Guided Visualization Meditation to Build a Sense of Safety

by Abby Birk, LMFT

Recently, many of my clients (and I) have desperately needed to revisit our regulation skills. Skills that bring us back to a sense of calm, ease, relaxation or restoration in our bodies. In today's world, this state of being can be elusive between the go-go-go pace of life and the incessant call to be more and more productive. The need for intentional mindfulness and somatic regulation keeps increasing as we fall more and more into the trap of "I just don't have the time" day after day.

Below, I've written out the script I use to walk my clients through a visual meditation called Safe Place, to cultivate safety and security in the here and now. Many have their own version of this skill; here is the one I utilize in my sessions. My hope is to demystify these types of skills and make them accessible for practical, everyday use. As you continue, I recommend reading through (or listening to) the entire script at least once before trying it on your own with your eyes closed or gaze lowered.

Listen to the audio below:

Or read the script here (and maybe record it for yourself, or have a loved one record it for you!):

Find a comfortable seated, reclined, or supine position. Whatever position you choose, make sure you are not holding any tension to support this position, rather lean into and feel the support of your chair, floor, or object you are resting on, in, or against. It's best for grounding purposes (if you are in a position that allows it) to rest the soles of your feet on the floor. Let yourself get weighty and heavy as you allow your body to rest fully supported. You may place your hands wherever you'd like, on your thighs, in your lap, or on your heart and chest.

Now draw your attention to your breath. Do not seek to change anything yet, first observe with gentle curiosity the quality of your breath, the parts of the body that move or don't move as you breathe, the speed or sound of your current breath cycle...

As you observe, you might notice your breath starting to change anyways, that's okay. You can soon begin to intentionally lengthen your inhales and exhales. For this visualization meditation, we want to focus on elongated our exhales more than our inhales to better turn on our vagus nerve and calming parasympathetic nervous system.

Take a few rounds of deep breaths with longer exhales.

Minds wander, that's what they do. Label your thoughts as "thoughts" or "thinking" and return back to an aspect of your breath that can provide a bit more focus: the quality, speed, depth, length, feel, temperature, movement, etc.

Now you will select a safe place that you can imagine or think about for the rest of this exercise. It can be real or imagined. A place you've been to or never visited. It can obey the laws of physics or not. Whatever place you choose, you are in control here, you decide what is in the scene and what is not: if there's anyone with you, the weather, the way you feel here. You are completely safe and at ease in this landscape of your choosing. Take a minute to select a place or try a few different images to see which serves you today.

You will then explore your safe place through your 5 senses, starting with sight.

As you imagine looking around in your safe place, what can you see? How far can you see into the distance? What living things are around? What colors? What's the weather like? What buildings or people or nature fill up your space, if any? What surrounds you, what do you sit or stand or lay on? Once you've taken time observing, take some deep breaths simply enjoying the sensations that arise just by being in this place and looking around you.

When you're ready to move along, we'll continue our exploration through our sense of touch. What textures make up your safe place? Is there sand running through your fingers? Water? Are you surrounded by cozy blankets or laying on a fuzzy rug? Petting an animal? There are no wrong answers. Take stock of what you can feel on your skin, temperature, breeze, weather, etc. Take a few deep breaths once you're done observing with your sense of touch to enjoy the sensations that arise from the textures of your safe place.

Next, imagine closing your eyes in this place, identifying all that you can smell. If there are no naturally derived smells in your safe space landscape, you can invent some: maybe pulling in some of your favorite smells from different parts of your life like perfume/cologne, essential oils, warm drinks, nature, candles, etc. Take a few more deep breaths enjoying how the sense of smell in this place interacts with your body to create more safety and relaxation.

Now, you can continue imagining your eyes closed as you pay attention to the sounds that exist in this safe place. Further ground yourself into this landscape by singling out various sounds around you. Maybe you prefer your safe place to be silent, that is okay too! Whatever you find, just give yourself time to experience it fully and pay attention to how your body reactions to what it can hear in this space.

Lastly, we will engage with your sense of taste in this space. Like smell, you may have to manufacture a taste in your safe space if one is not naturally derived. You may pull from favorite foods, flavors, crisp, clean autumn air or the taste of the air after rainfall. Let yourself enjoy, with a few deep breaths, whatever flavors show up in your safe place.

Integrating all 5 senses in this imagined location allows for further grounding and experiencing of this beautiful internal resource. It allows your brain to fully simulate what it is like to exist in that safe, secure, relaxed state.

