As I start to plan my return back home, I asked my therapist for help.
I have a good solid morning routine in place, which also involves a night time plan for the next day. This will ensure my mood stays lifted.
I have realized above all things that I need to balance my input and output of energy so that I’m not sucked back into always giving out my energy and services with out refilling them back up.
The 3 categories I need to be balanced in are: Mind, Body and Spirit.
I have created a plan which is hand written as I’ve found that manually writing with a pen and reading it out loud, re-routes the information in my brain so I can remember it more effectively (I learned this skill from the dyslexia centre of Utah, in case you’ve noticed my typo’s and miss spelled words as I am slightly dyslexic)
I then created a digital plan using reminders on my phone but even though my phone is constantly available, I find my hand written plan has more lasting impact for me.
My final question for my therapist involved:
How do I act/react/cope when things get tense or I’m triggered into a negative thought cycle?
She had great suggestions for that which will address my specific behavior of “go inward, quiet or shut down completely” and My husbands of “this must be solved immediately or a full panic happens”. She suggested, either one of us could call a “time out” but it had to involve a time to return to the issue, e.g. “I need a time out, I’ll come back in 1 hour, to discuss this” Usually given the time, I have removed irrational thoughts and allowed my frontal cortex to return to logic and the time to return aspect, allowed my husband to know, I wasn’t ignoring it completely and hoping it would vanish but that I’d come back to discuss it later. Usually at this point, we could see that the incident was small but the feelings were still valid and we now have an awareness of something we need to work on.
I’m such a huge fan of therapy. I would love it to be available to everyone but especially kids.