Possum state of existence

(somehow the best drawn possum comic to date??)

Rupi Kaur, Milk & Honey

Take a deep breath with it.

Grounding Techniques useful for trauma survivors

If you have experienced a trauma, you may experience traumatic symptoms. Grounding exercises can be so helpful in getting you back into your window of tolerance! When you’re out of your window you may experience flashbacks, panic attacks, dissociation, a numbness, foggy brain etc…

So here are a list of techniques! Please practice! If you can practice them whilst you are feeling ok and are in your window you are much more likely able to use them when you experience a trigger! It’s about trial and error with lots of practice! Wishing you lots of healing hugs and positive thoughts. Stephanie xx

Mental Grounding….

- Pick a category and try to think of as many objects as possible that fit in that category. (Eg. Types of dogs, cities, crayon colours, sports.) - Pick a letter & think of all the words that begin with that letter - Pick a colour & look for things of that colour in the room - Say or think the alphabet backwards or alternate letters & numbers (A1 B2 C3 D4.) - Describe an everyday event or process in great detail, listing all of the steps in order & as thoroughly as possible (e.g. How to cook a meal, how to get from your home to work or school, how to do your favourite dance.)

Reorientation Grounding Techniques…

- Say or think to yourself… ‘My name is…. I am safe right now. I am …. years old. I am currently at …. The date is…. If I need help, I am with …./ can call….. Everything is going to be alright’ - List reaffirming statements. (I am fine. Everything is going to be okay. I am strong. I can handle this.) - Ask yourself… Ask yourself where you are, what day of the week it is, what day of the month it is, what month it is, what year it is, what season it is, how old you are, who is the current political leader of your country.) - Name 5 things you see, 4 things you feel, 3 things you hear, 2 things you smell or taste & 1 thing you like about yourself. - Think about a fun time you had with someone recently or call them and ask them to talk about it with you.

Sensory Grounding Techniques…

- Run cool or warm (not too cold or hot!) water over your hands or take a cool or warm bath/shower. - Spritz your face (with eyes closed), neck, arms & hands with a fine water mist. - Spray yourself with your favourite perfume (One that is not linked in any way to trauma experienced or reminds you of a traumatic experience or person) and focus on the scent. - Feel the weight of your body in your chair or on the floor and the weight of your clothing on your skin. - Touch & hold objects around you. Compare the feel, weight, temperature, textures, colours & materials. - Keep a small object with you to touch or play with when you get triggered. - Bite into a lemon, orange or lime & notice the flavour, scent & texture or suck on a sour or minty candy or ice cube. - Listen to soothing or familiar music. If possible jump around and dance to it. - Pick up a book and read the first paragraph out loud. - Hug a tree or another person (If interpersonal touch isn’t a trigger). Pay attention to your own pressure and physical sensations of doing so. Register the smells of being outside, the wind & the sights around you.

Movement Grounding Techniques…

- Breath deeply & slowly & count your breaths - Grab tightly onto your chair or press your feet against the ground as firmly as you can - Rub your palms and clap your hands or wiggle your toes within your socks. Pay attention to physical sensations of doing so - Stretch out your arms or legs, roll your head on your neck, or clench and unclench your fists. - Stomp your feet, walk around, run, jump, ride a bike, do jumping jacks - While walking, notice each footstep & sat to yourself ‘right’ and ‘left’ to correspond with the foot currently moving - Squeeze a pillow, stuffed animal or ball - If you have a soft pet (dog or cat) brush its fur and stroke it. If you don’t, brush your own hair slowly and without pulling it too much - Write what ever comes to mind even if it’s nonsense. Try not to write about the negative thoughts or feelings until you are more capable of doing so without increasing a them - Pop bubble wrap or blow and pop actual bubbles - Dog in the dirt or garden, jump on a pile of leaves or splash around in puddles or mud - Rip up paper or stomp on aluminium cans to crush them

In case of a flashback…

- Tell yourself that you are having a flashback and are safe now - Remind yourself that the worst is over and you survived it. What you are feeling now is just a reminder of the trauma and does not fit the present moment - Breath deeply and slowly. Count your breaths and make sure that you’re getting enough air - Use the other Grounding Techniques above to distract and calm yourself - If possible or necessary, go somewhere where you can be alone or with a close friend, where you will feel safe, or where you feel protected or shielded - Be gentle to yourself and take the time to really recover. If what helps you to recover is to colour, take a bubble bath, hug a stuffed animal or watch a children’s movie and if it would not be disruptive to do such things at that point in time, embrace those options whole heartedly - If possible note or write down what triggered the flashback, what Techniques you tried to use to disrupt the flashback & what helped - Remember you are a survivor. You are strong, you can make it through this, though it might take some time. Be patient with yourself throughout the process of healing.

