This episode is packed full of ideas you can practice immediately to restore the flow back to your relationship plus gives you communication protocols you can adopt to stop stress arguments from happening. 

#COVID-19 # Stress #Lockdownissues #Marriagetroubles

This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

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This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

xx

1) What health and crime effects we are observing on society and the world at large

2) What the triggers of all of these strong emotions are

3) 10 great Emotional release techniques which you can try out during lockdown or beyond!

This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

NO pressure or preaching, just 2 Trauma Coaches giving advice and keeping it real. 

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1) How our brains and bodies handle uncertainty and what we can do to help ourselves relax

2) If you or your loved ones are feeling more emotional and scratchy, how to handle the ranges of reactions you might experience day to day

3) For many people who are considering massive changes at this time, whether now is the time to pounce on those instincts or not

4) How to handle all the supermen and superwomen on social media who appear to be doing epic things all the time. Figure out if you should be turning yourself inside out to run a marathon in your garden, bake bread daily, start and smash your side hustle or complete the push-up challenge like Sarah and Brad

5) If you notice yourself being more lethargic than usual, managing the lethargy that so many people face daily in lockdown (remembering that this ain’t a vacation!)

6) How to ground yourself when your emotions get out of whack

7) Whether you should have a routine OR whether you should be keeping it spontaneous and what the best approach is for handling mass uncertainty

8) How to self soothe

9) How to manage your environment for success

10) How to lighten the mood when the whole planet appears to have gone pear-shaped

This episode is full of practical tips, techniques and advice for what to do in each instance.

NO pressure or preaching, just 2 Trauma Coaches giving advice and keeping it real. 

xx

People are rarely themselves during times of uncertainty

I want to call out that during times of great uncertainty, you find that people deal with things at different times and in different ways. It’s all rather normal and depends on how acutely someone is feeling the impact of this event. Someone working on the front line worried that they will infect their family is in a very different place to someone who is working at home and feeling bored of being cooped up. We must therefore have compassion for how everyone is going through this. Think of it this way:

So let’s be mindful of being kind and empathetic to the differing ways people are experiencing COVID-19.

What is going on?

I read a brilliant article in the Harvard Business Review all about the collective grief so many people feel during this crisis. In the article the writer asserted that the world is experiencing differing types of grief. The COVID-19 crisis has succeeded in changing life as we know it and although most of us know that the events we are experiencing are temporary, we realize that things will be very different when we come out of this. Life is changing and this was the point at which life changed. We all need to now adjust to this ‘new normal’ which includes the fear or economic toll, the loss of connection with others, the potential loss of those we love without even being able to say goodbye. We are not used this kind of trepidation feeling in the air. So if you find yourself feeling sad, welcome to the club. You might be feeling Anticipatory Grief, which is the feeling we get about great uncertainty coming. A storm is brewing and we have no idea how bad this is going to get but some will imagine all kinds of doom-and-gloom futures which can lead to catastrophizing and jumping to worst-case scenarios. We feel the world has changed, and it has. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety.

We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.

Let’s use this Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Model developed by Dr Rachel Morris for acute Anticipatory Grief:

Whenever there is great uncertainty, it triggers our FIGHT or FLIGHT response within our brains

The amygdala is the brain’s ‘alarm system’. It works to keep us safe by constantly being on the lookout for threat. The amygdala is very sensitive and lives by the rule ‘better safe than sorry’, so as soon as sign of danger are sensed it immediately kicks into action and prepares the body/mind to defend itself. It also records information from our senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) about any dangerous situation. It all happens so quickly and automatically that sometime the amygdala has set off the alarm before we are even consciously aware of what is happening.

The uncertainty and its associated pace we are all experiencing with COVID-19 is activating many amygdalae’s out there. I would hazard a guess and say that there are not many people in the world who are sleeping soundly.

What happens when the threat system is activated?

The main purpose of the threat system is self – protection. Our survival instincts tend to make us do one of four things: fight, flight (run away), freeze, or appease (try to calm down the threat). When the threat system is activated a hormone called adrenaline is released into the bloodstream. This increases the release of cortisol which is the stress hormone.

The adrenaline and cortisol flow round our bodies very quickly, getting different body streams ready to quickly respond to the threat. The adrenaline increases heart rate so that there is more blood and oxygen going to our muscles. The adrenaline makes our muscles tense, making them ready to fight or to run away.

The adrenaline and cortisol speeds up our thoughts, so we can make quick (potentially lifesaving) decisions. All of these changes can affect how we are feeling. The diagram below shows some of the effects activation’s of the threat system can have.

When we feel under threat it is common to act automatically. We tend to act first and think later, and may behave in a way that we would not have if we were feeling safe or calm. We have very little, if any, control over these instinctual reactions and we rarely get to choose which ones we employ when we feel scared. Common instinctive reactions include:

• FIGHT
• FLIGHT
• FREEZE
• APPEASE

The slow, deliberate, rational, ‘thinking’ part of the brain (Hippocampus) often takes a back seat when we rely on our basic survival instincts. Cortisol also shuts down this rational part of our brain as the body mobilizes to protect us from whatever this perceived danger is.

Bottom line: When Emotions are High, Thinking is often Low.

It is very important to keep all this in mind as we can often blame ourselves for the way we may react during uncertain or traumatic events and wish that we had done or said something different. However, we probably just reacted automatically to protect ourselves in the best way we could at the moment.

So be empathetic to yourself, to others and to the world at large for how they are handling this crisis. Everyone is literally just doing the best they can.

What helps?

Understanding the stages of grief is a start. But whenever I talk about the stages of grief, I have to remind people that the stages aren’t linear and may not happen in this order. It’s not a map but it provides some scaffolding for this unknown world. There’s denial, which we say a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I social distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed.

Acceptance, as you might imagine, is where the power lies. We find control in acceptance. I can wash my hands. I can keep a safe distance. I can learn how to work virtually.

Let’s go back to anticipatory grief. Unhealthy anticipatory grief is really anxiety, and that’s the feeling you’re talking about. Our mind begins to show us images of the worst scenarios. That’s our minds being protective. Our goal is not to ignore those images or to try to make them go away — your mind won’t let you do that and it can be painful to try and force it. The goal is to find balance in the things you’re thinking and find ways to come into the present. 

