My Approach To Trauma

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Serious emotional trauma results in post-traumatic stress, perhaps even PTSD. You experience “flashbacks” where you are hijacked by the past. A scent, a sound, or a vivid reminder of your trauma triggers an instantaneous feeling that you are back there–even if you know rationally you are not. How do you deal with this?

The first step is “grounding” to help you stay in the present. When you are triggered, can you name five things you can see and five things you can hear? Can you feel anything, perhaps the chair you are sitting on or the temperature of the room? Can you smell anything? Really concentrate on your surroundings. If you have difficulty with this, try something more drastic such as sucking on a lemon or listening to loud music. Or you might carry a stone in your pocket, something hard and firm that can help pull you back to the present.

Another helpful practice is mindfulness meditation. Contrary to popular belief, it is not about relaxation, but rather its opposite: heightened awareness of the present. You learn to sit with with difficult feelings and thoughts as they arise and then dissipate by focusing intently on your breath or some outside stimulus such as a clock ticking.

In therapy, we deal with the toxic self-messages linking past trauma to present triggers. They probably happen so fast, you don’t notice them, but they are there. The scent of cologne might trigger a powerful memory of sexual abuse, for example. Immediately you replay the thoughts from your trauma, thoughts like: “I led him on. It was my fault.” And the thoughts lead to intense feelings of powerlessness, violation, and self-blame.

What are the thoughts you tell yourself when you are triggered? “I’m powerless”? “I’m to blame”? “I deserve this”? Thoughts like these may not only trigger you, they may also cause you to stay in an abusive relationship or be taken advantage of. How do you challenge them?

I might invite you to reflect on situations where those messages do not apply. I might suggest you come up with positive messages you know are true. I might question whether you would tell a friend in a similar situation that he or she deserves it. Are you horrified at the thought? – Then stop doing it to yourself. Find positive, healing messages to tell yourself instead.

Reminders of past trauma may always bring up painful memories. But if you can challenge the toxic messages associated with those memories, you can remember what happened without reliving it.

You can’t undo the past and “heal” the trauma you suffered. You cannot get back the life you once had. But out of its shattered remnants you can build something healthy, something wonderful, something beautiful.

 

Russell Stagg

Where do we fit in?

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Mass violence. Hurricanes. Shootings. Rape. Abuse. Assault. Earthquakes.

Where do we fit in?

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (2017) violent crimes increased nationwide in 2016 by 4.1 percent and homicides rose by 8.6 percent. During 2015 – 2016 violent crimes have experienced an uptick by twenty – percent, which is puzzling, yet terrifying at the same time. Children, adolescents, and young adults have more access to hear the exact details and updates on carnage and crime due to technological advances. According to the Veteran’s Administration (2017), within a week of September 11th, 2001, individuals reported watching around eight hours of media regarding the attacks, mostly focused on digital media, which includes images and videos.

According to Forbes (2017), there has been an increase in the intensity of category four and five hurricanes, but not the amount of hurricanes. Therefore, even though there are “less” hurricanes, the ones that make landfall are causing prolonged trauma, distress, and disruption of our lives. The never-ending warnings, updates, and sensationalism of news coverage of hurricanes can greatly impact survivors’ mental health, as it keeps individuals in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze. Individuals who consume more social media focused on disasters experience higher stress responses, increased hopelessness, a fixation on death and injury, and higher rates of PTSD symptomology (Rogers, 2016).

With the recent and more historical episodes of mass violence, including the Dayton shooting and the El Paso massacre, there is a question on all of our minds: when will we stop beating our own record of “deadliest mass shooting?” The inflation of violence and natural disasters in recent years has many effects, but one thing we have not been discussing is our stunted processing. With so many acts of brutality occurring at a faster pace than ever expected, we are not given the time to properly grieve, mourn, process, and understand these tragedies. Our attention is constantly torn to another tearful catastrophe. Our emotions, memories, and images become unprocessed, leading to the foundations of mental disorders and distress (Shapiro, 2014).

Every day it becomes increasingly challenging to turn away from the carnage. If the television won’t interrupt us while we watch our Monday sitcoms, our phones will inadvertently alert us. If we disconnect from technology in an effort to remain peaceful and sensitized, we can expect a friend or coworker to fill us in on the gruesome details, phone waving in their hand, depicting heart-wrenching images. We are stricken with a sense of vulnerability, and some would even say powerlessness. We are a society that is holding onto our last thread. We are powerful and spirited, yet ground down to our last shred of hope.
We must navigate our social media with grace amidst expedient broadcasts, tweets, and texts about violence in an effort to avoid desensitization, which often leads to hopelessness and symptoms of depression (Rogers, 2016).

