July 25th, 2006
(no subject)
amie's law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie%27s_law
check that out, reaserch it. i congradulate this girl for being so strong. i just ssaw a story about this on the local nightly news.
Songs?
So, I get how music can be soothing and all that, but I never would have thought it would impact me THAT much.
When I was little, I was very...not stable.
I had a really bad case of Separation Anxiety from my mom. I always thought she would just decide that she didnt want me one day adn leave me somewhere. So it scared me to be without her.
Anyway when I was this little, im talking...5 , 6 and on, and I would sleep over at people houses alot. I would cry all night. I didnt like no sleeping in my bed. I mean It freaked me out to be in unfmailiar surroundings, especially without my mom. SO I would sit up and cry all night, and go through many panic attacks and just...be so scared.
So my aunt Kathleen made me a casset tape. She didnt know what she was doing. She made it for my birthday. But the first song on the tape, was Enya's Watermark, off of the Watermark CD. That song..did amazing things for me. That was the only way I got to sleep at night. Thats the only way I would stop crying and calm down. It HAD to be playing constantly for me to sleep. It made all the bad things go away and everything would stop adn id be calm. It took the pain away.
Even to this day its an amazing song. It still does what it did for me as A child.
And just for you all who arent familiar with Enya, heres where you can find the clip. (Go figure shes Irish...)
"WaterMark"
Does anyone eles have these types of songs?
Thought stirring question of the week: Keywords
Shutting down all non-life-essential bodily functions means that our brains shut down our centers of higher learning: our complex logic, our long-term memory, and most importantly? Our centers of speech! Our brains literally shut down when we're under stress, making the formation of even basic sentences under stress very difficult.
For survivors, this means that often when we most need to communicate, to our therapists, to our friends, or to our family, we can't. When we're most upset and want or need to explain why, our brains just can't come up with the words. Not being able to communicate at these crucial times is frustrating, and often leads to some pretty negative feelings about ourselves. When we're not in crisis, we find it just as difficult to explain about that stressful situation - as thinking about that moment when you couldn't talk can sometimes trigger that same speech-center shutdown, starting the cycle all over again.
So this week we'll focus on keywords and their use.
A keyword is something you set up in advance with someone with whom communication is important in stressful times. Say for example that you have a trigger that makes you absolutely terrified. If you tell your partner, your friends, etc. in advance that when you're triggered, you often can't let them know what's wrong. Let them know that you're upset enough that you can't explain it, or answer questions well. Then, give them a specific word, or words that will be your keyword. With the trigger example I used, let's say you choose "Trigger-scared" as your keyword. Saying that word indicates to those close to you *exactly* what is going through your mind.
When you set up a keyword, you are giving your circle of supporters a key to knowing what to do. Often, our supporters want to help, but just don't know what to do and when to do it. By setting up a keyword with them, you can tell them *exactly* what to do with each keyword. Yes - it's okay to have more than one (if you have more than a few, it's okay to write them down). You're giving them the power to help you, how you need it and when you need it. It helps you get the support you need, and it helps them feel less helpless to support you
So this week's questions:
- When do you most often find yourself unable to communicate?
- Is there a keyword you could use to indicate you've reached that place?
bonus:
- If you've used keywords already, how have they been most helpful?