in a positive way as his "favorite emotion" at the time was "being pissed off"

Lin - an originally trauma stuck / loop - is very very poorly associated with anything that isn't overtly trauma related (and that is saying something cause Vocaloid is trauma related) and thus has very few connections to other parts

So looking at this though, there are a few things that have some similarities between parts. What you can do is make plans to try to foster the interests that you do have and try to generalize it a bit more to also encompass what interests other parts have. So lets engage in hobbies a little more - explore a few concepts that mean a lot to parts independently - and find some more generalized version of those hobbies

(forgot to add easy listening to Ray's and "only wearing monochrome*" to XIV's earlier) (*there are a lot of nuances and caveats)

Damn, look at that. It's messy and ugly to have in a 2D form. I absolutely hate it, this would be so impossible with our whole system. But HEY, it's very connected - and that's the goal.

Compared to the previous one, you can see how easily it can be for one part's interests to start to drift into another. Because they are largely and strongly associated features to each part, they are a lot more accessible when engaging in their shared / associated connections and interests which makes it easier for the them to stay together near the front, stay associated with one another, and work with and communicate with one another.

Of course anyone following this blog goes "Where tf is Birds" and that I left out because it would ruin the point of the web as it actually is one of our traditional "you are around the system a lot? okay pick a bird" which serves to 1) be a fun system culture thing 2) be a means of welcoming a part in and 3) helps establish a foundational connection; we do the same with music but with music its a lot more elaborate and I probably wont explain it for other reasons.

But overtime, by fostering interests that were already present and encouraging parts to broaden and generalize their specific interest a bit, you end up with a lot of overlapping associations that can greatly improve internal communication, co-fronting ability, and just general fluidity and easy of moving around the brain web.

It becomes a good way of trying to figure out what you can do to encourage and help build connections and associations between parts by seeing where things are similar / could have more overlap (combat and martial arts, different types of fashion, different types of music, different appreciation for arts, taking over the world, yada yada yada)

And you wanna know the coolest thing? When you step back from the whole web you can see certain things appear that stand out the most and have some of the most connections.

If you ever intend to go to Final Fusion, those are the things that will likely be the most prominent traits of your whole self

For us? [REDACTED BIRDS for the point of the demonstration], Music, Fashion, Taking over the World, Recovery and Healing, Buddhism, Martial Arts, Arts in general - they're all some of our largest traits that persist in almost all forms as individual parts, partially fused parts, and fully fused parts.

And the BEST part? Doing this didn't require us to touch trauma at all.

Of course in recovery that will come up cause PTSD doesn't ask permission, but its a very low stress way to help improve internal communication and engagement with one another.

[dndtreasury]

Rune Die by Goblin Coach

[nonbinary-vents]

This year’s Seder is going to well so far! Last year I didn’t even participate because I had a breakdown and had to go home from our friends’s house, now I feel like I can actually enjoy my favourite festival. Sometimes it’s hard to see how far you’ve come, but when you do it’s amazing. Mental disorders are a bitch because you’ll never permanently recover and things absolutely will get rough again, but the point of recovery isn’t to never struggle with your illness again— the point is to build up coping strategies, it’s to get the help you need, it’s to figure out how to live with something that you’re going to have with the rest of your life. And it’s about things getting better, it’s about things getting so much better

‏חג שמח ‏כולם ♥️

[positiveupwardspiral]

10 Tools For Getting Sober:

1) Change your mindset about alcohol from “can’t have” to “don’t want.”

2) The first 30 days are the toughest. Sign up to a 30-day course, such as the free 30-day Alcohol Experiment, write down your experience and start getting really curious about everything that’s happening.

3) Join Facebook groups, sober sub-reddits and other online or in person sober communities so you have support and accountability. Search out other sober people to befriend.

4) Arm yourself with alcohol-free alternative drinks. There are hundreds available and it’s great fun exploring it all.

5) Pour or give away your alcoholic drinks. You don’t want them in the house.

6) Avoid temptation. If you have any boozy nights out arranged for at least the first 30-60+ days, I’d suggest avoiding them because you might be tempted to drink. When you feel strong enough, carry on as normal.

7) Be passionate. Think about it like, I’m a sober rebel: I’m doing something amazing, I’m not feeling deprived.

8) Don’t worry too much if you slip – it can happen. Don’t beat yourself up. Learn from it, move on and try again.

9) Stay engaged as the weeks and months roll by. You’ll see loads of positive changes to your body, your mind and your life.