Take a few more breath cycles allowing yourself to simply exist in this safe place, remembering to see how your body feels. You will end the meditation with a body scan -- checking in slowly from head to toe (as if you were going through a scanner) for any sensations, feelings, emotions, etc. that arise. Then, you can wiggle your toes, eyelashes, and fingers: opening your eyes to fully come out of the meditation.

Remember, you are the author and originator of your own safe place, which means you have access to this space whenever you need it. Come to ground, regulate, relax, or restore yourself anytime you'd like! Visit when you need and just because you can, even allowing yourself a visit once daily or weekly. The more often we practice skills like these, the better utilized they will be when we actually NEED them in a difficult moment. Your safe place can change however you'd like or remain the same, time after time; don't forget, there are no rules, no "right" or "wrong" way to do this exercise. The important part to keep in mind is that YOU have full agency and autonomy over your safe place. View this guide as an invitation of cues to further ground you in your own experience -- which is all you, baby! Allow this guide to remind you of your own internal resources that you can avail yourself of anytime you'd like. Enjoy!

If you’d like to meet with a therapist to build a safe place together, or to further process stress in your life, Riverbank Therapy has therapists with openings, in person and virtual! Click here to schedule your free 20 minute consultation.

What is somatic therapy?

by Bobbi Smith, LICSWA

More and more, somatic therapy is being integrated into therapeutic techniques.  But what is somatic therapy?  And where does it come from?  In this blog entry I will attempt to give an overview of what somatic therapy means, and how to approach a therapist about integrating somatics if you are interested.  

As always, we start with context:  all the way back in the 1600’s (yes really) there was a French philosopher named Rene Descartes who was quite taken with examining the relationship between the human mind and body.  Since his work as a philosopher was pondering things, he began to think about the process of thinking itself, which he believed took place in the mind.  He theorized that the mind and body were separate organisms, and that the mind had dominion over the body.  This theory was known as Cartesian dualism, or sometimes mind-body dualism.  

Though there were always people that opposed Cartesian dualism, when what we now know as Western medicine began to form and institutionalize, it carried the legacy of Cartesian dualism with it.  Treatment of bodily ailments and treatment of mind ailments developed as distinct disciplines.  We don’t know if this is what Descartes intended, and can’t say for sure how he would react if he were alive to comment on it, but it unfolded this way anyway.

For generations, psychology has had the task of treating what western medicine firmly categorized as ailments that are located within the container of the mind, and therefore should be treated in that location, using the vehicle of thoughts to transfer a cure from the psychologist to the patient.  The most famous of these is “the talking cure” developed by Sigmund Freud.  In this approach, the psychologist would aggressively analyze the patients every word, which is 1. Deeply unethical and 2. Super annoying.

I’m getting to the somatic stuff, I promise.  

Let’s jump forward.  For decades now, some doctors, therapists and clients have questioned the utility of Cartesian dualism to truly address the complexity of mental and physical health conditions, and have been developing treatments that integrate both mind and body.  Soma means body.  Somatic therapy means incorporating some dimension of work with the body into treatment for ailments that used to be considered to be solely of the mind:  depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder, and more.  

There are many traditions of what is called collectively somatic therapy- Sensorimotor Therapy, Somatic Attachment Therapy, Somatic Internal Family Systems, and more. There is no singular type that is agreed upon as the best approach.  Therapists that integrate somatic therapy into their practices are trained in and draw inspiration from traditions designed by many different healers, and that is a good thing.  Just like every other type of therapy, there is no one size fits all.  In addition, there are many, many traditional healing methods practiced across the world that include some type of body work, to which western somatic therapy traditions owe great honor.

The tradition I myself am mainly trained in is called Somatic Experiencing- I am not certified but simply studying it.  Somatic Experiencing was developed to treat PTSD, or what is now mostly called simply trauma.  The thesis behind Somatic Experiencing is that trauma can cause wear and tear on the autonomic nervous system, and so, trauma treatment should include the autonomic nervous system.  The autonomic nervous system is a component of the peripheral nervous system that regulates involuntary physiologic processes including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual arousal. It contains three anatomically distinct divisions: sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric.  The autonomic nervous system lets us be relaxed, spontaneous, and socially engaged in a safe environment, or prepares us to fight, flee, or freeze in response to a threatening one.

Our human brains have evolved with add-ons to other species' brains, but we didn’t lose anything from them.  Basically, we have new apps but not a very different operating system.  As such, we have instincts to respond to harm or perceived harm in ways similar to other species.  Somatic Experiencing considers humans, aka homo sapiens, part of an evolutionary lineage that shares bodily features (such as an autonomic nervous system) and bodily instincts (such as fight, flight, or freeze) in common with other animal species that are evolutionarily older than us, and honors the innate intelligence of those similarities. In a threatening situation, animals either run to get away, fight off the threat, or if those don’t work, play dead (freeze) to appear unappetizing to a predator until it wanders away.