Here are some steps you can take right now…

1. Create a GROUNDED ROUTINE that you can go back to every single day, morning, noon and night. An example includes:-
   1. Get UP with alarm I set the night before
   2. Take my Immune Booster supplements (Vitamin A, D, C, Zinc and Magnesium) with hot water and lemon which I wash my mouth out with
   3. Gargle with Mouthwash to wash away any possible lurking viruses
   4. Go get some exercise (30 minutes of HIIT on an app, join an online class
   5. Shower and get dressed as if I am going out
   6. Set the table and have breakfast
   7. Clear table and wash dishes
   8. Begin productive work session for the day (whether that be my job I can do remotely, DIY project I am doing, Course I am taking online with Udemy or MindValley or any other productive activity)
   9. Mid-morning cup of tea and rest
   10. Continue work
   11. Set table and have lunch
   12. Continue work until 4pm
   13. Go for walk and get fresh air
   14. Set table, cook and make dinner
   15. Clear table, wash dishes and rest, play board games, connect with friends online or watch television
   16. Self care activity: Paint nails or apply moisturiser, etc.
   17. Make list of everything you are grateful for in your life and write down what you like about yourself
   18. Listen to a calming audio program. If you want to use the Naked Recovery Anti-Anxiety audio program, just email my team and we will send it to you with my compliments ([email protected])
   19. Bed time and plan the next day
   20. etc.
2. Don’t allow anarchy to develop in your home. Create a cocoon of safety and routine. Keep things as “normalized” as possible incorporating lots of self care
3. Keep up with exercise and activity to release the excess adrenaline and cortisol in your body. Go for a walk or bike ride; put on the radio and dance; walk briskly up the stairs; stretch or do yoga; go for a jog; do some vigorous cleaning.
4. Be creative. Draw, paint or sculpt; write in your diary; sing; play a musical instrument; knit; sew; carry out a DIY project.
5. Connect with others. Sharing the thoughts to normalise them: talk to others about your thoughts and feelings. This in itself may help. Phone or text a friend; help someone else online; talk about your problems with someone you trust; contact someone in my team if you feel isolated or alone. Message us on ([email protected])
6. Practice soothing and calming activities. Take a bath or shower; stroke a pet; have a warm drink; have a massage; listen to soothing music; practice meditation, mindfulness or relaxation activities.
7. Practice constructive activities. Send an important email; spend 10 minutes tidying or organizing; cook or bake; garden; write a ‘to-do’ list; volunteer your time.
8. Practice activities which require concentration. Do a puzzle, crossword or Sudoku; play solitaire, computer games or apps; watch a movie or a funny video clip.
9. Try these grounding techniques:
   1. Organize your drawers and declutter your house
   2. Thoroughly clean your house
   3. Complete your filing
   4. Sleep with a cat or hot water bottle
   5. Take a kick-boxing class
   6. Rub Vicks Vaporub on your feet and put socks on
   7. Have an Epsom Salt bath to replenish Magnesium depleted through stress
   8. Soak your feet in hot water with Epsom salts
   9. Go to bed earlier
   10. Eat one home-balanced meal a day
   11. Cook your own meals
   12. Bake Bread
   13. Do Gardening
   14. Set the table and eat at the table
   15. Go for a long leisurely walk once a day (keeping social distance of 3-4 meters from others)
   16. Have a picnic with your family in your garden
   17. Complete your year-ed accounting
   18. Eat root veggies like potatoes, turnips, carrots and beets
   19. Take a class on healthy cooking
   20. Foster a pet from a shelter
   21. Establish comforting routines
10. Focus on what you can be grateful for each day. Completing a gratitude journal where you identify 3 things each day that you are grateful for. Gratitude is a great antidote for anxiety as it is (almost) impossible to feel both things at the same time.
11. Challenging (re-framing) the thoughts, e.g. my mum is going to die, what if I get it and die, how will my kids cope, what will my funeral be like… Look at the balance of evidence for the REAL rather than mind-created risk. then reframe it, e.g. the story I’m telling myself is: I am going to die and my children will be left without a mother, and compare this with the reality: It is unlikely I will die; I am relatively young and have no other health problems.
12. Control what you CAN control
    1. Social media: reduce the amount overall. Notice how it makes you feel and find your own balance. There is good and bad – it can be helpful to reach out, connect and find support, but it can also escalate things.
    2. News updates: set specific and time-framed periods to look at the news, e.g. 10 minutes twice daily. Consider using the press conferences.
    3. As far as possible, try to keep your usual routine and participate in usual activities, even if you have to be a bit creative, e.g. virtual coffee with a friend, watching a family film and chatting about it by WhatsApp as it takes place, doing a HIIT workout in the garden or indoors.
    4. Think of life one day at a time. What can you do to stay in the moment? – use mindfulness techniques (https://www.headspace.com).
13. Practice the Calming Techniques I lay out below…

Try these CALMING Techniques

Calming the threat system: Relaxed Breathing

Controlling your breathing sends a signal to your threat system that everything is ok. Calm breathing is slow, relaxed, and from the diaphragm (‘belly breathing’), whereas anxious breathing is quick, tense, and high up in the chest.

1. Begin by sitting somewhere comfortable but supported
2. If you feel comfortable to do so close your eyes, otherwise stare off into the middle distance
3. Breathe in slowly and steadily for a count of 3
4. Breathe out slowly and steadily for a count of 5. Our bodies relax most on the out-breath
5. Repeat for a few minutes. It’s normal for your attention to wander off. If it does, just gently bring it back to focus on your breathing.

Calming the threat system: Colored Breathing

Another technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind is to use imagery while you breathe. Some people find it helpful to imagine breathing colored air. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

1. Imagine a color representing tension, or tense feelings
2. As you breathe, calmly and steadily, imagine breathing out air tinged with that tense color
3. See the colored air in your mind’s eye, and watch as you breathe it out and it floats away
4. Allow the tense colored air to become paler and paler, as you breathe out all of the tension
5. Now bring to mind a color representing calming, soothing feelings
6. Imagine breathing in this relaxed colored air
7. Just notice what happens in your body as you imagine breathing in the relaxed air
8. Continue breathing this way for a few minutes

Calming the threat system: Swing Breathing

Swing breathing is another imagery technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

Allow your breathing to become slower … and more regular. Just focusing your attention on your breath … on the air flowing in … and out … of your mouth and nose.

Your breathing finding a steady rhythm. Breathing gently from low down in the belly. Taking slow steady breaths. Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling … Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling.