There is a cost if we don’t.

Epigenetics is the study of the alteration of genes and their processes (Weinhold, 2006). So what does this have to do with the anxiety and fear we are experiencing or anticipating? Genetic changes caused by individual or community trauma may occur within the family line for more than four generations (Winhold, 2006). Although the studies surrounding transgenerational transmission of trauma have mostly been exploratory, difficult to generalize, and specific, there are still aspects which could affect our future generations.

Although it has been challenging to find out if trauma is truly passed down through the genetic line, there is still an opportunity to negatively influence our future generations. Trauma can be passed down through: family or friends reporting their experience with heavy emotions attached; utilizing negative and catastrophic terminology; a hyper-focus on discussing only the traumatic incidents during the period of tragedy; unresolved feelings of guilt and shame; ongoing anticipation of further disasters; parents living in fear based on identifying characteristics (LGBTQ, black, refugee); and providing technical levels of detail to children before it is developmentally appropriate (Braga, Mello, and Fiks, 2012).

Our unresolved issues can directly affect our children and our children’s children. As we grow, we learn from watching our parents with utmost precision; we speak about and conceptualize our reality in a similar way to how our parents do.
Some parents interact with their children through a preoccupied attachment style, which signifies parent’s engrossment in their own intrusive and damaging life experiences, like mass violence (Shapiro, 2012). This attachment style teaches the child to adopt an aggressive way of being in order to get attention, often resulting in insecurity and dependency later in life.
Other parents may interact in a disorganized attachment style, in which the parent has no boundaries about their psychological trauma. What you may see from this type of parent is anxious behaviors, fearful facial expressions, unexpected emotional outbursts, and haphazard ways of communicating, leaving the child confused (Shapiro, 2012). The child may be unsure and nervous themselves about initiating contact with their parent, as their parent is dually their source of care, yet the cause of their unconscious anxiety (Shapiro, 2012).

We are all at risk, now that we have unexpectedly been cast into the role of captive audience to unforeseen tragedy. However, despite our current feelings, we do have potential. We do have control. We do have hope.

1. Always remember your breath. It sounds arbitrary. It sounds like a platitude. Hearing someone say “take a breath!” can feel obnoxious or demeaning. However, it is one of the smallest, yet most impactful ways we can exert power in our lives. Our breath is one of the few things we can control and access at any time, privately. When overwhelmed, square breathing can help us take a break from racing thoughts. Breathe in for four counts. Hold for four counts. Breathe out for four counts. Hold for four counts. If it helps, imagine a stream of light in your favorite color pulsing through the square as you move through it.

2. Make an impact. In moments of vulnerability and suffering, we forget our abilities. Locate a nonprofit agency of your choice and donate your time, talent, or treasures. Set up a monthly donation of a few bucks. Dedicate an hour a week to volunteering. We may feel like our influence is a “drop in the bucket,” but all we can do is transform people or animals one at a time, setting off a butterfly effect of compassion.

3. Hold onto your routine for dear life. Symptoms of trauma can distort what we hold most dearly, disrupting our ability to focus. Establishing a daily routine can help normalize one’s day-to-day experience, stabilize us, and bring comfort. At the end of a productive day, we end up feeling accomplished and in control, despite the world’s happenings.

4. Create an internal safe place. Allow whatever image that comforts you to come to you. Choosing a place in nature can be a grounding experience. Ensure no people or pets are there as to avoid any upset feelings. Notice the colors, scent, sounds, and imagery. If you looked to the left and right, what would you see? Allow the feelings of security to set in and know you can access this private paradise at any time.

5. Make space for relationships. When we are overwhelmed by the “yuck” of our daily lives, we forget that people care about us. We forget the world cares. How can anyone care if the world is so dangerous? We must avoid buying into the thoughts that drag us further down. Reach out to friends, even if you simply say “Hey, I’m not doing so well, but I wanted to check in with you.” Or “Would you like to watch this movie with me? I need a little distraction and joy today.” Be honest with others and they may be moved to be honest with you.

6. Keep a “thought log.” Thought logs are ways of getting us in touch with our themes, patterns, and triggers in life. When the news keeps rolling in, we have our thought logs to ground us. It may help to jot down the trigger, what thought immediately came up, what you felt when that thought sank in, and balancing it out with an evenhanded perspective. What would your mentor say? What would your higher power say? Connect with that perspective.

