10/22/22 Community meeting recap: Resilience Toolkit Group Intro

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Hi again,

Thank you so much for attending the Resilience Toolkit Group Intro earlier today--this email is PACKED so take as many breaks/revisits as needed as you digest.

Below you'll find headers for: the Guiding/Check-in Questions, the practices we covered in our 10/22 session, Aftercare Information, and some resources on the ecological stress model. Feel free to jump between sections as needed.

Guiding/Check In questions:

You can use these questions to check in with yourself at any time, at any stress/relaxation level, before/during/after any practice.

  • What am I feeling? (i.e. intense/neutral/subtle/detached, positive/negative, stressed/relaxed, up-/down-regulating)

  • How do I know? (what qualities of thoughts/emotions/sensations are connected to this feeling? Where do I feel this?)

  • Is it serving me? (is this more/less/sufficient activation that I need in this moment? would any tools support me in that right now? What would make me feel supported in this moment?)

  • Remember that the goals are:

    • self-awareness (learning your body’s unique indicators of stress and relaxation) and 

    • self-regulation (or, as we discussed it, agency and support in connecting to a moment of safety in moments of stress) 

all while centering comfort, support, and ease.

Practices Covered in our 10/22 Session

With all practices, we're centering comfort, support, and ease, with the primary goals of self-awareness and self-regulation. We are not pushing through any discomfort. While practicing, stop if it ever feels uncomfortable or up-regulating (and this doesn't mean push and push and push until you've ). Otherwise, practice until you notice your own personal signs of down-regulation/settling and then stop to check back in with yourself.

  • Resourcing - Mindfulness around connection to positive somatic sensation
    (Where is there a pleasant/comfortable place in my body? What are its qualities? Observing without judgment and noticing signs in your body of safety/relaxation/down-regulation.)

  • Grounding - Mindfulness around connecting to internal environment (thoughts, emotions, sensations)
    (Notice your sensations, your emotions, your thoughts. What are their qualities? Observing without judgment and noticing signs in your body of safety/relaxation/down-regulation.)

  • Orienting - Mindfulness around connecting to external environment in a supportive way
    (Noticing something pleasant/comfortable in your external surroundings–colors, textures, sounds, objects around you.  What are its qualities? Observing without judgment and noticing signs in your body of safety/relaxation/down-regulation.)

  • Butterfly Hug / Knee Taps - Rhythmic alternating movement across chest / knees
    (Placing your hands on your chest, one crossed over the other, letting your fingertips find the space right below your collarbones. Alternate taps, or tap at the same time, tailoring the tempo and pressure to your liking. Observing without judgment and noticing signs in your body of safety/relaxation/down-regulation.)

There are also a few more practices in the Toolkit! If you’re interested in learning more, you can contact me or visit the Lumos Transforms website at https://lumostransforms.com/.

Aftercare Information

Depending on where your stress level was at the beginning of our session, you may experience increased activation or increased settling--even if your experience of the session was mostly or all settling/down-regulating. As your body acclimates to different levels of settling/down-regulation, it's normal to sometimes even feel a sense of relaxation-induced anxiety. This can happen if you tend to experience high activation levels over extended amounts of time--especially in the face of environmental factors that are out of your control or constantly stressful. The sense of feeling relaxed or settled at new levels can be so foreign to your body that the level of unfamiliarity can in and of itself feel unsafe. This is a normal function of your body--even if the activation isn't needed at the moment. Be gentle with yourself in the coming days and with your independent practice of these tools going forward.

Conceptualizing Stress/Relaxation: The Ecological Shell model

There’s a free Tango for Liberation article available where I explain this model and how it can apply to tango spaces. This is not the only model that exists for conceptualizing stress, and it has its own imperfections and pitfalls when doing so. Some of the observations that came up in discussing how we contextualize our own stress responses were:

  • Who feels safe and invited in asking for help?

  • Who is celebrated in the space? Who is not?

  • Who is empowered in the space? Who is not?

If you’re looking to engage with this model a bit more, explore which level(s) of the model to which these questions might apply.

Additionally, we talked about one way of conceptualizing the stages of healing: Stabilizing Turbulence, Repatterning Past Harm/Trauma, and Visioning the Future. The Toolkit is designed for use in the first stage, Stabilizing Turbulence, towards developing self-trust, discernment, and self-compassion by centering comfort, safety, and connection in times of chaos, intensity, and overwhelm. You can think of this more as triage rather than recuperation. This is not a substitute for therapy or trauma healing. 

Just like our session, please take whatever serves you in this moment and feel free to move on from the rest.

I'm also happy to engage with/answer questions around any of these materials as well!

Thank you so much again for contributing to the Oxygen community with your presence and engagement! 

Hugs,

Misha

Quotes I referenced:

Bamboo metaphor–Bamboo is versatile, strong, flexible, can grow in many places, is stronger when bundled (in collective). And, it is organic matter, meaning it will still break. Resilience can only take us so far.

–Desiree Magsombol

“No amount of resilience will resource us to thrive in systems of oppression” 

–Nkem Ndefo

“Alchemical resilience, flexible strength overcome adversity, heal, and change systems of inequity and oppression into places where we thrive.” 

--Arrowyn Ambrose

Resources for further learning on trauma-informed practices

Lumos Transforms - https://lumostransforms.com/

Trauma-Informed Los Angeles - https://traumainformedla.org/

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration - https://www.samhsa.gov/

SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach - https://traumainformedla.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/sma14-4884.pdf

Therapist Resources

The Loveland Foundation - https://thelovelandfoundation.org/

(all of the following resources are directly from The Loveland Foundation’s list of partnerships)

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

Crisis Text Line - https://www.crisistextline.org/

Therapy for Black Girls - https://www.therapyforblackgirls.com/

National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network - https://www.nqttcn.com/directory

Talkspace - https://www.talkspace.com/

Open Path Collective - https://openpathcollective.org/

Black Female Therapists - https://www.blackfemaletherapists.com/directory/

Zencare - https://blog.zencare.co/zencare-x-the-loveland-foundation-therapy-fund-information-for-clients/

Psychology Today - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/