And as you continue to breathe slowly and gently … in a rhythm that’s comfortable to you … I’d like you to imagine … and then begin to feel … that you’re on a swing. Gently swinging backwards … and forwards … backwards … and forwards … finding that you’re swinging in rhythm with your breathing … just gently swinging … relaxed and peaceful. Pay attention to how it feels to swing gently forwards … and backwards … peaceful … relaxed … at ease. Just swinging gently … and smoothly … smoothly .. and gently.

And you can carry on breathing calmly and gently for as long as you like. Relaxing into this gentle rhythm more and more as time goes by.

Calming the threat system: Muscle relaxation

When we feel under threat our muscles tense up – ready to fight or take flight. Keeping the muscles tense is one of the body’s ways of trying to keep you safe. One way of letting your body know that you are safe is to deliberately relax all of your muscles.

Progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing, then relaxing, all of the muscle groups in turn. Find a comfortable spot, sitting or lying down. Then, for each of the muscle groups in turn, follow this pattern:

1. Tense the muscles
2. Notice the tension for a few moments
3. Release
4. Notice the sensation of relaxation as the tension drains away

Relax each of the muscle groups in turn:

Fists

Upper arms

Shoulders (lift up slightly)

Upper back (shoulders back slightly)

Stomach

Buttocks

Thighs

Lower legs / calves

Feet

Neck (gently move neck back)

Forehead

Muscles around eyes (scrunch face up)

Calming the threat system: Creating a safe place

A safe place is somewhere that you create using your mind and imagination. It is a place that you can go anytime, wherever you are. For some people, it is a place that they remember from their past as being particularly safe and calm. For others, they cannot easily remember a time like this from their past and so they work on creating one for themselves now. Either way, the same process applies. You can have more than one safe place and it can change over time as you wish. It is your creation and your own personal ideal.

It is useful for your safe place to have certain qualities though: it needs to be a place you feel calm, not judged, warm, free and above all safe.

How to create a safe place:

1. If you feel comfortable enough, close your eyes and take a deep breath in and count to three. Then breathe out slowly to the count of five. Do this several times. As before, spend some time slowing down and controlling your breathing until you reach a calm and soothing rhythm. As you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in a sense of safeness and relaxation. As you breathe out, imagine you are breathing out all of the tension in your body.
2. Begin to imagine a place where you feel calm – where are you?
3. Focus on what you can see, take a minute to look all around you in your mind. You may perhaps even turn around to see what’s behind. Concentrate on any objects that you can see, the colors around you and areas of lightness and darkness.
4. Focus on what you can hear, take your time to notice the noises, even the subtle ones. What noises can you hear close by? What noises can you hear in the distance?
5. Focus on what you can smell. Again, take a minute to really notice the smells around you.
6. What can you feel? Is it hot or cold? Are there textures under your feet?
7. Focus on any taste in the image and notice this for a minute or two.
8. Now focus on how you feel in your body, feelings of calm and safety in this image. Focus on the release of tension. Where do you feel this feeling in your body?
9. Keep imagining your safe place in as much detail as possible and revisit that feeling of calm and safeness over and over, noticing where you feel it in your body.
10. Is there a word that might remind you of your safe place? If so, what is it? If you have a word, repeat it in your mind over and over as you keep your safe place in your mind.
11. When you are ready, take some deep breaths in again and slowly open your eyes, trying to hold onto that calm feeling.

Remember, you can come back to it whenever you want to. The easiest way to do this is to start by slowing down and controlling your body and to repeat the word that you picked that reminded you of your safe place. In doing so, it will be easier to return to your safe place whenever you would like.

Safe place: Write a description of your safe place in as much detail as you can. Remember to include information from all your senses. What word have you chosen to remind you of your safe place?

Coping with nightmares: Use all of your senses

When we wake up from a nightmare, our awareness of the things around us in the here-and-now can be diminished. Just as we can re-experience traumatic images from the news or social media in all of our five senses, we can use those five senses to try and ‘ground’ us back in the present.

Sight

Look around you and use those sights to remind yourself that you’re in the present and that you are safe.

Touch

It can be helpful to carry an object with us that remind us that we are safe, such as a stress ball, a pebble, or a flower.

Hearing

Focus on all of the noises around you in the present moment. Use them to remind you of where you are.

Smell

Smell can be one of the most powerful ways of learning to soothe and comfort yourself Try using essential oils, your favorite plants, or any comforting aroma.

Taste

Strong tastes such as chewing gum can be helpful. For people who re-experience ‘taste memories’ it can be helpful to focus on the absence of taste in the present moment.

Coping with memories: 5-4-3-2-1

When our minds and bodies feel as if they are fully immersed in the past, using all of our senses at once can be a very effective way of bringing ourselves back into the present. Focus on:

5 things you can see

1:

2:

3:

4:

5:

4 things you can feel / touch

1:

2:

3:

4:

3 things you can hear

1:

2=

3:

2 things you can smell

1:

2:

1 thing you can taste

Sleeping better: Sleep Hygiene

Feeling stressed often affects our ability to sleep. We may have difficulty getting to sleep if we lie in bed thinking about how our life has changed and wondering if things will get better. We may avoid going to sleep for fear that we might have more nightmares. If we do manage to get to sleep we may then wake up after experiencing nightmares. It is normal to have difficulty getting back to sleep.

The tips and ideas below have been selected to try and help you increase the chance of getting better sleep.

1. Bed is for sleeping and sleeping happens at night-time

• Try and keep your bedroom and bed for sleeping only
• Avoid sleeping in the day
• Develop a routine before bed time such as having a relaxing bath or listening to some relaxing music and go to bed at around the same time each night. Try and wake up around the same time each morning. Small children find habits and routines comforting, and the same things work for adults too. As adults, we forget that these things apply to us as well
• If you cannot sleep after 30 minutes, get up and try an activity such as listening to some music. Do this for about 15 minutes then return to bed and try and sleep. Repeat this as often as is necessary until you go to sleep
• Make your bedroom a nice place to sleep – try smells or flowers (or some new bed sheets!)
• Put your phone on the opposite side of the room and if you wake up: DO NOT CHECK YOUR PHONE

2. Be kind to your body

• Do not go to bed hungry
• Try and avoid spicy food late in the day as this can act as a stimulant in our bodies
• Reduce caffeine but definitely avoid caffeine after 4pm-remember caffeine is also found in tea and fizzy drinks like pop. You can buy de-caffeinated versions of these drinks if needed
• Although alcohol can initially make us feel sleepy, it stops us from experiencing restful sleep and is not great for stress or Adrenal Fatigue. It can also make it harder to fall asleep again, if you wake up in the middle of the night

Try: Any of the other grounding strategies that you have developed can be helpful if you wake from a nightmare

In Summary

Many different treatments have been developed for coping with uncertainty and traumatizing events. Research has shown that they can be extremely effective.