As animals, if an instinctual survival response sets off an alarm in our autonomic nervous system telling us to fight, flee, or freeze, it is important that that protective response is allowed to fully play out in service of its goal:  to get to safety.  If that response is prevented or constricted, the unresolved instinct can remain trapped in the nervous system as a chronic trauma response, or PTSD.  That can mean someone can feel trapped by the instinct to constantly fight, flee, or freeze, even if they aren’t in an unsafe situation anymore.  That is because even though our mind can cognitively register when a threatening situation is no longer happening, at the level of the organism (or body) there is no real proof of that, because all the nervous system knows is that it couldn’t do what it needed to in order to protect itself.  The nervous system doesn’t know time.

If that response were allowed to play out to its natural conclusion, our nervous system settles back into its baseline state, which is a proper flow in real time and proportional to what’s currently happening around us- not stuck in a chronic response.  We'll start in therapy by creating a safe container, building skills to cope with overwhelming emotions, thoughts, or body sensations. Then, when you're feeling ready, we may slowly approach your traumatic narrative, attending to body sensations along the way and supporting the discharge of trapped fight/flight/freeze energy.

One thing I love about Somatic Experiencing, and all types of somatic therapy, is that they acknowledge that human beings have evolved capacity for abstract thought, but otherwise are not fundamentally different from other animals per se.  Somatic therapy acknowledges the intelligence and healing instincts of other parts of our bodies besides just our minds.  Our bodies have instinctive reactions to what’s going on around us- and that means involving the body in therapy can have profound positive impacts on our sense of not only ourselves, but the world.  And who wouldn’t benefit from more wholeness and integration?

Most of our therapists at Riverbank incorporate somatic traditions into their treatment approaches. If you’d like to schedule a free 20 minute consultation with one of our therapists in-person in Seattle, or online for residents of Washington state, click here to fill out our contact form!

Your Nervous System and the Window of Tolerance

The nervous system is composed of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves that go throughout the body. The nervous system is the command center of the body, responsible for our thoughts, movements, and automatic processes such as breathing and digestion. Importantly, the nervous system is also responsible for our experience of emotion. Understanding your nervous system can help you become more aware of your emotions and how you can manage them without becoming overwhelmed.

Let’s start with a brief overview of the brain using this handy model created by Dr. Dan Siegel and based on the triune brain model by Paul McLean. It can be helpful to familiarize yourself with three major parts of the brain: (1) the brainstem (responsible for basic survival functions like breathing and heart rate); (2) the limbic system (the emotional center of the brain, responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response) and (3) the cortex (the “thinking and reasoning” part of our brain, responsible for managing big emotions, connecting with others, and helping us make thoughtful decisions).

(Image from Kerra-Lee Wescombe, 2021)

When all three parts of the brain are working together, we feel safe and connected to others. This is the optimal zone of nervous system arousal, known as our window of tolerance, or our social engagement system.

Window of Tolerance

Window of Tolerance, a term coined by Dr. Siegel, refers to the zone of nervous system arousal in which we are able to function and engage with other people most effectively. In this zone, our brain can process stimuli without becoming overwhelmed. This means the thinking part of our brain, the cortex, is online and helping us keep our nervous system (and emotions) regulated. This state is associated with our parasympathetic nervous system and is also known as the “rest and digest” state.

(Image adapted from NICABM, 2019)

When we are within our window of tolerance and difficulties arise in our day, we are able to handle them without our nervous system becoming dysregulated. This means that we can manage our emotions without getting overwhelmed.

Within this zone, we feel safe and socially connected. We are grounded, open, curious, flexible, and able to take on challenges. We feel calm but not exhausted, energized but not anxious. When emotions like frustration or sadness take us closer to the edge of our window, our thinking brain is able to use strategies to keep our nervous system regulated so we can stay within our window. This diagram shows how our nervous system ebbs and flows when we are within our window and our brain is able to regulate our emotions:

          (Image adapted from Levine, Ogden, Siegel)

 Sometimes, however, we can get thrown out of our window of tolerance when our limbic system sends our thinking brain offline. This happens when it senses danger and sends our nervous system into an automatic fight, flight, freeze, or collapse response. This state is associated with our sympathetic nervous system.