Another woman utterly failed by our society’s devaluation of women’s reproductive health. We can’t wait around for male doctors to decide what we need to know. This is why we need to take control and educate ourselves about our own bodies.

and here’s some comments i saw under the post. why is this a pattern?? why is this a recurring theme?? why is this information not common knowledge? what the fuck are doctors doing??

This is news to me so let’s share it so people will know!

Gross tmi: but i passed a pretty big clot after having my daughter. It was about the size of a baseball. It actually hurt worse because while 15 hours of labor opened my cervix, i passed the clot in 30 minutes. I knew it was a possibility because of my midwife and reading, but everyone Ive told after this (mostly other pregnant women) were shocked that this could happen.

In our culture, it’s much more common to do deep research about what family cars we want to buy than we do about childbirth when we ’re pregnant.

Tmi: I passed a huge clot after birth in the bathroom of my hospital room and called the nurse sobbing because I didn’t know it was normal. She treated me like an idiot, but NO ONE told me it was a possibility. And the pain associated with healing for the first couple of weeks after birth was worse than the labor imo. Again, I had no idea. They didn’t tell me a thing besides “sitz bath regularly and change your pads.” Before discharging me from the hospital.

I was most definitely told about this in school. Fucking hell, 4-6 weeks of bleeding? My periods were/are bad enough, why the hell don’t we get told this?

I didn’t know it could last so long, wtf? Is the bleeding inevitable after birth? 

Bleeding is inevitable after birth - your uterine wall is shedding a fuck ton of lining. It can last from three to six weeks (possible longer) and it tapers off.

More TMI - I passed a MASSIVE clot after my fourth birth. At this point I already knew this could happen - it’s normal. What I DIDN’T know, was that I had caused it.

My post birth contractions were so bad after the birth that it felt like full transition labor. And they don’t give you anything for the pain. So I used a hot water bottle, without the nurses knowing, and it caused me to bleed even more. I lost so much blood that by the first time they sat me up to go to the bathroom, I fainted. It took three more tries until I could sit up.

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, the next morning I passed a clot the SIZE OF ANOTHER PLACENTA I KID YOU NOT, and I know what is and is not normal. So I called for the nurse and through the door told her I had passed a huge clot, and her response was - “It’s not big. I know what big is.” She hadn’t even looked. So I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, no. It’s big, I’m telling you.”

So, sounding extremely put upon, she asked me to open the door. I did, and after a long pause she goes, “Okay, yeah, that’s a little big.”

YOU DON’T SAY.

The point I’m trying to get across is that this shit is so common - women not knowing this stuff is so expected, and it keeps getting reinforced. People don’t expect you to know anything, don’t teach you anything, and then make you feel like you’re totally ignorant and a burden for your lack of knowledge when THEY WON’T SHARE.

Fucking learn EVERYTHING you can when it comes to childbirth, girls. It is the single most empowering thing you can do for yourself. And if you missed something, that’s okay. But the more knowledge you arm yourself with, the more in control of your situation you’ll be.

A few post partum tips:

This is just a few things, but PLEASE feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions about ANYTHING childbirth/pregnancy/nursing related. I have four incredible kids. I’ve done it all - c-section, vacuume birth, episiotimy, stitches, with an epidural, without an epidural. I’m here.

….I know I keep reblogging this but people keep adding super important information.

I feel like no one tells women this stuff because if a woman was even a little on the fence about having a baby before this would kinda make them run for the damn hills.

…..you are correct, typing.