Every crisis represents an opportunity for transformation

Sometimes it’s hard to find opportunities when we are right in the middle of the storm. BUT they are there.

Every day I want you to try to find ONE GOOD THING. Examples are below…

• Finding time to do the things you have always been traditionally too busy to do
• Spending more time in nature doing simple things
• Many organizations suffer from slow procedures and rigid ways of working. The coronavirus has forced many of them to skip or change rules instantly. Suddenly employees are allowed to work from home without direct supervision. COVID-19 shows that, as soon as there is a strong enough stimulus, things can change. This leads to remarkable innovations. Not being allowed to open their doors, restaurants, for example, are shifting to delivery mode. And schools suddenly do much of the teaching and even some of the testing online. This brings the opportunity to create innovations now that can be maintained after the crisis. And it also can help to keep the current speed and innovation mode afterwards.
• We are spending quality time with family
• Connecting or reconnecting with people online that you have lost touch with
• Nature is taking a breather from all of us humans: COVID19 causes a significant reduction in green house gasses and other air, water and land polluting outputs. In Venice this has allegedly led to dolphins return after just a couple of weeks. Polluted skies are blue again, rivers and streams are clear again, animals are curiously coming out to play again. Perhaps when all this is over we will become more aware of the planet and the role we must play as caretakers
• In today’s overheated economy, TIME is often seen as the most valuable and sparse thing we have. We are always SO BUSY. We fill our week with social gatherings and entertainment such as going to the theater, birthdays, cinema, restaurant, bar, sport clubs, gym, music, festivals, concerts and what is more. Suddenly, all of that is cancelled or forbidden, giving us significant amounts of extra time. DO NOT fill your time immediately with other activities. Rearrange how you spend your time and reserve time for nothingness. Not just during the crisis, but also after it. 
• COVID-19 provides an opportunity to reflect on things and to reconsider what we do, how we do it and why we do it. We have a great opportunity to rethink our habits and routines and make changes. Now that you haven’t been able to go to the restaurant twice a week, commute 2 hours per day, hang out with your friends or go to a party every weekend, you can reflect on whether you really want to continue doing so after the crisis. The virus forces you to make changes to your daily life that you might actually want to keep also after the crisis.
• As such, the virus shows us that, no matter how well-planned and organized we are —we are not in control. One simple virus is disrupting everything. This offers a great opportunity. In almost every aspect of life we want to be in control. Whether it is health, airline safety or our calendars, we live in the illusion that full control is possible. The virus can help us create awareness that this is not the case. It provides an opportunity to take a more modest role and accept that many things are simply beyond our control.
• An opportunity to end something which has been intolerable before. In the book Necessary Endings, Henry Cloud lays out that for new things to begin, some things need to be let go of like business partnerships, relationships, the job that you hate…
• Challenging times offer a great opportunity for social bonding and other ways of connecting to and helping people. Of course, not being able to visit friends or family has increased isolation and feelings of loneliness in some cases. But the feeling of “we’re in this together” has also triggered interesting ways of connecting. Some of those have gone viral—such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies—but there are many small, local initiatives too to connect and help people who need it.

When everything becomes uncertain, everything that is important becomes clear

Anonymous

If you are really struggling…

Many different treatments have been developed for coping with uncertainty and traumatizing events. Research has shown that they can be extremely effective.

At Naked Recovery, we practice many different Trauma therapies including:

1. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) Involves talking in detail about the events you experienced. Going through the events with you and will help you to make sense of what happened.
2. Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) which is suitable for people who have experienced multiple traumas
3. Compassion-Focused CBT is helpful for people who experience a lot of shame or self-criticism.
4. Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) – Involves holding an image of your trauma in mind while your therapist guides you in making specific kinds of eye movements. This method can be effective but the previous 3 methods are the most effective for processing trauma.

If you need to talk to anyone about your feelings, myself and my team are available and here to help. Working with a Clinical Trauma specialist can help you cope better with all the stress you are experiencing. Don’t suffer in silence, contact us.

Follow my tips and videos on https://www.facebook.com/AdeleTheronMentor/

My thoughts and prayers are with you all during this uncertain time. Stay safe and self isolate please.

Big Hugs

xAdele

This is not a time to panic. Panic leads to over emotional uninformed, unintelligent decisions. Choosing not to panic however is NOT the same as choosing in-action.

With any trauma it is our suggestion that you take informed pro-active actions…

Ultimately this is an unprecedented situation. Some would call this a crisis and a crisis demands adaptation. To adapt, we need to work on our Resiliency and there are typically two blocks to Resiliency

• Learning Resistance – Unwillingness to accept what happened

Signs: Denial, burying head in the sand, retreating, unwillingness to accept reality, running from reality, obsessive rumination, consuming a lot of energy reading social media updates etc.

What needs to happen to move on: Accept you cannot make it unhappen. Accept reality. Take a look at this post from someone who currently has Corona Virus in Spain. The reality ain’t pretty… https://www.facebook.com/paul.brooks.3576/posts/2859674540765943

• Learning Defiance – unwillingness to adjust to what happened

Signs: anger/ outrage, you ruined everything, unwillingness to adjust or cooperate with life experiences which happened, rebelliousness (I won’t adjust), opposition

What needs to happen to move on: Willingness to move to survivor mindset vs. remain in victim mindset – willingness to adjust. Being open to learning. Can’t control what happened but can control what happens next.

The Bottom Line is we must all as a planet surrender to this virus and adapt our lives accordingly. The sooner we adapt and surrender, the sooner we have the opportunity to contain the outbreak.

Here are some tips for getting ahead and not panicking during this crisis…

1: Pick your news sources

In this era of multiple and personal news channels, choosing who you listen to might be critical.

Everyone has a view, and many people are distributing those in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in previous decades. As always, the most dramatic messages attract the most ‘interest’, they may not however be the most accurate.

I would warn against news aggregators, unless you can configure those to control what the sources are. I would suggest you take a more pro-active roll in your news choices.

That said, you may decide to pro-actively that news aggregators provide a broader range of opinions. Whatever you do, please make a pro-active decision.