Although trauma can be a powerful force, remember: we will be more exhausted by running from trauma than by shocking it and facing it with our strength and willingness. Do it afraid.

written by Rachael Wells

My Abuser Was So Charming, No One Believed He Raped Me

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My life consists of helping others, reading dystopian fiction, activism, writing poetry and crafting. Most of these activities have assisted me in coping and healing from the rape I survived when I was 16 years old.

My partner at the time was 20 years old, maniacal and abusive. He was exceptionally talented at lying and cheating. He would monitor my eating by clocking how long it would take, and if I did not hurry, there were extreme consequences.

He cheated on me with five women, and as he told me, he laughed.

In the car, during his giddy story of deceit, I grabbed a sharp item from his glove compartment and began slashing at my wrists. This would not be the last time I self-harmed.

Finally, physical and emotional manipulation and abuse would not suffice. He raped me in his locked room, with his parents just around the corner, so forcefully that the bed looked like a murder scene.

Cheerily, he took the sheets off, put them in the washer and said, “Ha, I sure hope that stain comes out!”

My abuser was extremely charismatic. He is a nurse. When you think of a nurse, I would assume most individuals think of someone warm, welcoming, smiling and compassionate. On the surface, he is all that and more, but it is a finely tuned façade.

The first time I met him, I was dating his best friend. We were all at a mechanic together, waiting for my current boyfriend’s car to be fixed.

He sat down next to me and attempted to get to know me. He was highly flirtatious and said all the right things, things I had never heard before. He told me he could feel the endorphins in the room. I lit up the room with my energy and beauty.

Compelling, poetic words.

I did not feel creeped out by this, surprisingly. He has an energy that makes you feel under the influence, but mostly as if you are buzzed. It is like slipping into a warm, glowing place.

From my description, this sounds exactly like what you might like to feel with someone, anyone. I promise you, you do not. He had this effect on everyone he met.

However, behind closed doors, he was the most manipulative person I have ever witnessed.

He had a sharp grin like a fox. He would smile and dote on me as he delivered the most horrendous backhanded compliments and emotional abuse.

He would look me straight in the eye and tell me he could not take me to the homecoming dance due to lack of funds while showing me his new keyboard, mouse and computer.

It is still hard for me to look at the local park where he hit me, degraded me and brutalized me.

He was an excellent liar. Remarkably so. No matter what pain he delivered, you were spellbound into believing you deserved it and this is how it must be.

He made me feel like he knew what was best for me in the end and was only doing what he did to “make me a better person.”

When I would share this with others, they thought I was nuts. “He is such a perfect guy. He is older, well-established and so friendly… what you are telling me is bullshit,” they’d say.

Little did they know, he checked off all the marks for those likely to be abusive.

I believe my friends reacted the way they did because all of us really had no education on consent, boundaries or abuse. I found out later some of these friends had experienced their own abuse and attempted to curb their feelings by shutting me down.

The biggest reason I was misunderstood and rejected was because my abuser was so full of charisma.

I always tell people, to this day, “You would love being around him. He could even trick you despite your psychological knowledge. He slips past your radar.”

From that brutal event, I suffered from PTSD, which is marked by night terrors, hyper-vigilance, increased stress response, reliving the trauma and avoidance.

From the age of 16 to 17, I abused pills to a degree, had a scathing attitude and was fueled by hatred.

In school, teachers knew something was wrong, but did not try to interfere. I could not have gotten through high school without their willingness to stay their distance.

Because of the uncomfortable fear I felt when I thought about telling my parents what happened, I only told a few friends of mine. This was the right decision for me at the time, but I still wish I had told them at the time it happened because I never got any soothing or healing from my friends, and my traumatic memory seems to be permanently stored in my amygdala.

But at the age of 20, in an act of desperation, I blurted out to my parents what had happened to me. Everything came to a screeching halt. My parents could not simply process what it was I was saying to them.

Their first response was to feel guilty for being the people who brought me to my then-boyfriend’s home. They thought it was their fault for “facilitating the assault.”

I assured them this was not true, but they continued to harp on their wounds: “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” “Why didn’t you report this?” “Why did I drive you there every week?”

This barrage of guilt-inducing questions made me sick. However, I empathized as best as I could. Hearing what had happened to me so much later likely left them feeling disheartened and powerless to fight back against my rapist.

All of this hurt me.

Over time, they have begun to realize the focus should have been on me, as I had already moved past those terrifying inquiries. Now, they have fostered respect and healing toward my experiences.

Although they are still mystified about it, they try to understand the effects of it by letting me speak my mind and have a healthy amount of space.

Because I never got to openly discuss my trauma until years later, my memory of it is generally fuzzy and I feel like that has caused a stunt of my growth and healing.

My thought patterns and behavior were poor and negative. I tried to control others and hurt them with my words and actions, thinking that I would somehow feel better by doing this.

