Breath like a tree!

I know, it sound super cheesy doesn’t it.  You can see yourself in the hippie sweat lodge right now huh?!  It’s ok if you’re like that cause well…I for sure am.  It’s the difficult part for me in therapy, I’m super resistant to try anything hokey and kumbaya-ish.  If your open to it, you’ll be fine.  😉

Ahhhk…enough horsing around.  What the heck am I talking about right?!

I have this in my tool box of things to do when I get triggered/dissociative, this is really good for anyone though.  I have passed it on to a few people who liked it for road rage, standing in lines, dealing with small children. lol.

You can get to where you feel out of touch with reality, like your going to fly away, fly off the handle, have a psychotic break, whatever.  That’s not really a good place to be (trust me if you haven’t for some reason discovered this already, you can end up doing some dumb things!)  So how the heck to you go about getting out of that place?

Breath! Sound familiar? Yeah…it works too. You know that up tight feeling, tensing your shoulders and back (eventually you become every ones nightmare all because of that backache your toting around!), feel like your head might explode, etc. ? Those things are very hard to do and feel when you are deep breathing.  There are a lot of breathing exercises out there so if one hasn’t worked for you (breath count to ten, breath count to three, …doesn’t work for me much. You?) try a different one.

The thing that works for me with Tree Breathing is there is a physical and visual portion to it.  You don’t need to do the physical portion if you don’t want, I think doing the visual can give you the sensation anyway.  Basically what you are going to do (Hokeyness ALERT!) is imagine you are a tree.   (I’ll wait for those that need to eye roll, laugh, etc.)

Your head is the top of the tree.  The physical part is that you can actually use your arms if you want, stretching will really help you get back in you body.  You want to imagine breathing in through the very top of your head (or through your stretched up arms).  Take a big deep breath and imagine it traveling all the way through you.  Don’t exhale yet.

Your feet are the start of your roots. You want your roots to grow right through the ground your feet are on. So when you exhale imaging that your exhaled breath is traveling out through your feet as your new roots.  Imagine the roots growing out under the surface your on.

Do it as many times as you need.  Your rooted *snicker* *smirk* *cheesy!*, you can’t float off now.  I don’t always do this standing or standing still.  If I’m walking I just imagine that I pull up the roots with one foot (the other is still rooted behind me) and they just grow back out in the next step.

All I can say is give it a try! If it works for you great, if not…  Don’t worry I have some other suggestions for grounding and it’s always good to have a tool box full as the same ones may not work all of the time or in all situations.

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Getting ready!

Well, my insomnia has been on high gear for the past week (kind of the reason I decided to sign on, figure I could do something good with that time). The one thing that I am worried about is when the dawn hours hit.  I’m not worried about screwing up posts (missing one or something) or draining out.  Nope…

Dawn happens to be a trigger for me.  Yeah, this did not dawn (har har) on me until my attack of insomnia struck last night.  I suddenly found myself wondering if the clock was right, I could hear traffic louder than usual, there were a few birds making noise still.  I was warding off the panic when I realized “Ok, I can handle this because it’s not actually dawn. My brain is just confused but I can get a grip on it because I can see it’s pitch black, no sign of the sun rise…”  For Blogathon, I don’t know what will happen if anything.

See the trigger is that for about a week – week and a half during my teen age year I did not sleep.  Yes, I’m serious not a wink. Yes, I did start hallucinating a bit.  The only “sleep” I got was through my ability to dissociate, I shut my brain “off”. I went through my days like a robot to try and conserve energy.  So now I avoid being up for the dawn because the few times I have experienced it since those days, I freak out.  I’m not sure what day it is, I’m not sure if I’ve slept, I panic about how long I’ve been awake for.  I panic that maybe everything that has happened in between those days and now is a hallucination.  I panic that I have never gone to sleep at all since those days.

I don’t know why I was not sleeping back in those days.  There have been some flashback type things that have slowly gotten more and more intense over the years that lead me to think perhaps there was another trauma around that time. (One family member mentioned a few months ago a gut feeling they had about someone else around that time which fit with my flashes. I had not told the family member about the flashes.)  All I remember is just feeling completely alone in the world. I felt like the Apocalypse or a plague happened and I was the last person on Earth.  I wandered around the house staring out of the windows at all the dark houses on the block, not a single light on inside any of them.  The dawn would come and I’d watch everything return to life, there was the steady glow of light, change of color in the sky, the birds woke, the lights in the houses slowly went on, people came out in pajamas and robes to get the paper, cars took off for work.  I’d finally plop down on the bed or a chair and think ” Another day and I haven’t slept. The world goes on.” I just wanted to cry but there was no energy for that.

If you’ve never had the experience of not being sure when time begins and ends, I hope you never do.  If you want another take on it check out the film/documentary “Touching the Void”.  I had a hard time watching that (still sometimes do) but toward the end of the film this type of experience is described and I think the imagery that goes with it is perfect.

In someways I think doing the Blogathon will help.  I think typing, having to think, interact with people, get my posts, will all help keep me grounded.  That’s what I hope.  I haven’t decided whether to turn the blinds on the windows or not. I’ll probably have music on, maybe headphone (I do have noise canceling ones) so if the early morning sounds are too much maybe that will help. I’m some what fearful of this challenge of myself but at the same time I welcome it.  It will be one more step on this path that I will have either attempted to conquer or will conquer.  Let’s hope for the latter!

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