Here is a very good article of what Sina Farzaneh discovered whilst in self-isolation in China. There are some great tips here for adapting to the changes the virus demands: https://medium.com/@sinajahn/lessons-from-a-coronavirus-refugee-8cb245fca061?fbclid=IwAR3YNYv3Rn7gCM3IS3yDGixb5hxdgMEk6n4qFS0uhuhfJ_-c5TdjbzYFiUs

Here are some news agencies, and information providers you may wish to refer to:

• Xinhua – China, in English
• Reuters – USA
• Al Jazeera – Qatar
• BBC – UK
• World Health Organisation

The following links are links to specific articles from with WHO that you may find of benefit (assuming you feel they are a suitable source of advice):

WHO: How to use masks

WHO: Basic protective measures

2: Symptoms

It goes without saying that if you have any viral like symptoms you follow the best medical advice. At the time of writing that is likely to include self-isolating.

Procedures are different from Country to Country, and probably day-to-day. Check your local authorities for directions, and the steps to follow.

3: Act smart

Be good to yourself and to others.

Make bold, brave, and inconvenient steps to reduce your exposure.

Doing so will not only reduce your chances of contracting the disease, (and this may be the most important) you will also reduce any risks of you spreading the disease. Remember it is possible to have the disease for some time before experiencing ANY visible symptoms.

You may not be in a social group that has a high risk of death. Take steps to positively reduce the spread.

Wash hands:

I have personally turned to the BBC for what I consider to be a legitimate news worthy source of information. Here is a 20 second video showing how to wash hands correctly to help stop the spread of the virus. 

At risk of stating the obvious, washing hands to protect against a virus is different to the every day way you’ve probably been washing your hands (unless you are a surgeon) for years.

Please watch –

You will need;

• A suitable cleaning agent, such as hand soap
• Paper tissues for drying
• Waste paper basket close to hand with a closed lid
• Discipline to relearn a new habit

It’s hard to change our habits of a like-time. So even if you are at home, even if you believe you have not come into any contact with another person, wash your hands the right way every time throughout the crisis, it’s good habit forming.

Set a recurring alarm:

Wash hands regularly. I’ve taken to setting a count-down timer on my mobile phone to remind me to wash my hands every 2 hours. At the very least it’s a good reminder. And to get myself into new and better habits, I needed a tool like this to remind me.

Distance, greetings, gloves:

I have again turned to the World Health Organisation (WHO) for advise here, if you do not consider this a reputable source, please pro-actively find another.

Reduce outings and begin social distancing:

Consider;

• Can you do that workout at home instead of the gym?
• Can you order food online rather than do a daily visit to the supermarket?
• Can you buddy up car-runs (shopping, school-runs etc.) with a neighbour? Taking the trips in-turn will reduce exposure by half.
• Can you do that meeting online, rather than in-person?

4: Keep moving forwards:

This challenging time will likely need some re-adjustment by us all. Perhaps changes in our habits, in our goals, or in our careers.

Embrace the changes, you are a highly capable, highly flexible intelligent machine.

You’ve got this!

5: What I do know for sure…

The Corona-Virus will have significant repercussions across three major areas of our life;

1: Health

2: Wealth, and

3: Mental-wellbeing

6: Support others

Let’s be vigilant, please help support and love one another through this.

Does a neighbour or family member need help?

7: Support for yourself

How can we support you more – let us know?

As a company that helps people get over trauma, we are here to help. For this reason, I have put together a rapid-intervention program for anyone who is experiencing debilitating fear and stress with this COVID-19 crisis and wants support in overcoming that stress and getting your head back in the game. All proceeds will be donated to the primary global organization fighting the spread of the virus: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/donate

You may have some challenging situations to deal with, difficult decisions to make. You don’t need to go it alone, contact us for support.

Stay safe

Adele

According to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NERB), this middle age is when people feel least satisfied with their lives, and it doesn’t matter where they are, what they are doing for a living or how their overall health is. 

Here are some excerpts from her article:-

“In nations that are still developing, it happens only a little later: 48.2. 

Professor David Blanchflower, an economics professor at Dartmouth College, compiled a massive dataset and found that although trajectories varied and looked somewhat different from nation-to-nation, the basic gist was the same. 

For the US, measured by the General Social Survey from 1972 to 2018, once controls are introduced, happiness goes into a veritable free fall from the optimism of an Americans’s 18th year of life and first of adulthood on into middle age. 

It’s not exactly ‘thirty, flirty and thriving,’ but the plummeting happiness quotient does slow its downward roll a little around age 30, before bottoming out in the late 40s for the US. 

For his part, Blanchflower doesn’t offer a a lot of explanation in his latest paper, but does heartily defend that it’s solid evidence that ‘the happiness curve is found in 32 countries. No myth’ (the final words of his paper’s conclusions, to which he’s devoted an entire page). 

Others akcnowledge that science hasn’t quite worked out why, but offer some compelling context and hypotheses. 

Journalist Jonathan Rauch wrote a book on The Happiness Curve, discussing the same 40s slump, noting that orangutans and chimpanzees also hit a midlife slump. 

Rauch also suggests that this is a time of transition – and we shouldn’t necessarily think of it as a crisis point. 

‘The best conjecture is that it is because of a change in our values and our brains,’ he says. 

‘It seems like we start out wired for social competition, we’re ambitious, but our ambition is a trickster. 

‘It is disappointing because it never lets you feel satisfied and by midlife we feel disappointed.’

Brain shrinkage also starts in the 30s and 40s, and accelerates in our 60s. 

The sex hormones testosterone (for men) and estrogen (for women) also start declining as early as in the 30s, and the shift may become more noticeable in the 40s. 

But, there’s hope. 

With time, happiness perks back up again, according to the new working paper. 

In fact, happiness climbs back to heights seen only in our 20s once more in our 70s. 

So no matter where you live, or how dark the middle ages seem, hold on, the happiness curve is everywhere,’ writes Blanchflower. “

Damn. Midlife crisis is seriously real people. The reality is that midlife crisis has more to do with our resignation over our lives and ability to generate happiness than anything else.

Happiness is an elusive concept for some of us and  according to Dr. Daniel Gilbert who wrote the book “Stumbling on Happiness”, we have a certain “set point” in happiness. Meaning, we usually get happy with whatever we have at the time. The best predictor of human happiness, however, is in the human relationships that we foster and enjoy with family, friends, and loved ones. Getting support is significantly more important than achieving money and even health. So, regardless of how much money or lack of money one can spend on a vacation, for example, everyone derives the same relative level of happiness from the vacation that they end up taking. Dr. Gilbert illustrated this by showing the results of the 1978 study by Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman on lottery winners and paraplegics. After a year of losing the use of their legs and a year after winning the lotto, lottery winners and paraplegics are equally happy with their lives. In fact, both groups were equally happy — which one would think is completely counter-intuitive.

