Posted by sunnydays on June 7, 2007, at 23:15:15
In reply to Re: holding tension in your body, posted by DAisym on June 7, 2007, at 22:20:32
> I would highly recommend "tense and release" methods of relaxation. When you feel yourself tensing up, consciously tense those muscles all the way and then release. It helps discharge the half-way stuff. It is important to breathe in when tensing and out when releasing. I like to tell clients to breathe themselves into the floor with every exhale and really feel themselves sinking and letting go. I totally understand the whole quiet mind thing - I end up freaked out or in tears. In the classes I teach, I use a Sesame Street song - Up goes the castle -- and this is a class for adults! It really works - the song is about breathing in and out.
***** Thanks for the ideas. Progressive muscle relaxation works the best for me out of everything I've tried. But sometimes it still makes me more anxious - I think I haven't totally figured out how to let my body do the releasing, so I release some but still get stuck with some tension in my body. And it still is sometimes too quiet and I get freaked out. I also have a tendency to forget to breathe, just in general, which I think contributes to the anxiety.
>
> It gets really tricky when you feel in that little girl space. My therapist is pretty good at figuring out when I'm there, although now I'll usually just tell him. Your name is a powerful weapon - all of us can recall our parent(s) calling out to us in anger - using our names. So it makes sense to me that it would be a trigger. It is scary to know how easily we are startled, even by someone we trust. One of the first things babies learn is their own name -- not that it belongs to them, but that this sound, combined with certain tones, tells them who is coming near and how that person feels.
>**** Yeah. I just I don't understand how triggers like that work though. It was just my name, in the same tone, but slightly louder than he had said it before. It just seems so foreign I guess because there's no memory connected with it explicitly -- it's just this tremendous fear I had. I mean, that's how triggers work sometimes, but it's so weird to have such a strong reaction to something that you have no reason to think would cause a reaction like that.
> Do you have plans for the weekend? Are there little girl things you can do? It might help.**** Well, I see my T tomorrow, but no plans, really yet. I might color some, definitely paint my fingernails because the polish chips so fast, read, watch TV. Probably go for a walk, though there have been some robberies around here in broad daylight in busy areas lately so I'm a little afraid to go out alone. But no exciting plans. I'm also tied to where I am because I have a pager for my job so I can't go very far away in case I get paged.
Thanks for responding. I hope things are going ok for you.
sunnydays
poster:sunnydays
thread:761726
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070525/msgs/761769.html