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Teri Wellbrock - writer, speaker, podcaster, therapy dog handler, glitter-shitter

Hope for Healing

Start Your Healing Journey Here!

Thank you for joining me and welcome to this month's edition of my Hope for Healing newsletter! I feel blessed to have you here with me. I would love and appreciate your feedback as I learn to navigate the world of newsletters, blogs, and websites. Feel free to reach out via my website contact page or through e-mail at info@teriwellbrock.com with comments, feedback, or any questions.

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Defining Resilience

Step 1: Focus on the Positives

Before diving into step 1, a reminder about resilience: it is defined as the ability to overcome adverse conditions; with healthy bonding relationships, guidance, support, and compassion as the catalysts. Basically, it entails having the capacity to bounce back from stressful or overwhelming experiences.

What are some steps we can take to ensure we are building resilience in our lives?

Focus on the positives.
Seek out and nurture supportive relationships.
Utilize self-care strategies.
Take action steps to create positive change.
Work on healthy habit formation.
Find a guiding hand to hold.
Learn to become our own hero.
Be gentle with ourselves.

Today we will cover Step 1: Focus on the positives.

I love when my memories pop up on Facebook. I can glance back at my life over the past nine years, since joining that social media platform, and re-live the joys. Sure there is an occasional post where I set a gripe free, but it's mostly happy-sunshine stuff.

However, it has not always been that way. This glitter-shitter stuff took a lot of effort. I had to completely revamp my habits in some areas. Here are eight suggestions to incorporate into your own life:

Surround yourself with positive energy: I made a concerted effort to remove toxic people from my life, or at least, how much exposure I had to their toxicity. Those energy vampires are draining. Emotionally, spiritually, even physically.
Create positive affirmations: I made mine using a Word doc, incorporating heart shapes into the doc, then filling the heart with nature photos I've snapped. Here is one of many I've created:

Practice mindfulness: This is a way to be present with all of your blessings in the present moment. Let your past worries go. Do not focus on future "what ifs". Just be here. In this moment. With everything peaceful in the moment. I like to practice mine in nature settings as I find tranquility in that space.
Re-direct your negative thoughts: I will purposefully stop myself mid-thought and say, "Nope. Let's think about this in a positive way, T." Example: my eighty-two year old mom was taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R. strolling through the grocery store. My own to-do list was nagging at me and I found myself becoming impatient with her. I stopped myself right there in the condiments aisle and just looked at her little hand reaching for the hot sauce. I smiled in the moment, knowing I am blessed to still have her with me.
Smile: It sounds simple enough. But, seriously. It requires effort sometimes. I try to remind myself to connect with others through a smile. It truly is amazing how people respond. Sometimes they actually look surprised to see someone smiling at them! But, almost always, they smile back.
Look for the light in the darkness: This can seem an impossible task. Especially if you are hurting or struggling. But, I promise, you will help yourself recover your footing if you find that light, that thing, whatever it is in your dark moment. Focus on it, treasure it, remind yourself of it as often as needed. Purposefully seek out a positive force, solution, or beacon.
Share the positivity: Put your happiness out into the world. I keep a happy thoughts journal. I also share my joys on social media. I write about things that make my heart happy. I try to offer positive solutions to others. Through radiating joy, I bring more joy into my life.
Give of yourself: I ran into a teacher I used to work with while pumping gas earlier today. She made my heart smile when she said, "It's not been the same since you left. We miss you. The kids really need you." She was talking about the job I had as a mental health specialist working in various school settings. Helping those kiddos, offering them coping skills and a chance to talk about their struggles, sharing my positive energy, helped bring positivity into my life. I knew I was making a difference in their lives. I still do this though our therapy dog services, meeting with kids to discuss anxiety and the important role of therapy animals in healing.

Coming up next month: Step 2: Seek out and nurture supportive relationships.

Defining Trauma-Sensitivity

I love the idea of having a trauma-sensitive society. "Trauma-sensitive" is another one of those buzz phrases making its way into the mainstream. I am over here jumping up and down, clapping my hands and shouting out a "WOO HOO!". Because the more society, as a whole, understands the impact of trauma on survivors, the quicker we can implement strategies to aid the healing process and help survivors build resilience through compassionate measures.

How do we do that?

Educate the masses: As more people understand the impact of trauma, particularly early childhood adversity (see last month's newsletter for an ACEs article) and the increased risks appearing in adulthood, we can move toward more compassion. Social media has been blamed for numbing us to the horrors of mass shootings. Yet, I believe we are more in tune to the sufferings of others as we become aware of the true impact of such traumatic events. Yes, we need action along with those prayers and positive thoughts, but it's in those well-intentioned prayers and positive vibes that the power of compassion resides. A great step in the right direction for trauma-sensitive awareness.
Provide support: Those who have experienced adversity, a traumatic event, toxic stress, or secondary trauma, can be experiencing a whole host of symptoms related to that exposure. And many times, there is an underlying current of fear. Providing supportive environments on physical, social, emotional, and spiritual (think holistic) levels is crucial to promoting healing.
Patience: Just as with grief, everyone heals in their own way on their own time. There is no set cut-off date to be "over it". Some people will shut down, some will lash out. Some will experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), some will not. Some will be able to self-regulate and communicate their emotions, some will not. Some will have physical symptoms (panic attacks), some emotional symptoms (anger outbursts), some spiritual symptoms (God-blaming), some social (isolating friends), while some will experience no symptoms right away yet something will surface later. Awareness brings about understanding, allowing us the gift of patience.
Adaptation: As our understanding grows, so does our ability to adapt to newfound coping strategies. Being able to offer suggestions, such as alternative therapy modalities like Brainspotting, Narrative Exposure Therapy, and Brief Eclectic Psychotherapy, or the idea of utilizing a tool box full of coping skills from breathing techniques to mindfulness exercises, can offer even more of that much needed hope that trauma-survivors crave.

These are just a few ideas we can implement on a community level. What are YOUR suggestions for creating and growing a trauma-sensitive society? I'd love to have you share them with me by email at info@teriwellbrock.com or via my website at https://teriwellbrock.com/contact-us/. Thanks!

Coming next month: A discussion on trauma-informed care.

Name It. Claim It. Heal It.

Name It:

Name your trauma in order to begin the healing process.
Know your ACEs score.

Claim It:

Put healthy boundaries in place.
Own your trauma and its impact on your life.
Find community with other trauma survivors and motivational souls.

Heal It:

Become your own hero:
- Complete the exercises at the end of each chapter of Unicorn Shadows: From Trauma to Triumph - A Healing Guide.
- Download the free resources throughout my website.

Stay tuned for further details!

Coping Strategy

I want to share one coping strategy a month. These are strategies I use (or have used) in my own life as I travel the healing journey. I hope they bring you tranquility, as well!

Journaling. I journal almost every day as I have made it a part of my morning ritual (meditation/mindfulness, prayer, reading, journaling). My favorite journaling exercise is to write from the soul without editing. I simply set my thoughts free onto the page. Colorful gel pens (some with glitter effects) brighten up my entries. Sometimes I doodle or draw (stick figures are about the extent of my artistic drawing abilities!).

I have various journals I use depending on my mood or needs: happy thoughts, blue day, positivity, letting go, daily, and many more.

Here are a few from my collection:

Until next month, remember to be gentle with yourself!

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