10) Find new things to do with your time. When you stop drinking, you might find you have a lot more time on your hands. You’ll also feel more motivated and enthusiastic to go and do stuff, and you want to fill the void. Instead of going to the pub every night, you now have the chance to join that gym you've had your eye on, or to learn how to cook your favourite dish.

~ S. Chappel

[neurodiverse-adulthood]

❤️‍🩹 10 things to cut instead

(instead of yourself or anyone else)

1) Eraser

x x x

2) Soap bar

x x x

3) Meat

x x x

4) Cheese or butter

x x x

5) Fruit or vegetable

x x x

6) Wax

x x x

7) Silicone

x x x

8) Gummies or jelly/jello

x x x

9) Clay or dough

x x x

10) Putty or slime

x x x

Honorable mentions:

Gum

Liquid-filled candy

Foam

Squishies

Lipstick

Sponges

Marshmallows

Soft resin

Leather

Sand

Soil or mud

Pencil or wood

Plastic

a rich person's tires

all ties with your overly critical mom

[goldkirk]

It is so incredible to be able to leave a situation, center and ground myself, and start recovering my energy, mental focus, and peace within minutes to an hour. What other people said or did wasn’t about me, I behaved well myself, I let things roll off as much as possible during the situation, and as soon as it was over I started doing nervous system first aid. What a difference living this way makes. Life is so much more peaceful when you actually protect boundaries, keep perspective, and care for yourself while properly in tune with your needs.

[c0rpseh0und]

ana is so fuckin scary... i could handle the heart palpitations, almost passing out, etc, but when i started to lose my grip strength? losing my energy felt like losing my independence bc suddenly i couldnt carry groceries to the car. i couldnt open jars of certain things, i noticeably had to use more effort when doin things i would previously do. i just had no energy for anything and felt like shit all the time. if youre going thru smth similar keep in mind that your heart is a muscle.. you risk long term heart damage. osteoporosis. thyroid issues. bladder dysfunction. refeeding syndrome. lots more... not fun

[uncanny-tranny]

There's this idea I see sometimes that you can only like food insofar as you use it as a tool to satiate your hunger, but honestly? It's okay to like food not for how it serves you but for what it feels like and means.

It's okay to like food because it tastes good, because it reminds you of your childhood and your culture, because it reminds you of beautiful nostalgic memories. It's okay to like food. Food is such an integral part of the human experience. The more we minimize food as "solely a tool," the less connected we are to not only food but to ourselves because so often, people tie their bodies in with food and how it does or does not serve them.

[iceicewifey]

ik i wasn't active there, but i'm completely locked out and therefore i’m no longer using instagram. not sure if i was hacked or something but the email and my password are completely different so uh pls disregard anywhere i have it linked until i can get around to removing it

[kasumingo]

discussions about endorsement don't really make sense or should be applied to vent art , because vent art by definition is not meant to be a teaching tool, a published story nor an educational piece, but raw, unfiltered rush of emotion dumped on art or story by someone who needs to release repressed feelings by means accessible to them, so often by art, the most widely accessible tool out there

filtering and suppressing vent art makes it lose its most important and primary functionality of serving as a release

someone drawing a comic about cutting that they show in a neutral (or positive!) light is not meant to endorse it or convince anyone to start cutting, it's their way to explore their trauma in a safe, detached way in a form of a drawing

someone drawing art of fantasizing of cutting their leg off doesn’t endorse it

you have the ability to view the art through the lens of your own experiences, a sole art piece does not create or modify your whole worldview and moral compass

what can be true though that this kind of content has to be properly labeled, but at the same time allowed to exist and most definitely accessible to those with similar experiences who want to find it

in fact, it has to be properly labeled, so that those who need it can find it

there are countless cases of people saying how stories or art have saved their life or helped to gather courage to move on

and generally just throwing keywords like that around that might hold water if you apply only very specific scenarios to them don't mean they're universally true and have the same intensity every time

[muzzled-kelevra]

I added this onto a reblog about advice/tips for surviving abuse but since it's a very, very long post, I'll be reposting it alone too.

Unfortunately, I have some useful tips to add on based on personal experience.

If you have baby/dog gates in your house that are too loud to open/close, try to climb over if you can.

You can climb over gates by putting one leg over like you'll ride a horse and then put your lead leg down to the floor (tip toes preferred) and bring your other leg over. If you're short or worried about tripping, grab your foot and pull. Might take some practice if you're bad at balancing.

If there's hidden spaces people don't see but you can get to behind fridges, microwaves, the oven, etc, use them to your advantage. Try to keep it small items.

