by Kathryn de Bruin | Apr 29, 2020 | Crisis
My answer to this is: Only deal with what challenges are truly needed during a time of crisis.
The only thing absolutely necessary right now is getting through this time period! This is your foremost job, to survive this crisis and to come through it as well as you can.
Adjusting your life to take on this job is most important. This is a time to lay other projects aside, unless taking those on serves you in some way, like a distraction or giving you something that you can control amidst an especially chaotic time.
It isn’t a time to dig up old injuries, or to work through more than you need to. It’s a time to be kind and gentle to yourself, and to build yourself up as much as you can.
Are you one of those people who loves a challenge? When the going gets tough, the tough get going. You are goal-oriented, and if you have something to work on or to achieve, you are in a happy place. When you are in a time of crisis, you get tougher and you take on an additional challenges to keep you in a place of feeling a sense of purpose. I’m one of these people. During this crisis, I’ve taken on the challenge of transforming my garden. I’m using my time off to destroy the weeds in my garden, and to claim back our beautiful land. When this is all over, I am determined to be appreciative of this time taken to transform my amazing garden!
What helps you to feel strong and in control?
Maybe you are just in need of a goal to focus you during this time of crisis. I personally find that I do better emotionally on the days that I exercise, eat well, sleep well and check off some of those goals. If you find yourself in a similar space of needing to challenge yourself, perhaps you can redirect that challenge into something beneficial. I would love to hear about any fun goals you may have for conquering this quarantine time, either personally for yourself or with your families! Don’t worry about it being anything cool or fancy, as I said, the most important thing is to get through and stay healthy!
by Kathryn de Bruin | Apr 9, 2020 | Crisis
We all have inherent strategies for coping. Coping Strategies are especially important in times of crisis, because they keep us feeling safe and in control of our feelings.
One of the most underutilized tools in relationships is knowing what your loved one’s strategies are.
If you know their strategies, then you will be able to work out how to support your loved ones in this time of crisis. Comfort will look different to different people. Chances are you’ve already talked to your loved ones about how they handle stress, as we talked about in our last post. Click here to view great conversation starters to talk about stress with your families. But learning coping strategies adds another tool in your toolkit to help you better understand your relationships, and so that you know what to do to be effective and helpful in the emotional lives of your loved ones during this time. There are 3 more common strategies that I want to discuss with you briefly. We will have a blog breakdown of each of these, with this first one going over what a secure coping strategy typically looks like in relationships.
The 3 Common Coping Strategies Are: Secure, Anxious or Withdrawn.
Some folks have Secure Strategies which means they feel a range of feelings, but to a more limited degree than those with anxious strategies. They tend to be more hopeful and to have better problem-solving abilities as well as abilities to be creative when things are tough. They feel confident in sharing openly how they are doing, and they tend to have people that they can talk to in times of distress, and so they get more comfort and support. They are also soothed more easily and more quickly. They “bounce back”.
I think of my youngest daughter who will easily jump onto my lap and say exactly what she needs in that moment, for example, “Mommy, I need a hug”. But then the moment she feels better, she’ll be on her way again. If you’re a parent to a secure child, you are likely to know exactly how they are doing and this is because they let you know. Just because they are a have a secure coping strategy, doesn’t mean that they don’t have times they experience the other range of feelings and deal with crisis in negative ways. The secure strategy is the most flexible one, so people with secure might sometimes withdraw and other times be anxious. But overall they are able to find balance.
by Kathryn de Bruin | Mar 31, 2020 | Anxiety, Family Therapy, Therapy
I’m thinking about you all as we are going through this environmental crisis that is hitting close to home for all of us.
Some families and couples that I’ve checked in on are rallying together against this common enemy and are feeling stronger in their relational dynamics than usual. This is wonderful news! Other families/couples are struggling more than usual because this crisis is surfacing any crack in their relational foundation and it’s hard for them to get through the day without their negative cycle getting triggered. My heart especially goes out to these families who are feeling that heaviness, and I’ve wanted to put together a series of blogs that gives some coping tools to get through this crisis together as a family.
Blogs 1-3 start with three very different but common strategies many of us utilize for coping: Secure, Anxious and Withdrawn. Obviously we can fluctuate between them at different points, but we often land on one or two that are most comfortable for us in times of uncertainty.
In blog 4 we dive into recognizing our own personal and unique family strategies – this will help give an idea of how your family would like to receive love based on their coping strategy, and what comforts them best during this time of stress (and how you best receive it!)
For our final blogs we get to talking about the virus specifically. I’ll go through questions we should be asking as a family and ways to prepare, ways to utilize play therapy techniques with your child to check in on how they are doing, and finally talking about how the elements of “challenge” and “trauma” play into this difficult time.
My hope in this blog series is yes, to help everyone learn coping techniques, but to also bring light and recognition, perhaps a few “aha!” moments, and awareness of how to better get through this individually and together!
