By Niseema Dyan Diemer SEP, LMT, BCPP
So much of life happens this way and it seems to be happening over and over again now. Every morning it seems I will do anything to avoid the news of the day. Imagine being someone who is actively involved on the front lines of that news story. The person who is going to pull on a set of scrubs or a fireman's jacket, reeking of the smoke from the flames the day or hours before. I've often wondered, "How do they do it? How do they move through the visual and moral assault they face everyday?"
I have a lot of highly sensitive people (HSP) in my practice and often wonder that same thing about them. How, when their world is so invasive and difficult, do they get up and move into their day? Some function better than others, but they function none the less.
Most of us, by now after 6 months of living with, hearing about and managing the existential threat of getting or giving a potentially deadly virus, are limping through our days. The changes and adjustments we've had to make may be easy for some and very difficult for others. It has been a real pervasive threat that may be challenging our sense of who we are, how we are living and what we really want to do with our lives.
We invited Thayer Case LCSW-R to our show for two episodes to talk about how accessing the body using some simple techniques can help us all increase our resilience to move through these times and avoid PTSD. SCOPE: Slow Down, Connect to your body, Orient, Pendulate, Engage is a resilience building tool to be used in middle of your day, in the break room of the ER, in a moment between fires, or when you have to go back to work after helping your child to understand algebra.
In order to understand SCOPE we talked about Somatic Experiencing which is where SCOPE comes from. Somatic Experiencing is one of many body based modalities that help people feel, understand and work with the biological/physical processes that trauma triggers. When you begin to understand why your body responded to your too much, too fast, too soon you can stop blaming or shaming yourself for what you feel or how you respond to life.
When trauma is held in the body it can become PTSD. When you are not able to exercise your autonomy or agency in a stressful situation and feel victimized or assaulted that feeling can get stuck and cause your range of resilience to be more narrow, less able to manage the acute stressors in your life. By practicing the stabilizing exercises of SCOPE while in the midst of an acute stress you can use your agency to DO something rather than be victim to the stress.
Ultimately it is about being in touch with your body: feeling grounded, protected and stable. These same techniques used by first responders can be used by anyone experiencing a high-stress situation. And done regularly, the body will automatically learn to respond with stability and resilience as opposed to "fight/flight/faint".