If you're worried about the fridge light at night, there's an actual switch usually inside (it could be on the outside) the fridge in order to turn it off. Try to do this right before you and others go to bed if you need to get up in the night for the fridge.

If you have multiple fridges/freezers, try to memorize what items/foods/drinks are in each separately. Overall try to remember even if you only have *one* fridge/freezer.

If you have ledges or shelves located high up in your room or in your closet, you can hide small items on those ledges. Someone may never know you have a key, pen, or small notes hidden above your doorway.

If you're allowed to have items hung up in your room (posters, pictures, notes, drawings, etc) try to hide small, light items behind them (key, notes for phone numbers etc). Don't keep them there, don't forget about them.

Find some way to have a lighter, matches, and/or keychain flashlight if a large flashlight or candle is unavailable. You can often find these at gas stations or stores like Dick's Sporting Goods or Big Five.

For whatever reason you may need it for, you might be able to hide something small in your hair (if you have hair that at least goes to your chin) using bobby pins. Marks on your neck or face can also be hidden with hair and bobby pins can pin your hair in place. Might look odd though, I personally haven't tried it but it's something I thought of doing.

Definitely try to keep Ibuprofen and Tylenol on you or stashed somewhere safe if you can. I know that can technically be added to first aid said above but those are both great over-the-counter painkillers.

If your door is loud when you close it because it slams against the doorway (maybe it's very light), turn the knob, slowly close the door, and push all the way forward against the doorway before you slowly turn the knob back into place.

If you're worried about leaving your room during the day and someone grabbing your arm in order to hold you there and talk to you, try to stick toward walls and stay away from the person. Peek around corners quickly to make sure the room is empty. If you have to be in the same room as them or pass by, keep yourself tucked and your arms as close to your body as possible and move quickly. Try not to be suspicious about it.

If you have cameras in your house/room/outside but you have cash of any sort and are allowed to go to the store, try to find a secondary safe place away from but somewhere near the house where you can hide the items you bought. If your garage or shed is the safe place, hide the items somewhere up high or in an attic space, or somewhere no one will really check. Some cashiers might be kind enough to store some items there if they're nice enough, but it may only be for a few hours.

If your house has white noise (specifically fans), definitely use it to your advantage in any way you can that won't be suspicious.

If you live with someone disgusting who does not have any sort of hygiene, don't assume anything is clean. Try to wipe down dishes with a clean cloth, paper towel, toilet paper, or wipes if you can. Don't use hand sanitizer to clean surfaces you will have food/drink you'll ingest on. Try to have your own cleaning products if you can and store them out of the bathroom (if you share).

If you share a room/bed with someone and you have a closet, try to make a makeshift bed for the closet if you have space.

If your household has arguments, sometimes the closet doubles as a place that muffles the shouting. Bonus if there are clothes hanging in the closet that you can hide in.

If your house has a crawl space that you can access, try to learn the layout of it if safe to do so. It may come in handy. You might be able to store items down there if no one goes down there, but make sure no one EVER goes down there. Try to be on top of knowing if housework needs to be done so you're prepared to move the stuff.

Learn how to hop high fences and chicken wire fences, it especially helps if you have something to climb on first such as a picnic table nearby. Shoes help a ton with chicken wire, but you can try socks since barefoot hurts a lot.

If your window is a bit high off the ground but you can jump from it, don't land on your heels/flatfooted/knees locked. Try to land on the front of your feet and fall with gravity i.e bend your knees and fall if you need to.

If you have a foam baby mat on your floor, try to fold it up and do NOT step on it barefooted.

If your parents turn off the wi-fi at night and you don't have access to mobile data, Samsung notes and Google Docs don't require any sort of data/wifi so your written content will be saved.

If you need to take your phone to school but you're not allowed to, hide it in your lunchbox or backpack RIGHT BEFORE you leave. ONLY DO THIS FOR EMERGENCIES OR IF YOU REALLY NEED TO. It's possible you may get punished when you return home if your parents notice.

If you menstruate and don't have pads, use a thin hand towel or other clean cloth. Try to avoid toilet paper as it breaks up really easily and becomes uncomfortable, and paper towels may also.

I probably have more but this is just stuff I can remember right now. I haven't gone through a lot of the hardcore stuff described in the reblog and I'm so sorry to anyone who is going through that. I can't imagine what that's like but I'm here if you ever want to vent. I'm a traumadump/abuse/vent-specific blog. You're safe here.