Sensory Coping Skills- Using your Body to Cope with and Calm Big Emotions

Therapy in a Nutshell

Therapy in a Nutshell -Emma McAdam

Mental Health, Education, Health & Fitness:mental Health, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2020

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Get the course: Coping Skills and Self-Care for Mental Health https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/coping-skills-and-self-care-for-mental-health?utm_campaign=Aug%2004,%202022&utm_medium=Description&utm_source=podcast Coping skills are essential to managing big emotions without doing something stupid, but it can be hard to calm yourself down when your brain isn't working very well. Sensory coping skills are essential to soothing the body to calm the mind. Looking for affordable online counseling? My sponsor, BetterHelp, connects you to a licensed professional for $65/week. Try it now for 10% off: https://betterhelp.com/therapyinanutshell Learn more in one of my in-depth mental health courses: https://courses.therapyinanutshell.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=08042020 Support my mission on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/therapyinanutshell Sign up for my newsletter: https://www.therapynutshell.com?utm_medium=YTDescription&utm_source=podcast Check out my favorite self-help books: https://kit.co/TherapyinaNutshell/best-self-help-books Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC, and the information provided by Emma McAdam are solely intended for informational and entertainment purposes and are not a substitute for advice, diagnosis, or treatment regarding medical or mental health conditions. Although Emma McAdam is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the views expressed on this site or any related content should not be taken for medical or psychiatric advice. Always consult your physician before making any decisions related to your physical or mental health. In therapy I use a combination of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Systems Theory, positive psychology, and a bio-psycho-social approach to treating mental illness and other challenges we all face in life. The ideas from my videos are frequently adapted from multiple sources. Many of them come from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, especially the work of Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, and Russ Harris. The sections on stress and the mind-body connection derive from the work of Stephen Porges (the Polyvagal theory), Peter Levine (Somatic Experiencing) Francine Shapiro (EMDR), and Bessel Van Der Kolk. I also rely heavily on the work of the Arbinger institute for my overall understanding of our ability to choose our life's direction. And deeper than all of that, the Gospel of Jesus Christ orients my personal worldview and sense of security, peace, hope, and love https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe If you are in crisis, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or your local emergency services. Copyright Therapy in a Nutshell, LLC Music licensed from www.Bensound.com or Artlist.io Images from Freepik.com (premium license), Pixabay, or Wikimedia commons

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to therapy in a nutshell. I'm Emma McAdam, a licensed marriage and family
0:17.3	therapist, and this is the podcast where I condense mental health skills
0:21.9	into bite-sized nuggets of help. If you're ready to learn more in-depth mental health skills,
0:32.7	check out my online courses on anxiety, coping skills, and how to change your brain.
0:38.3	Ten alternatives to medication to improve mental health. The link is in the
0:42.0	description. You can use the code Nutshell for 25% off.
0:50.3	You may have seen this meme. Never in the history of calming down has anyone calmed down by being told to calm down.
0:57.0	So why is that? Well, it's because when we're stressed out, our limbic system is kind of running the show.
1:04.0	So this is the deeper, older, emotional brain. And its purpose is to keep us safe from threats and help us connect to others and a whole bunch of other really important things.
1:13.6	But this part of our brain is not where conscious or logical thinking happens. That stuff all happens in the cortex, the younger logical and rational brain.
1:23.6	And these two parts of the brain, when they're stressed out, it's like a bad breakup.
1:28.3	Like they aren't really talking to each other very well.
1:30.3	So that's why it's pretty hard to calm yourself down or to relax by just thinking that you need to relax.
1:35.3	That usually just makes things worse.
1:38.3	But that doesn't mean that we can't train ourselves to calm down.
1:42.3	We just have to come in through a different approach,
1:45.5	and that's from a body-based approach. The limbic system is also called the mammal brain.
1:52.0	So if you imagine a mama bear who can go through all the emotions, like she's happy when she finds some honey,
1:57.6	or she's furious when she sees something that threatens her cubs, or she's sweet when she sniffs and licks her little babies.
2:04.6	All of these emotions are associated with her senses, smell, taste, sight, or touch.
2:10.6	And that's how the limbic or mammalian part of our brain works.
2:14.6	It relies on our senses to determine whether we're safe or we're in danger. So one of the ways that we can signal to our brain works. It relies on our senses to determine whether we're safe or we're in danger.
	...

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