Fight/Flight/Freeze/Collapse

Our limbic system contains the part of our brain responsible for sensing threat and protecting us from danger. It can make split-second decisions to keep us safe, whereas our thinking brain wouldn’t be able to respond as efficiently to danger. Therefore, when our limbic system senses danger, it can turn our thinking brain offline and trigger our fight/flight/freeze/collapse response, moving us outside our window of tolerance in its attempt to keep us safe.

When we are in this state, our nervous system is over-activated, or hyperaroused. Our body is alert and ready to fight or flee danger—or it may freeze to avoid danger. Our breathing and heart rate quicken, our hearing becomes sharper, our skin sweats, our muscles tense, and our pupils dilate. Here we can feel anxious, panicked, angry, or out of control.

In the collapse response, on the other hand, our nervous system is under-activated, or hypoaroused. Our heart rate drops, our breathing slows (we may even hold our breath), and we feel immobilized. It can be easy to confuse the freeze and collapse responses, so it may be helpful to imagine you are playing a high stakes game of hide and seek. The seeker is right outside your hiding place. You are tense, alert, hyperaroused because you know they might find you: this is freeze. Suddenly, they lock eyes with you, and you’re defeated, hopelessness: this is collapse. In collapse, we can experience exhaustion, numbness, dissociation, depression, shame, and hopelessness.

(Image from Mind My Peelings, 2019)

The fight/flight/freeze response evolved over ages to keep you safe and alive. It was very useful in our early hunting and gathering days when we encountered regular threats to our survival, like dangerous wild animals. And it is still useful when you are faced with real threats to your safety, like when you have to slam on your brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of you. In this case, you want to be dysregulated so you can respond effectively: You don't want to be in your window all the time.

However, our fight/flight/ freeze response is also frequently triggered by non-life-threatening occurrences, like a first date, a bad grade, a deadline, an argument, or a visit from your in-laws. While these are stressful events that can result in ebbs and flows in your nervous system and move you toward the edges of your window, sometimes our nervous system responds as if these events are life-threatening, sending us outside our window into fight/flight/freeze.

Why do I react so strongly to stress?  Your window of tolerance can narrow and widen based on a number of factors, even throughout the day. If you have experienced trauma or you are going through a stressful time, your window can become very narrow. When your window is narrow, your nervous system is even more attuned to potential dangers, triggering your fight/flight/freeze response more often and for even smaller “threats.” This means your limbic system may sense danger when there is none. Unfortunately, by trying so hard to protect you, your limbic system is unintentionally sending your nervous system on a roller coaster ride that can keep you from experiencing safety and connection.

Expanding your window

How can you expand your window of tolerance? An important step in expanding your window is getting to know your nervous system a little better (you’re already doing this!) and starting to notice what it feels like both when you are within your window and when you are outside your window. You can start to notice what your body feels like when you are calm and connected—and what your body feels like when your emotions are dysregulated. You can start to take note of the types of triggers and situations that your limbic system labels as dangerous.

An equally important step is taking care of your body’s most basic needs like sleep, healthy food, and exercise. Even factors like feeling tired or hungry can narrow your window. Do you tend to snap at others more easily when you’re hungry for dinner? That’s because when your body is running low on something it needs for survival, your window can shrink. Anything that puts your body on high alert-–like physical or emotional pain, perfectionism, self-criticism, and disconnection-–can be a force that narrows your window.

Learning strategies for managing stress and finding ways to connect with other people are also ways to expand your window. Additionally, mindfulness and self-compassion are practices that can make your window bigger over time. Working with a mental health professional to process trauma and difficulties can also help you expand your window and get back to feeling safe and connected.

Coming back into your window

How can you come back into your window once you’ve gone outside? When your limbic system has sent your thinking brain offline and you are outside of your window of tolerance, there are many things you can do. As a general rule of thumb, if you are in fight/flight/freeze mode (hyperarousal), you may need to release energy and then sooth. If you are in collapse mode (hypoarousal), you may need to add energy to your system.

To release energy and then decrease arousal from fight/flight/freeze: First, you might try releasing the energy. Dance, go for a walk, run up and down the stairs, shake your body all around. Then, find something soothing. This might include: deep belly breathing (with exhales longer than inhales), laying on the ground, using a weighted blanket, drinking tea, listening to soothing music, making comforting food, stretching your body, giving yourself a hug, meditating, practicing yoga, or engaging in the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise (find 5 things you see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste).

To increase arousal from collapse: Try out some physical activity like dancing, walking, or even just simply sitting up straight or standing and feeling your feet on the ground. You can also try listening to energizing music, rubbing your arms and legs, or stomping your feet on the ground.

