#therapy skills

[passionfruitmango]

Today I kind of want to hole up and not be perceived but I am practicing opposite action by being present and heard

[murderofcr0wbars]

[phoenixsavant]

Top Skills Thursday: Cultural Competence

Did you know that learning cultural competence can also be accomplished through therapy? Cultural competence is the ability to understand cultures you weren’t raised in. It allows you to interact with people from varying cultures with empathy, understanding, and acceptance. Sound like a skill you don’t really need if you live somewhere that everyone has the same experiences you have? Well, don’t…

[jesusinstilettos]

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

[robertseanleonardthinker]

something my therapist told me that personally has been rather helpful is that coping skills are not to make us feel better. they are to create space between u and ur feelings. they r to help u cope and do what u need to do. they are not meant to resolve ur negative feelings. if they do, that's a bonus. but if they don't, that's ok. learning that honestly helped so much. i'm such a perfectionist that i can't even cope if it's not gonna be perfect and this like took a weight off my shoulders. if i use a coping skill and don't feel better, that's ok. i am simply trying to distance myself from my emotion. i felt like i wasn't coping correctly before i learned this. like maybe i was doing something wrong or there was just something wrong with me.

[chronically-idiotic]

No is not always a rejection. No sometimes reflects the depth of someone's devotion to a relationship- a way of saying, "I love us too much to acquiesce in the name of appeasement."

Healthy relationships are infused with

BOTH heartfelt yeses and loving nos (I checked. Those are the proper plurals for yes and no. English is weird!).

Here's an example: If I ask something of you, and you say YES with your mouth while the rest of your body silently screams NO, guess what's going to happen? Resentment is going to build. As resentment builds, your wide open heart, the one I so cherish, will begin to close in self-protection. You'll pull away from me, shut down, retreat. Resentment erodes authentic connection.

In order to love me fully, you must be able to say no to me... without guilt and without fear of retaliation.

* Your work is to speak your no with love and clarity.

* My work is to handle whatever your no stirs in me.

In the face of your loving-healthy-boundary-no, I might feel the rise of a thousand old stories:

* "I screwed up."

* "I'm bad."

* "I'm alone."

* "'I'm helpless."

* "'I'm too needy."

* "People alwavs leave me in the end."

I might feel the sting of tender feelings:

* sadness

* shame

* fear

My brave work is to sit with my stories and my feelings. The more I can SIT with my stuff, the less likely I am to ACT on my stuff... punishing you, withdrawing from you, begging you, etc. My commitment to practicing Relational Self-Awareness in this way will open the door to an understanding that your boundary may very well be an expression of love.

This is MY work to do. You can be an ally to me- you can remind me of vour love for me, your belief in me, your pride in our relationship. But I will also have to do my work to resist the urge to turn your no into a statement about my worth. (I am not saying this is easy. I am inviting reflection and pointing us toward possibilities.)

Dr. Alexandra Solomon,

Instagram : dr.alexandra.solomon

(https://instagram.com/dr.alexandra.solomon?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji might be an unstoppable force, but Xie Lian has 800+ years of practice of being an immovable object.

(poll results here for context)

[littlegeecko]

Making sense of it.

[kacievvbbbb]

I think Haikyuu makes an effort to be a great example of all the different ways innate talent can manifest, and all the ways it can go unrecognized or under appreciated when we stick to the ridged rules of what it means to be “gifted”

Take Kageyama and Oikawa. Both insanely gifted and innately talented people. But Kageyama’s genius is obvious it’s grounded in an exceptional skill in physics and mathematics anybody with a basic interest in volleyball can tell his sets are basically perfect, he is lauded as a genius because he is one!

And then there’s Oikawa whose innate genius is a little harder to see especially if you’re not paying attention, because he does it so well that you don’t even think to notice it. it’s not very technical or flashy so it’s been overshadowed by the more trained flashier aspects of his playing. But Oikawa’s genius is that he knows people. He knows how to finely tune a set, adjusting the most minute details to fit the spiker like a glove and he does it all in a split second like he doesn’t even need to think about it he just knows. That is actually insane. Hell it’s even pointed out by Iwaizumi, nobody is better than Oikawa at knowing his players and knowing how to set to his players.