However, all I can do is move forward with the memory and coping skills I have. Through this, I realized it was time to change and devote myself to protecting and helping survivors.

Now, I am in my second semester in a master’s program for mental health counseling, I am an advocate for survivors and victims, and I constantly champion for social justice.

The rape at 16, and a succedent rape, as well as numerous experiences with sexual assault, sexual harassment and catcalling, have led me to the point where I am today.

Six years later, I am now able to succeed in my field, help others properly, cope healthily, go to counseling and express my feelings and my story without being afraid.

My partner now is wonderful, compassionate, full of love and understanding. I am able to share my story, experience safety and feel comfortable. He listens to me always, about my concerns and my fears.

He is familiar with the symptoms of PTSD, so he never startles me with knocking on my front door or ringing the doorbell. Instead, he sends a text.

He looks at the parent’s guide for movies and television to screen for things like sexual content, vulgar language, violence, misogyny and transphobia.

He makes things for me that soothe me, like a little box that holds kind words of love and how he feels about me. It is to be used when I feel worthless or depressed.

To transition from a victim to a survivor, others need to provide you with time, space, sympathy, active listening, understanding, involvement in your story and the repercussions and, most importantly, nonjudgmental love.

Rachael W

Bea’s Story

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I’m known across the Internet as Bea Dux or HoneyBea depending on where you look. I’m originally from Lancashire but now live and mostly work in London. I began working in the sex industry as a retail worker for Ann Summers, then began modelling and have since done cam work, worked for websites such as MyFansPage and SuicideGirls and now also work a lot as a photographer/videographer for other sex workers.

I began to get involved in Sex Work activism after the FOSTA/SESTA bills went through in America. Seeing the ignorance (wilful or otherwise) surrounding the subject of sex workers and sw safety made me want to DO something. I uploaded few (admittedly shoddy) videos to youtube hoping to educate, I began openly and regularly using my social platforms (@itsBeaDux) to speak on the issues and decided to create some form of clothing that people could wear to show their support to sex work and the workers within the industry.

Originally TheSafewordProject was an idea I had a few years ago. It was going to be a website filled with information, recourses and contacts to help sex workers, I got a quote from a few web developers and started saving up. Not long afterwards, I found you guys! Pineapple Support was doing pretty much everything I wanted to do, from providing mental health support as well as tons of other recourses for workers. I figured, rather than having several separate sites, we stand a better chance of helping as many people as possible if we all work together. It made far much more sense to send you all the support I possibly could.

So, the store ’TheSafewordProject.com’ is currently owned and run by myself, and the packaging and posting is currently done by me and my lovely mum (I travel a lot with work and she offered to be a stable base for all of the stock. Bless her). ALL money made from the store is put right back into it, as well as having stickers printed (that you can usually spot around London/Birmingham/Manchester) and business cards with the message ‘Someone you know is a sex worker’ on them, left at a ton of small shops, bars and cafes etc. Together, me and my mum have managed to send out LOADS of orders and it’s been wonderful!

Recently, a protest organised by my dear friend Rebecca Crow happened outside instagram offices in London (which went brilliantly!) and it seemed wanted to wear their own Safeword merch! Because of that boost in sales, a lot of money has gone right back into making more clothing and stocking up on original designs; so if anyone fancies treating themselves, and supporting Pineapple Support in the process, get yourself something from the store!

The money Safeword has accumulated is slowly ticking over and I thought I’d send over a donation to Pineapple now as I couldn’t wait anymore! Hopefully there will be a lot more to come in the future.

Thank you for all the work you do. Proud to support.

Bea Dux
@itsBeaDux

Free Emotion Regulation, DBT Course with Sophia Graham

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Who am I?

I’m a disabled, queer coach and therapist working primarily with marginalised individuals and groups. I’m especially excited about working with people interested in building psychological skills so they feel more able to manage the challenges in their lives in their own way. I believe that we are the experts in our own lives and that finding new tools and developing new skills helps us to create the lives we want to live.
Why work with performers?

Therapy professionals, in general, have not been great at working with people outside the mainstream. This means that performers can really struggle to access high-quality support. As someone that has had been really let down in the past by judgemental and unprofessional therapists, I know what that is like. I also know that it takes a huge toll on people’s wellbeing, and sometimes costs lives. I want that to change, and I’m doing my bit to try to make that change in the world.