Generally speaking, we have a “happiness setpoint” that can only be raised slightly through leveraging support and relationships. 

The Drivers of Happiness include these factors:-

Part of helping clients solve a midlife crisis is about resetting the Happiness Factors to areas which matter more than people think…

Video ⇣

Transcription ⇣

Simon: Cool. Okay so, here I am with Adele. Say hi.

Adele: Hello.

Simon: Okay, so again we’re doing our Ask Me Anything. And as the title suggests, these are just questions that have come in, a lot of these questions have come in from our Facebook group. Excuse me, got croaky voice this morning. And if there are people do have questions for the future, [inaudible] send those in, send them in to [email protected], [email protected], and just let us know that this is a question for the Ask Me Anything. It is our expectation that we will continue to do these from time to time. The general format of this is, I’ve basically picked some of the random questions, fire them at Adele, put her on the spot, and we take it from there. Sometimes they’re short, sometimes they’re long, et cetera, et cetera.

Adele: Absolutely no preparation whatsoever. Just off the cuff, right?

Simon: And I’ll try and trip you up occasionally just to see how it goes.

Adele: Just for fun.

Simon: So we’re recording this in kind of getting close to middle of December, but we’re probably going to put this out either just before the New Year or just after. So, just for context or if a reindeer goes past or something, understand the context. Okay so, oh actually the first question I have here, I did actually … Those are questions. Sort of ring around here and I want to start here is, question for you is where are you? And I guess before you answer the question, the thing behind that is of course, you’re always around, you’ve just come back from a trip, so perhaps you can share a little bit about that, where you are and what’s going on.

Adele: Yeah, so the nicer of the incredible job that I have, which I’m so fortunate to be able to do what I do, I mean, I absolutely love working with people going through various life changes, traumas, mid-life crises, that kind of thing, is there’s just lots of travel, as I travel to clients, we run retreats all over the world. And I’ve just come back from Peru. We were just at the Inca Trail with a group of amazing clients, and sort of stormed through 53 kilometres of up and down stuff at altitude. It was super awesome. And then we went down to Patagonia. Months before I was in Lisbon and then in London. And I’m now in Thailand, so just kind of wrapping up some retreat stuff towards the end of the year.

Adele: And very excited, because we’re actually going to be launching a whole bunch of new things in New Zealand from February, March next year after I get back from South Africa in between. But basically, we’ve worked out that a lot of people are extremely attracted to doing retreats in New Zealand. New Zealand is a fantastic location, because it’s just breathtakingly beautiful. But it’s also quite, the flight times and locations and settings just make it absolutely perfect for all of our clients and the people who come to us from the United States. We’re still going to be running retreats and things across Asia, as we always have done, but it’s just opening up a whole new territory. We have a lot of clients and people from Australia and Tahiti, Polynesia Islands, that kind of thing. So it’s just a whole new location for us. And we’re going to be spending a lot more time in New Zealand next year.

Adele: But we’re a global small business, we continue to run things all over the world. But yeah, I’m going to be locating myself a lot more in New Zealand from next year onward, which is going to be-

Simon: Yeah, we’re looking forward to that. So we’ll then have a real base in Thailand, South Africa, and New Zealand, which I think-

Adele: And in London, of course.

Simon: Yeah, we’ve done less retreats in London. And if people want to escape life-

Adele: Well we do, yeah, exactly. We do kind of more Lisbon or Spain or that kind of thing. Not many people like to escape to London.

Simon: Yeah, people are heading the other direction. And same for America, because I’m sure there’s many beautiful places there. But we do get a lot of American clients of ours coming over to us in Thailand and, hopefully, soon in New Zealand, as well. So yeah, we’re looking forward to that. So, that will be kicking off early 2020. Just touching on one thing you mentioned there about your recent trip, so just want to straighten out, that wasn’t actually a holiday, right?

Adele: Right.

Simon: That was actually an event. So, perhaps you can tell us what it’s called and just a little bit more of the-

Adele: Yeah.

Simon: Because we are … Just a little bit that, your intention about running that again.

Adele: Yeah, so the Peruvian/Patagonian adventure … One of the things that’s really cool is obviously we help people get over big life changes, and traumas, and things. But once they’re beyond that and they’ve moved their life to the next level, what they’re really interested in is how they can break through all areas of life to move the entire base level that they’ve set in their life completely to the next level. So I wanted to create a retreat for long-time clients of ours who were just up for the next thing. And this challenge was called Naked Discovery. It was all about achieving limitless potential and the science behind achieving limitless potential. All the latest developments in quantum physics, latest developments in manifestations, latest developments in intentionality and goal setting and that kind of thing. We basically had a 21-day retreat abroad, where we also set physical challenges, mental challenges all the way through the journey. So, every day there was a new challenge that was being set and the group had to push themselves through something quite tough to reach breakthroughs.

Adele: Everybody, they were kind of bonding with each other, they were bonding to themselves, they were breaking through various things in their lives, finding people from home, having these huge insights, experiences, that kind of thing. So, massively challenging experience to lead, as well, because I was also on the journey with them going through the challenges, myself. And unfortunately, on the Inca Trail my boots were awful. I had 18 blisters all over my feet, having to hike the 53 kilometres with-

Simon: Your own transformation.

Adele: Yeah, in pain myself, leading other people through their own physical transformation. I’m not really a personal trainer, but I sort of feel like I became one instantaneously. It was an immensely transformational experience for everybody. Everybody, upon return, it’s been two weeks, and just touching base with everyone and how they’re doing in their lives, they’re in the stratosphere right creating absolute chaos wherever they are. Almost unrecognisable in their lives as they’ve come back. We’re really excited about leading that particular adventure again, because the journey to limitless potential, you really learn how much you get in your own way. And how much limitations like physical pain or you tell yourself a certain story, “I can’t do that. That’s not who I am. Oh, I don’t do things that way.” And it’s just a barrier to limitless potential. And actually when you remove all these conversations in your head and physical gibbity gibbities that you keep generating and conversing about, actually anything is possible. You can actually create amazing components and adventures within your life. We all were on the journey together. It was amazing.

