Different Ways of Caring For Ourselves
Posted by Survivable - 03/08/09, 01:03 am
1. Commit yourself to a Safety Contract – sign a contract stating to your safety, whether it be concerning self-harm, suicide, overeating, sexual behavior, etc.
2. Grounding Method – use a strategy to detach yourself from emotional pain (drug impulses, self-harm urges, etc.) by focusing on your outward external world.
3. Safe Place – an emotional detailed description of a scene or setting that would feel safe and soothing to you.
4. Containment – provide yourself with a temporary storage of overwhelming emotion, thoughts, memories, or urges. This is something tangible, such as note cards or paper folded up, etc.
5. Affirmations – Positive, meaningful, short statements, relevant to your mental growth.
6. Wise Mind – combines both your reasonable mind and emotional mind abilities.
7. Observe only – Observe troubling surroundings, others actions or events without getting caught up in the experience.
8. Describe or put into words – Acknowledge your feelings, thoughts and actions.
9. Participate or enter in the experience – Allowing yourself to get involved in the moment and letting go of ruminating.
10. Nonjudgmental Stance – Notice, but do not evaluate; just look at the facts, unglue your own opinions from the facts.
11. One-mindfully or in-the-moment – do one thing at a time by focusing your attention on the very moment you are in.
12. Effectiveness or focus-on-what-works – Do what needs to be done in each situation and let go of anything that hurts you.
13. Let go of emotional suffering – observe and experience your emotions, but remember you are NOT your emotions. Practice loving your emotions.
14. Changing emotion by opposite action – do what you are afraid of doing by approaching it. Do not avoid.
Author Unknown