What is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

Dialectic Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is a non-pathologising approach that teaches skills for creating a life worth living. It focuses on the areas of mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance and emotional regulation. The DBT approach is one of the most heavily researched and validated forms of psychotherapy. It was initially designed for clients with a borderline personality disorder diagnosis but has been found to be effective in relation to a broad range of diagnoses including depression and anxiety. This is a peer group where we work together to learn DBT skills and practice them in our lives between sessions. One of the most important parts of this approach is working with others to understand the skills we are learning. Homework is an essential component of DBT, and you will be given worksheets to complete each week between sessions. We go through these in detail each session, and that’s where a lot of the learning happens, as people are able to share their experiences, successes and challenges.

Why emotion regulation?

Out of control emotions can make it hard to maintain friendships, romantic relationships and can even jeopardise our careers. Many of us never learned the skills we need to cope with difficult emotions, and that makes it impossible to deal effectively with stressful or distressing situations that inevitably come up in our lives. This course teaches participants how to recognise, understand and regulate emotions so that they have more choices about how to manage day to day stressors and distressing events.

Why interpersonal effectiveness?

Our efforts to manage our own emotions are frequently challenged by our interactions with other people. Sometimes this leads us to behave in ways that we later regret. Other times we can fail to speak up assertively for what we need, which can lead to resentment or misunderstandings later. This course is about empowering us to handle interpersonal situations more effectively.

Why distress tolerance?

There are no lives without pain, and everyone has crises at times. These times of intense emotional dysregulation can lead to out of control behaviours that can damage our relationships, life and reputation. This course teaches techniques for reducing emotional activation and distress. It equips participants with skills to practice in their lives so they are able to deal with crises more effectively and cope better with intense distress.

Time commitment

You will attend a 2-hour session each week and complete homework between sessions which usually takes between 20 minutes and an hour.

What do you do in a group meeting?

We start with a mindfulness exercise, then in each session after the first, we go through the homework and discuss each of our experiences with it for the first hour. This hour helps us to consolidate our skills and troubleshoot any problems. Then we have a 5-10 minute break before learning a new skill.

To apply please please click on the link found at pineapplesupport.org/support-groups

Five ways to work with a social comedown

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If you haven’t read the last post, you might want to start there, since it has a much longer definition of what a social comedown is. In brief, social comedowns consist of difficult thoughts, sensations, feelings and urges arising after socialising that often include ruminating over past distress and judging yourself for having a hard time. They can include deep-seated feelings of shame, inadequacy, sadness, guilt, dread and embarrassment.

There are a huge range of ways to work with social comedowns; if they are having a big impact on your life, I’d recommend talking to a coach or therapist about how to find the best way for you. People are really individual, and because we each have our own histories and preferences no single option is going to work for everyone. Nevertheless, here are 5 ways that you could try to see if they fit for you:

  1. Focus on the sensations

Many people experience emotions in their bodies. If you are a person that can feel emotions in this way it can be a wonderful way of just being with one aspect of your emotional experience. Rather than doing things to avoid the sensations in your body, approach them with a sense of curiosity. Find a comfortable position to sit or lie in for 5 minutes, and just scan your body for sensations. When you find a sensation in your body that is related to your emotions be curious about it. Notice whether it is hot or cold, its density, whether it is staying still or moving. Notice its size and shape, and whether there is a colour or texture to it. Is there any tension to it? Just allow it to be exactly what it is in your body without trying to change it or move it. Notice what it is like to accept that you are experiencing this sensation. When your thoughts drift as they inevitably will, just bring yourself back and allow yourself to notice whether anything is different about the sensation.

This practice can help you to be with emotional experiences without ruminating or avoiding – which both usually make emotional experiences more intense and difficult to manage. It can help you to accept your emotions and allow you to move on from them. This is an exercise that you can practice in advance so that it is easier to remember when you are experiencing distress – and don’t be afraid to use it when you’re having nice sensations in your body as well as more difficult ones.

2) Mindfulness of thoughts

Creating space between you and your thoughts can be a hugely helpful alternative to ruminating. My favourite way of doing this is to imagine tiny boats going down a river, and then as I notice thoughts come up, I put them onto one of the boats and letting them go as they float off. Sometimes I can’t help jumping on the boat with the thought, and I have to ‘unhook’ myself by jumping off the boat back to the shore. That’s OK too. People often get caught by a thought and feel really compelled to follow it to its conclusion. Noticing that happen is a really important part of this technique, because it allows you to find the moment to decide not to follow the thought further, ideally without having further judgemental thoughts about yourself! Different people have different preferred ways to visualise their thoughts. While I prefer boats, others like leaves on a stream; trains on a track or balloons floating their thoughts away. Whatever your preference, noticing the thought is happening, and letting it come and go through your mind is a hugely powerful way to remind yourself that no matter how much a thought feels like your whole world, you can let it go.