But the world they (and by extension we) live in, is so used to seeing genius in only a constrained specific light that Oikawa’s innate talent is woefully underrepresented so much so that it leads to him ( and by extension most of the fandom) believing that he has no innate talent, that he’s not a genius. Oikawa somehow believes that he is less that kageyama because kageyama was “born to do this” but if you think about it so was he!

Even despite his self aggrandizing and petty selfishness Oikawa innately, more than anyone else in the whole show, understands what we all tend to forget (across many sports), Volleyball is a team sport.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the single most best techical player out on the court; there are 5 other people out there as well and like it or not they’re playing too. Who then can say that knowing how to make 7 other people move as if extensions of your self with an ease taken for granted, isn’t a sign of genius?

[phoenix-positivity]

Here are some links to worksheets about anger (you can download the pdfs for free and print them):

The cycle of anger

The anger iceberg

This worksheet discusses when your anger might have become more of a problem rather than a healthy emotion.

A small introduction to anger management

The 'anger thermometer' to identify your own gradations of anger

Anger warning signs

Anger stop signs (intended for children but I like this too)

Worksheet to identify triggers

A summary of anger management skills

Coping skills to deal with anger

The 'urge surfing' technique

Improving the moment when in distress worksheet

Distress Tolerance Skills (self-soothe with senses / distractions)

Distracting from distressing emotions worksheet

Interpersonal Effectiveness Skills (communicating needs, fostering positive interactions and self respect)

Communicating needs worksheet

Emotional Regulation Skills (opposite action, fact-checking, paying attention to bodily needs, guiding focus back to positivity)

Brief explanation of some relaxation techniques to use when angry

Questions to ask yourself about anger (good journalling prompts)

The 'fair fighting rules' aka how to engage healthily in arguments

Template for keeping an 'anger diary'

Template for keeping a 'coping skills log'

[aingeal98]

I love writing about female characters I love making them silly and flawed and hypercompetent and moral at the same time and watching fandom's brains explode because they're not one dimensionally chill and supportive or mustache twirling evil and are allowed be jerks and overreact and make mistakes and still be good people worth rooting for or not even good just Interesting. This is very fun to do in male centered fandoms because sometimes they get so confused and scared like no she's supposed to be Nice to my fave guys why isn't she validating them and being supportive? Why are you letting her exist like that? She's being mean to my blorbo she needs to either be written as evil or erased from the narrative.

And every time I see that I get more determined to either make her meaner and have everyone support her or erase your blorbo from the narrative. She doesn't think about him at all actually he's irrelevant to the story now. Yeah sorry to break it to you she made him cry and everyone told her good job so he left the country. Also she's got a girlfriend and they're going to fuck in his house which is theirs now that he no longer exists.

[phoenixsavant]

Top Skills Thursday: Check In With Yourself

I’m sure most of us have had a day, or a few days, where you get to the end of being insanely busy and suddenly realize, “I’m exhausted!” Well, that can happen on a repeat cycle, right along with stress levels increasing, anxiety climbing, depression creeping up, and self-care tanking into nothing more than an afterthought. The solution is to set a time to check in with yourself. It’s good to…

[sea-owl]

Lucy, one of the most well-adjusted of the friend group: When I am rich

*Points at Simon and Gareth*: You're getting therapy

*Points at Kate and Michael*: You're getting therapy

*Points at Sophie and Penelope*: You're getting therapy

*Points at Phillip*: You're getting DOUBLE therapy

Lucy: Everyone is healing!

[psychotic-tbh]

Huh, I don’t think I ever posted about the color-related coping mechanism I use

Basically I give myself three options for colors, one bright (orange, red, etc.), one easily found in nature (green, brown, etc.), and one neutral (white, black, grey). It’s okay if you need someone to help you choose!

Once I pick a color I look around wherever I am in that moment and try to list off things of the color I chose

You don’t have to count unless you want to, and it works almost anywhere!

If it doesn’t work the first time, that’s okay! You can do it a few more times (assuming it proves helpful for you. Everyone is different so it’s possible it won’t work for all)

I find it most helpful for anxiety, dissociation, and hallucinations

I also found this on my own, and outside of therapy

Sorry for the wall of text, I hope you’re all well!