300% EXTRA SURE I’M NOT HAVING BABIES. 

peri bottles, witch hazel or anti-pain anticeptic spray are your friends. Also passing large clots after birth is a WARNING SIGN. Bigger than a half dollar is a sign that you have not passed your entire placenta (this is most common in hospital vaginal births where the mother is not allowed to naturally birth the placenta and instead has it ripped out by the doctor) if there is any placenta left in your uterus you can get extremely ill. This happened to both myself and my mother in law

WOW I didn’t know any of this and I’m terrified of what more I’m unaware of about my own body :( Honestly when will we fucking abolish this taboo about the female body…

I had pretty great sex ed in school (lots of contraceptive information, and totally acknowledged that teenagers might have sex) and all of this is news to me.

And, as a 28-year-old person with a uterus, I’m extremely appalled I’m just learning this.

Long, but very important information, even for those who don’t plan to have children, because you will almost certainly know someone who will, and you might be able to to help them. Or at least increase your level of empathy for them.

reblogging for all my followers with uteruses  

Friendly reminder

“Doing your best” does not mean working yourself to the point of a mental breakdown.

It’s also good to remember that “your best” is not a fixed quality, it changes with you, your life situations and your health! You cannot always expect to perform as well as you have before because you might not be that same person at that moment. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not easy, but learning to forgive yourself for taking time off and not meeting your old standards is one of the best gifts you can give to your mental health.

In light of the women’s marches today, please remember that not all women have vaginas, and not all people with vaginas are women!!! There have been some transphobic signs at the marches today that play into the gender binary and echo the sentiment “my genitalia is better than yours,” so here’s to intersectional and inclusive women’s rights, bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, and human rights

Buddy Wakefield, “Healing Hermann Hesse” (via cloudyskiesandcatharsis)

please don’t ask me who i am; my insides are always remodeling or maybe the truth is that there’s nothing to see here. that i’m just reacting to things as they come, no personality to speak of. sometimes i think i’m doing okay but then i look back and realize i wasn’t. sometimes i think i’ve figured out who i’m going to be but it’s gone in the next week. sometimes i get it right but i constantly ask myself the same questions all of the time: why did i say that? why did i do that? why am i like this?

The Half Hour S05E09 – Emily Heller

I have been thinking a lot about the nature of homes. What makes a place ours. The last step you skip, the crack in the wall. The shadows you all ignore. The place you knocked with your elbow and almost broke your bone. Where he first got stitches. Small items that have no owner but instead appear out of the ether and remain for years. The knife that cuts better than the rest. Is home the house or the one place you can read without anyone bothering you. When we make people our homes do we just move in our memories. Learn to skip over talking about her, he doesn’t like it. The place you knocked heads. Words you should have left unsaid. Words that you repeated just for the delight of saying them. Maybe there’s a reason it’s hard to move out from people. Maybe once you get used to how the ceiling groans when it settles or how one of the door hinges is loose it just … gets harder to picture anywhere else. Even if the windows leak you know what you’re dealing with. Everyone else is new and scary. At least there’s a roof. Even if it’s sometimes awful. You see the good stuff when you close your eyes. And hindsight always lies.

The thing I hate about coming out is the way society expects it to go down.

When gay people come out, more often than not they are expected to almost have to beg for their families love, and if they receive it without having to, they are expected to be over the moon and rejoice and be thankful and think, “what loving family and friends I have”.

The way coming out should go down is the exact opposite. 

Families and friends should almost have to beg for your love, and should most definitely be apologetic for the homophobic shit they most likely put you through whilst you were still in the closet. They should be like, “I’m sorry I was a bigoted prick all these years, I hope you can still love me and forgive me”.

The thing that bothered me the most when I came out was that my families reaction was just, “of course we have no problem, we love you no matter what”… when what I really wanted was an apology. An apology for having been ignored for years, an apology for having to sit though homophobia not only by them, but by my extended family and their friends. But what I got was, “of course it’s not a problem, now lets not talk about it again and lets not bring up all the horrible shit that we said to you openly or allowed to be said about gay people openly because we don’t want to feel bad”.

It bothers me so much to this day how much society loves to praise straight people for being so accepting of gay people but no one ever praises gay people for accepting and loving their families through the years despite all the homophobia.