Adele: We had a moment in the middle where it was like, “Gosh, there’s some real conflict beginning to happen personally, within the group, or whatever.” But the way that we, I chose to lead it, we would address absolutely everything. There was just radical openness, transparency. And I mean, this group just bonded so deeply. I mean, there were war cries, there were sing alongs. The rest of the people on the Inca Trail were like, “What are you doing? What are you guys doing? You’re doing something, because you’re crazy.” We were like entertaining everybody on the Inca Trail. We’d stand at the top of this peak that we’d climbed, I don’t know, it was like 4,200 metres, whatever the thing is up there. We’re doing yoga. We’re leading like 80 other people who are on the trail with this yoga thing. And then we’re talking to them about transformations. And they’re just like, “You guys are crazy. We’re loving it.” So they’d follow us and they’d do our sing alongs and war cries with us.

Adele: It was an amazingly spirited adventure. Super fun. I can’t wait to lead it again. It’s just so much fun.

Simon: That sounds amazing. I’m sure you’ve got some friendships there that will be unbreakable and will last for three lifetimes, right?

Adele: Oh yeah, they’ve got this group chat that they’re on and there’s just so much banter. It’s very funny.

Simon: And one thing that’s really intriguing to me about that is the, I think there’s a tendency for us as humans to separate physicality and mentality. We always look at those very separate. And we do that a lot, right? We’re not a physical experience company traditionally. This is probably the first time really we’ve done something a bit more physical. And the two are intrinsically linked. If you force yourself to hunch over and walk slowly all day long, you will feel depressed by the end of the day. And the opposite is true as well. If you are down and you force your shoulders back and you walk around powerfully and speak in a strong voice, you’ll feel better by the end of the day. And that’s just a very simple example, but there’s such an intrinsic link.

Adele: Actually, and it’s, I’ll actually cover one of the points that we cover on the retreat around the science of emotion. For that, I studied quite a lot of pharmacology and that point, like actually what is an emotion. And from a chemical perspective, each emotion has its own chemical blueprint that it follows. And each emotion actually generates different chemistry within the body. And when you suppress an emotion, actually what’s happening is your cell receptors shrivel back, and they’re not connected, and the energy isn’t flowing throughout your body. So the generation of an emotion is actually not the problem, but the suppression really is. So if you’re feeling really angry and you just ignore that and do nothing with it, you can actually create complete chaos within your body as toxicity begins to build up because the cell receptors are not connecting and not flowing properly and they’re blocked.

Adele: And what we were really discussing on the retreat is that emotion is like a formula. It’s thoughts plus sensation. So, you can’t actually separate thought from your physical state, to your point. Your physical state has everything to do with the emotion getting generated. Because if you’re thinking, “Oh, I can’t do this. It’s impossible for me,” and you’re hunched over and you’re in that physical state, you’re actually holding your body in a particular way and you’re thinking these negative thoughts, you’re now really generating and feeding this negative emotion. It’s kind of like it then spreads like wildfire. And really when we’re looking, from a therapeutic perspective, at treating depression and really negative emotions, one of the first cognitive behavioural techniques is what we call behavioural activation, where you actually have to change your state. You have to get into action. You’ve got to move your body, because if you’re jumping around, doing star jumps, it’s quite impossible to feel really deeply depressed at the same time.

Adele: So, separating, you can’t separate your physical state in an emotion. Emotion is really that combination of a negative thought plus that physical state. So by shifting the two elements of the equation, but thinking more positively, accessing those negative thoughts through language, and by changing your physical state, you can actually change the way that you think and feel as a result of that.

Simon: It’s very empowering, right? When people realise it’s under their control.

Adele: It’s really empowering. And what I noticed about myself, which was kind of a personal breakthrough, I was in agony at one point, we’d been hiking for 10 hours that day, is that when I’m in incredible pain, I seem to get really funnier. I started singing and doing war cries and making jokes and poking fun at the tour guide and chasing after him and poking him with my hiking stick. I don’t know where that came from, but it was a really interesting moment of kind of going, “You could be in pain and still produce the results. You can still break through something and get there.” Whereas, actually what would normally happen in those moments, you go, “I’m in pain,” and sit there in a heap and cry.

Simon: Yeah, there’s a reason humour exists, right? I mean, it wasn’t just, it’s a needed, important emotion, I think. As a non-coach and as a non-scientist, it’s just my observations that, for me also, if I’m in a really ridiculous, stressful deadline, and this is more true for me if I’m working in a team than perhaps on my own, if I’m honest, but then there’s lots of jokes and it’s kind of great banter. And it’s actually quite enjoyable and there’s humour in those dark moments. Black humour, right? So, I think one of the purposes of humour is to lighten a grave situation, because it helps us move through it. We are complicated, complex animals. And just another thing, of course, emotion, I think e comes from some Greek word which basically means feeling, and the rest of the word is motion, right? It’s just a feeling which then leads to an action. And those emotions can be good or bad, depending on what those actions are. But it is us that’s choosing the action.

Adele: And also the reverse, that particular emotions can also lead to particular feelings. It’s a vicious circle. When you’re stuck in a depression, I mean, I’ve been stuck in really bad depressions at certain points of my life. So I can really relate to some of the very very traumatic feelings that people have. And we mus never downplay. When someone is massively and deeply and clinically depressed, it is like a circle you can’t get out of. You’re thinking and you’re feeling in this absolute circle. And really you need somebody to help you interrupt that pattern and kind of signpost for you, “Hang on, let’s just step out of that for a second. Let’s take a look. Let’s become aware of what’s happening and let’s take a look at actually these components. And manipulate these portions of the equation in a particular way.” So, I think having support from people when you’re in that dark space is really really critical to breaking out of it.

Adele: But when you’re at a place of mastery, and that’s really what a lot of the Naked Discovery was about was mastering emotion and mastering your limiting beliefs, you can really play and toy with those portions of the equation and it’s very very powerful, very empowering and very powerful.

Simon: Yeah. Next time, I think we’ve talked about this a little bit and we need to move on, but when we said it’s just brainstorm around this initial concept, it wasn’t that long ago, and it’s great to see it come through and really get to the field in such an excellent way. We will be looking at doing a Discovery again in next year. Me and you will have to sit down and decide when, where, et cetera, et cetera. So if people are interested in this and this is not a conversation about the Discovery, but if somebody is interested, just send us an email to [email protected], and we’ll get more information to you as soon as it becomes available, but we’re still putting that together as we speak.

Simon: Okay, I think we should probably move on. I’ll pick a light question so we can get going. Who is Piper?

Adele: Oh, Pipey, Pipey, Piper, Pipes, gosh, she’s got so many nicknames. She is our support angel. So she is an American gal who lives in Sweden, and she does all our client relations, bookings, chatting, invoicing-

Simon: Yeah, replying to customers’ inquiries and things like that. So you people may hear from her.