Some examples of audio files to help you with mindfulness of thoughts are here:

3) Urge surfing

We all have urges to do and not to do things all the time. The urge may be to hide in bed all day or to lash out at someone or get really drunk. Sometimes it is helpful to notice what we really want to do, and just sit with that desire. You may notice the desire is located in a part of your body – and this process may be very similar to the first suggestion of sensation watching. Alternatively, urges may be a really different kind of experience for you than other sensations. Here are a couple of audio files to use for sitting with your urges:

4) Do intense exercise

People that know me will know that intense exercises isn’t something I’m usually keen on. Nevertheless, increasing your heart rate and keeping it above 120 beats per minute for 10-15 minutes helps a lot of people to manage distress. Some people think that it is because you get to complete the stress response cycle by using up some of the energy boost that you get when you’re facing a stressful or distressing situation. Some think it is an intense form of distraction that is helpful because it allows you to shift your attention to something else happening in your body. I think it is a mix of these things, and that it works really well for some people. If you want to try it, jumping, skipping or running can be a good way of getting your heart rate into that zone and holding it there.

5) Do a paired muscle relaxation exercise

This exercise can help because you’re both distracting from the distressing thoughts, feelings, sensations and urges that you’re feeling, and you’re doing something to physiologically relax your body and give it the message that you’re safe.  We know that tensing and then relaxing muscles helps them to relax more fully than trying to relax them without tensing first. If you want to do this you can find exercises here:

If you’d like to do more work on how to cope with social come downs and other mental health challenges think about joining one of my DBT groups. We work on psychological skill building to help you to manage interpersonal relationships, distress and emotions. You can find more information here.

Social comedowns: the morning after the night before

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So you’ve heard of the social hangover, but what about the social comedown? A social hangover is the experience of feeling drained, exhausted and in need of recovery time after a social event. There has been a lot written about it probably because it is a pretty common experience, particularly amongst introverts. But what about its lesser known cousin, the social comedown? A comedown is when you experience a physical and/or emotional crash, usually after having an intense experience or taking psychoactive substances. Whilst some comedowns are fairly mild and can be similar to hangovers, others can be really intense and longer lasting.

What is a social comedown?

Social comedowns consist of  difficult thoughts, sensations, feelings and urges arising after socialising that often include ruminating over past distress and judging yourself for having a hard time. They are most common the morning after an intense social situation, usually a group hangout, but sometimes one to one situations can provoke them as well. More unusually, some people experience a social comedown towards the end of hangout time or immediately after leaving a social situation. The physical sensations can start off really similar to a social hangover, and can include feeling tired, drained, and listless. The emotional symptoms can be wide-ranging, from sadness, guilt, dread, emptiness, lonliness, embarrassment or shame through to panic about having said or done the wrong thing. These emotions can lead to someone taking a mental tour of the social time, analysing in detail every potentially awkward or embarrassing social interaction. Every time they did something that could be seen as weird, every misplaced smile or frown.

Even when someone knows logically that everything was fine, and that their friends wouldn’t judge them for their behaviour it can be nearly impossible to step away from critically over-analyzing every moment. Worse, the analysis of the social event can lead people to a lowlights reel of all their most humiliating social interactions and ruminating over all the ways they have been awkward in the past. Because this is a cycle, people usually feel better a couple of days later, but rather than being able to move on from these feelings, they can get stuck being judgemental towards themselves about having the feelings at all. That, in turn, attacks their self-esteem and self-worth. If this resonates with your experience, know this: you are far from alone.

What if we understood social comedowns as a normal part of life?

As part of the kink community, I have long understood that comedowns are a normal part of life, but that message seems not to have spread particularly widely. Indeed, I’m aware of some kinksters that feel it’s a point of pride that they *don’t* get comedowns and others that feel like the fact they do have them sometimes is a personal weakness. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted that comedowns are more or less inevitable if you play long enough and hard enough with someone, whether you’re a top or a bottom.  They can come in unexpected ways, at unexpected times and learning to cope with the emotional fallout is a skill that we have to learn. We work out how to engage with ‘comedown’ buddies if our tops/bottoms aren’t available for that emotional work. We have aftercare plans. We explore ways to treat ourselves and each other with compassion, kindness and gentleness in the days and weeks after we play together. I wonder what would happen if we extended this thinking to the social comedown. Would it make the emotions more manageable if they were normalised? Would we be able to engage with our own distress with less judgement about who we are? I think perhaps we would.

