Three simple ways to mitigate stress and practice self-care
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to create anxiety and uneasiness and impact people’s mental health and overall well-being, a Clinton Foundation partner shares her expertise and resilience-building strategies to use during uncertain or challenging times.
This blog post was written by Dana Brown, Organizational Liaison, ACEs Connection. Dana is an ACEs Science Statewide Facilitator, and through the organization, Learn4Life, she works within the Trauma-Informed Work Group and Steering Committee of the “Strong Families, Thriving Communities” (SFTC) coalition in San Diego, California. SFTC was formed in 2017 and led by the Clinton Health Matters Initiative, in partnership with the San Diego Foundation and the County of San Diego, to improve the health and well-being of children and families in the region.
I was grateful to be invited to develop and facilitate a virtual training for the SFTC’s San Diego Mentorship Network and host a virtual think tank about COVID-19 responsiveness as it pertains to building self-resiliency. I began the training with a grounding activity — the 4–7–8 breathing technique is an easy calming technique accessible to each of us any time of the day that honors California’s Surgeon General, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, and her powerful quote, “Your breath is your medicine.” As we know that intentional breathing is our most immediate self-compassion strategy for soothing a dysregulated brain and calming an anxious body.
Soothing strategies from my training, Trauma-Informed Mentoring in a Pandemic, are calming techniques that reflect self-compassion practices to mitigate stress and anxiety from the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest in our nation.
Across the lifespan, our opportunity to soothe ourselves with intentional breathing is our most expedient, calming practice of self-care and self-compassion.
We are all enduring collective trauma globally. When an individual is stressed and feels the brain going into hyperarousal, these symptoms can include increased heart rate, sweaty palms, and hypervigilance as the brain is activated in the amygdala. This flight/fright/freeze mode in our brain stem negates access to our “thinking brain” in the prefrontal cortex, which is where we access logic, reasoning, emotional control, self-regulation, and capacity to learn.
Here are three resilience-building, self-compassion strategies that any child, youth, adult, and elder can practice in their daily lives:
Daily, for forty days, writing a list of five things one is grateful for is research-proven to support increased well-being and enhanced optimism. These reflections of gratitude cannot be replicated. Thus, the first few days are aspects of one’s life, such a 1) family 2) family pet 3) a dear friend 4) a cherished teacher 5) career. Throughout the weeks, one is looking daily for things to be grateful for, such as bare feet on the grass, the sun on one’s face, the sounds of birds singing. Harvard University’s research reflects strong neural connections on gratitude and altruism. Individuals who practice gratitude report having decreased anxiety and depression, fewer incidents of illness, building resilience, and stronger relationships.
2. Meditation
At Harvard University, the research study senior author Sara Lazar, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School Instructor in Psychology, explains; “increased gray-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection” following an eight-week study with meditation practices for 30-minutes per day. The first author of the paper, Britta Holzel, a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany, shared; “it is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and increase our well-being and quality of life.”
3. Mindfulness Coloring Activity
Myriad mindfulness coloring books are available to download online or purchase. One can choose animals, flowers, nature scenes, words, etc. for the opportunity to calm an anxious mind through the repetitiveness of coloring. An excellent family activity, across the lifespan, mindfulness coloring books are an accessible, joy-filled, creative, practical application for all ages.
Research has proven that repetitive actions, such as coloring, drumming, chanting, singing, are supportive calming strategies on reducing anxiety and improving empathy, self-compassion, and self-care.
Our own self-care, self-compassion, and self-talk are the epicenter of our well-being. With such a plethora of available healing-centered resources available to us, the most imperative aspect of our lives is how we truly take care of ourselves.
By increasing the tools we add to the tool belt of how we live our lives, we enhance our own resilience-building with increased reserves for those we love in support of their well-being.
With several thousands of thoughts per day, please consider your self-talk as your highest priority. You will never speak to anyone else more than you speak to yourself.
For more helpful resources, visit www.acesconnection.com.