Additional ways to regulate include taking a cold shower or dunking your face in ice water, journaling, doing something creative like drawing or playing an instrument, and increasing your emotional vocabulary (get out that emotion wheel and put a name to what you are feeling!).

Co-Regulation: All of the above tools are focused on what we call self-regulation (tools that you can use on your own). However, co-regulation (tools that are used with others) can be just as important for coming back into your window (as well as widening it). This might look like asking for a hug, petting your dog or your cat, or calling a friend. The people in our lives we feel safe with are one of our greatest resources when it comes to reducing stress, so reaching out for support is a great way to come back into your window of tolerance.

Therapy: If you’d like to explore these topics more specifically, and with a therapist trained to bring the nervous system into trauma therapy, we have therapists with openings for new clients in Seattle who are offering both in-person and virtual sessions. Click here to schedule a free 20-minute consultation now.

Sources:

https://kiddomag.com.au/education/a-handy-way-of-looking-at-childrens-behaviour/

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/window-of-tolerance

https://www.mindmypeelings.com/blog/window-of-tolerance

Interoception--the 6th Sense

Interoception is your ability to feel what is happening inside your body.

You know the 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. These are "exteroceptive" senses. They help us know what is happening in the outside world, and help us determine how to respond.

INteroception is like a 6th sense. It's how you know when you are hungry, thirsty, or tired. It's how you know that you're in pain, or need to pee, or need to stretch.

After trauma, you may notice less of what's going on in your body. Because of the trauma, you may have disconnected from your body, and disconnected from your sense of what is happening inside.

Not knowing what is going on in your body, being disconnected from interoceptive cues, makes it much more difficult to meet your needs. If you don't notice pain when you've been sitting in an uncomfortable position for an hour, you won't think to change positions. If you're hungry, but have gotten caught up with work and didn't notice your growling stomach, you won't consider giving your body the nourishment it needs.

This makes it harder and harder to trust ourselves. We're missing the cues that tell us how to care for ourselves, which leads to not taking care of ourselves. This undermines our ability to believe we deserve care, to trust our bodies to tell us what we need, and to trust ourselves to meet our own needs (let alone ask others for what we need).

This is why so much of trauma therapy is building awareness of what is happening somatically. Being able to FEEL AND NOTICE what is happening in your body builds your connection back to yourself. It helps you RESPOND to your needs, building TRUST and SAFETY.

There are a ton of ways to do this:

-schedule a time every hour to ask what sensation you're feeling in your body (this can take just a few seconds)

-schedule reminders to ask yourself if you need a drink of water or a snack

-move your body, and take notice of how it feels when you move

-work with a somatic therapist

You can also come to my yoga class on Wednesday 10/21! (or after, I'll be sending out the recording!)

This class is an intentional, mindful, trauma-sensitive exploration of movement to help cultivate your interoceptive capacity. Every yoga-ish shape is offered with a lot of variations, and time to get curious about what feels good in YOUR body. You don't have to do what I say, or what I do...I really encourage students in the class to do what feels good. To feel into your body and respond to what it's asking for. 

I hope you'll join us :) Click here to find out more and to register.

10 Tips for Soothing Anxiety With a Mask On

Wearing a mask is mandatory in Washington state as of last Friday. Most of us have been wearing them before this anyway, and if you haven't, get on that now. While you're at it, make a few calls to demand the arrest of the officers that killed Breonna Taylor.

Masks reduce the possibility of the spread of COVID massively. They are also hard to breathe in.

I often use my breath as a primary tool to soothe myself when I get anxious. And anxiety abounds these days. You know, anxiety, like...when you walk into a grocery store trying to get through it as fast as you can and a bunch of other people with masks reminding you that you live in 2020 and you're trying not to touch anything or touch your face or get too close or wonder is that box going to give me the virus and also systemic oppression and murder of Black people by police and am I doing enough and my personal mental health concerns and...you know. There's ANXIETY.

Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that a deep breath would usually help, but not right now. (Taking action about the things we care about helps) and also you may need to use other skills to soothe the anxiety that you're holding in your body.

Other skills that might help soothe anxiety with a mask on:

• Feel the movement of your legs

• Notice the crinkles of a smile at the edges of people's eyes

• Hug yourself

• Tap your fingers in a rhythm

• Squeeze and release your hands

• Press your feet into the ground

• Roll your neck and/or shoulders

• Place your hand on your chest and feel your heartbeat

• Hold something cold in your hands

• Alternate tapping your feet

What helps you soothe when the breath doesn't?