When I work with clients on this topic, many of them feel entirely alone. They have no idea that there are lots of people, particularly neuroatypical people, who experience intense comedowns after socialising. Just the fact that others have this experience is incredibly affirming and helps people to shift the self-judgement. The next post by Sophia is on a few ways to work with the strong feelings that arise with a social comedown, but in the meantime, I think it is important to have some conversations to normalise this idea. Here are some suggestions:

1) I’d invite you to open conversations with people about the concept of the social comedown, maybe even share this blog post.

2) Share your experience. What does it feel like to you? What helps you? What support could other people offer you?

3) At large gatherings like sexuality and kink conferences, make active plans with others about comedown support. Make it a community issue where we share emotional and practical resources.

Brandon’s Story

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When I was 12 years old, my mother committed suicide. She was the 3rd family member in my life to do so. At that time the feeling of loneliness and fear were overwhelming. What I wouldn’t have given to have someone there, someone to listen and provide hope. This is one of the many reason I decided to become a listener with Pineapple Support. You may not know this now, but a small fraction of your time, simply listening could change a person’s life, it could bring the promise of a tomorrow that otherwise may never have come for them.

Giving back to my adult community and industry is just a small gift I can give to help others find mental health support and outlets in a sometimes all to lonely business.

I would ask anyone with a caring heart to please consider giving this amazing opportunity a chance. You can’t imagine the feeling of love and connection until you’ve walked with someone truly struggling, when you stop talking and start listening you see and hear things in a different light. Helping others has HELPED me more than I could have known. I’ve worked on so many personal issues and have grown so much through my work with Pineapple Support. You can make all the difference in OUR world too.

Pineapple support training is straightforward and direct. You will receive hands on training through our app it allows you to learn and practice the techniques you learn along the way as you collect your badges and advance in steps to become a Pineapple Listener. Sometimes the greatest gifts in life are not the ones we receive but the ones we give. Give hope a chance, be the light in someone’s world, let love shine above all else.

Be a listener in a world full of noise.

3 STEPS FOR LETTING GO OF NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

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Feeling depressed or anxious is never pleasant but this unpleasantness is what makes negative emotions useful. Our brains are hardwired to attend to that which may harm us. Similar to how hunger motivates us to seek food, negative emotions motivate us to seek safety and comfort (and to take better care of ourselves).

Bad days and bad moods are a normal and healthy part of the human experience. But prolonged negative thinking can result in negative thinking habits, which alter our neural structure over time. However, we can lessen the impact that negative thoughts, emotions, and experiences have on our brains.

Psychologist Steve Hayes suggests that we allow ourselves to feel bad in order to feel better. This may seem counterintuitive, especially to Western cultures where we try to control and rid ourselves of our anxiety, depression, and frustration. But Tibetan Buddhists believe that this attempted control is the problem and not the solution.

An increasingly popular new treatment called Acceptance Commitment Therapy is based on this assumption. ACT proposes that when we stop fighting our emotional pain and focus on the things that are important to us, we actually suffer less.

Accepting negative emotions can free up mental energy to focus on other more important things in our lives.
ACT’s founder, Steve Hayes, suggests that when we judge a thought or feeling, we give it more power. For example, the more time and energy that we spend trying to control our anxious thoughts, the more anxious we become.

Beating ourselves up about feeling down just adds more negative feelings to the collection we’re already coping with. So we become depressed about being depressed. We may not be able to shift our unwanted mood but we can change how we feel about the mood itself.

The less attention we give to our negative thoughts and feelings, the less impact they have on our neural structure.
We have thousands of thoughts and feelings a day. We can’t possibly attend to all of them. When negative thoughts arise, don’t ignore them, judge them, or try to stop them. Acknowledge them and let them pass. Here is how.

1. Let your negative thoughts and feelings flow. Neurologist Rick Hall suggests that we think of our thoughts as flowing through our mind like a river. If we attach to a thought, then we can ‘let it go and let it flow.’ Here is an example.

Attaching negative thoughts and feelings:

Thought: I feel like such a failure.

Reaction: I am doing it again. I am beating myself up. Every time I try to be positive, I fail. See, I am a failure. Stop it. Stop it. But I can’t even do this right. Ugh.

Accepting negative thoughts and feelings and letting go:

Thought: I feel like such a failure.

Reaction. Hmmm. There is that thought again. What should I have for dinner?

2. Meditate ten minutes a day to get better at it. Apps such as Headspace offer short (some are only 1-2 minutes) exercises that you can do anywhere. The Acceptance exercise teaches how to accept our own thoughts and feelings as well as other people’s difficulties. There are also short exercises on patience, pain management, and happiness.

3. Practice self-compassion. I say ‘practice’ because self-compassion is a skill. We will inevitably get stuck on negative thoughts and feelings and it easy to get disheartened. With Kristen Neff’s collection of self-compassion meditations, you can learn to compassionately let thoughts and feelings flow. The less palatable it sounds to you, the more you may need it.

Accepting our negative thoughts and feelings does not mean that we should not take steps to better our lives. “Letting our thoughts flow” is useful when we have done what we can to remedy our negative mood but it still persists. We don’t have to be carried away by our thoughts and emotions. And letting go frees up the mental space so we can focus more on the positive experiences in our lives.

Warm regards,

Jena

HOW TO CATCH DEPRESSION BEFORE IT CATCHES YOU

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When we think of depression, we may imagine being permanently pyjama-clad, lying in bed or on the sofa in a dark room, unable to move. Clinical depression (or major depressive disorder) can look this way and the Internet and media often paint this picture.

If we research depression symptoms online, it usually brings up Clinical depression information, leaving some of us thinking that, it feels bad but it’s not as bad as all that.

But some depressive symptoms are less recognizable. Most of us are busy. We might feel down but we can’t afford to stop. Even when a situation (like a breakup) triggers deep sadness in us, we have to keep going. So the symptoms are subtler, more gradual, and easier to disregard. They sneak up on us and if unaddressed they can become debilitating.

Recognise any of these?

– A sense of heaviness you can’t shake
– Impatience, irritability, quickly losing your temper over little things
– Growing intolerance of others, our surroundings, or ourselves
– Heightened awareness of negative things
– An emboldened inner critic, bullying ourselves or self-loathing
– Incessant worrying (going over the same thing again and again) or catastrophizing (using words like always and never)
– Wanting to hide from the world and avoiding things that make us feel better (friends, exercise, nature)

Our brain activity is habit forming; the more we think and feel certain ways, the more likely we will think and feel that way in the future. A persistent low mood can spiral into depression and the lower we spiral, the harder it is to pick ourselves back up.

We all have low moods but when feelings of depression seem unshakeable, it is time to start paying attention to them. One of the best ways to deal with depression is to catch it early.

Here is how:

– Become mindful of how you talk to yourself. Would you lose friends if you talked to them the way you talk to yourself? Your inner critic may have pushed you to do better but it can push you down that depression spiral too.
Get blood tests from your doctor. Low mood can be a side-effect of any number of physical ailments: nutritional deficiencies, bacterial imbalances in your gut, hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, fibromyalgia, hormonal imbalance, food allergies, infections, and medications.

– Create exercise accountability. Exercise is one of the best ways to improve our mood. We may have the best intentions to exercise regularly, but low mood can sap our motivation. When depressed, we are far more likely to put it off.

So instead of beating yourself up for not exercising, put measures into place that hold you accountable. For example, book a boutique exercise class, schedule workouts with a friend, or join a beginner’s club team (your Fris team depends on you). If you have no problem skipping those type activities, then hire a trainer for 30 minutes twice a week. (Hire a really cute one for added motivation!) Tell her/him to follow up with you if you miss a session.

– Forgive yourself for feeling this way and for setbacks that may have triggered these feelings. Low mood often increases our critical self-talk. We feel down so we beat ourselves up, which makes us feel even lower. Interrupt the self-critical spiral with self-compassion. If this sounds too difficult, read or listen to The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook by Tim Desmond.

– Listen to what thoughts are driving your emotions. There is no such thing as a ‘negative’ emotion. Even depression serves to protect us. Our low mood is a red flag. Sometimes it is telling us to slow down, to reconnect with loved ones, or to disconnect from unhealthy situations. Or to get help.

– The app Thought Record app from Moodnotes helps you uncover the situations and thinking patterns that may trigger your low mood. And to find alternative, more helpful perspectives.

Everyone feels low, drained, or worn-out occasionally. Many of the symptoms of major depressive disorder – irritability, lethargy, and hopelessness – can be normal reactions to stressful life events.

‘Sometimes, depression is a perfectly reasonable response to trouble in your life.’ Karla McLaren

However, if your low mood is cyclical or doesn’t respond to the healing changes you make, talk to your doctor or a professional therapist.

If you think you might be clinically depressed, you can take this test.  Depression Self Assessment

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fifth edition.
Tim Desmond. (2017). The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook. A 14-Day Plan to Transform Your Relationship with Yourself
Rick Hanson. (2013). Hardwiring Happiness. The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence.
Karla McLaren. (2010). The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You.
Robert Plutchik. (1980). Theories of Emotion (Volume 1).
Dan Siegel. (2010). Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation.
Bessel van der Kolk. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Warm regards,

Jena