Adele: Yeah, customer service. Yeah, she’s married. She doesn’t have any kids yet. She loves ice skating. She’s awesome.

Simon: Don’t be surprised if you get a random message from Piper. That’s one of the gang. She tends not to be in videos too much, but she’s one of us.

Adele: She’s a bit shy.

Simon: Okay, next question. Okay, so I am a mother of three girls and a grandmother of eight. My divorce was tough and it was long, 14 years. Even if I “won” in justice, I still have a hard time to feel in peace and definitely get over this trauma. There’s not actually a specific question, but I guess the underlying question there is, despite this being a long time ago, and having completed that cycle and even getting the kind of logistical result that she was hoping for, sounds to me like she hasn’t got the mental peace or the mental conclusion that she perhaps needs. So what could she do to help achieve that?

Adele: Firstly, thank you so much for that question. I think it’s brave to admit that. I think a lot of people don’t really have the courage to admit that maybe something from the past is incomplete for them, because they judge themselves as well. Kind of thinking, “Well, it’s been so much time. What’s wrong with me. I should just-“

Simon: It’s also a good start, right? I mean, I guess that’s a good, to observe that, be aware of it is a first start to taking some action to move through it.

Adele: And I think this is not an isolated case at all. Every year we get loads of messages like this from people that have gone through a trauma many many years ago, 15, 20 years ago, and they’re not over it. And the deal-

Simon: Well, we’ve had people who’ve been divorced for 40, 50 years, was it? Yeah, incredible.

Adele: The deal is really that it’s all about this concept of time healing wounds. We’re incredibly passionate with Naked Recovery and Naked Divorce that time really doesn’t do anything, it just passes. Over time, you become more used to something or you become more numb. It kind of lessens its grip on you, because life moves on and other things begin to happen. But it doesn’t mean that you’ve actually processed what has happened. Processing is a very active journey. And healing is a function of learning, and healing is a function of active engagement with a topic. And if you have not actively engaged in the topic, actively learned whatever the lessons are that you need to learn from that trauma having happened, actively engaged with all the kind of ins and outs and left no stone unturned in that area, you haven’t processed this and you haven’t healed. Healing is a very active, very specific journey. So don’t make yourself wrong if you feel like 14, 15, 20 years later you haven’t healed from something. Don’t expect to heal if you haven’t done that kind of processing. It will still have a bit of a grip on you.

Adele: So processing is a journey that you have to grow through to actually unpick what has happened and look at it from every angle and do some kind of forensic analysis on it to put to bed and put to rest any of the things that are lingering and incomplete. And once you’ve done that and you’ve processed it, healing is a forgone conclusion.

Simon: Great. I mean, the analogy we often use is about an accident, right? Someone has an accident, like say your daughter or your son’s had an accident, fallen over, cut their arm, it’s going to hurt. And if it was down to them, they wouldn’t clean the wound up, because it’s going to cause more pain. So they leave it, scar forms and that scar’s going to be with them forever, right? Emotions work very very similarly, I think. Unless you actually go back to that wound and they say unpick almost literally, only then once you’re gone through that process … And there can be a little bit of pain to that process, unfortunately, but that is part of it, part of that learning experience. Then you get clarity and you can get real closure. And then that wound can, with a bit of effort and a bit from time, literally completely disappear.

Simon: So this is a long one. I might do these in bits. And perhaps I’ll need to repeat it as well. So stick with me. I left my husband three months ago after 29 years of marriage and loads of counselling along the way. We don’t own any property and there’s not too much in the way of finances to sort out. Before I left, my husband agreed verbally to our financial agreement, and I put it in writing and offered to pay for our separation agreement to be drawn up by my lawyer and to have our parenting agreement lodged with the court in New Zealand. We have to be separated for two years before we can get a divorce. However, at that point, he ceased to reply. So she lost contact. Now, I’ve moved out, and the priority is our 11-year-old daughter to ensure she is settled into her routine. Only communication we have is to do with her. I decided to not push the financial settlement, as he is well and truly in the grief cycle, as he did not want this. So, I don’t want to tip him over the edge. What, and this is the question, what, in your opinion, would be the recommended timeframe for me approaching him again to settle our financial affairs?

Simon: That make sense? It’s a long question.

Adele: From the moment you’ve lost contact, about seven to eight months. So that’s, when someone isn’t processing something actively, they’re just in the roller coaster of their emotions, that’s about the timeframe for enough new things to happen in their life that they’re a bit distracted. There’s enough new things coming on the horizon … I mean, maybe you start seeing somebody else or something begins to happen, that he’s a bit distracted from that initial pain and turmoil. You could probably have that conversation at that point. But don’t assume that he’s done any processing. Don’t assume that any therapy has happened or any growth or anything like that.

Adele: I think also when you do make contact, you’ve got to tread lightly. It’s sort of a fact-finding mission initially, rather than, “I’m tired. I want to get this over with.” I wouldn’t go in guns blazing like that. I would go, “Hey, I, firstly, just want to say thank you for the way that you’ve handled things with the daughter.” Definite compliments and appreciate and commend them on the way that they’re parenting and that that has been their focus, and that you’re really appreciative of that. Ask the question, “In terms of moving forward and reaching some closure, when would be a good time to have some conversations to-“

Simon: Address this.

Adele: “… move this forward and address it?” I think, again, because what’s you’ve got to get is if you’re the one that pulled the plug, that person that you’ve done that with has lost all control. Now life is not by their control, it’s totally by your control. What they’re going to instinctively do is find ways to regain control in their life. And the way that they do that is by refusing to engage. “I won’t engage. It’s now my terms.” That kind of thing. So when you reengage with someone who has lost control, it’s important for them to be in control of how they reengage. So getting them to actually set the timeline or to have some control in the way that the process moves forward is beneficial. Try to find a way to make them feel empowered, rather than your call, your decision, your timeline, your everything.

Simon: And I guess it must be very tempting to, “Okay, it’s been eight months now. Enough of this.” It must be very easy to say that, but I can totally understand why that wouldn’t be the best approach. This is to myself here. So yeah, that’s good. And I guess, if there is a disagreement or conflict, which is very easy to have in that situation, trying to remind both parties there is some agreement. So, “I’m sure you agree, we both want our 11-year-old daughter to grow up to have a good education. Dah dah dah dah dah.” Find a point of agreement. “We just have slightly different agreements about the best way to achieve that. So let’s investigate that.” Reminding yourself and reminding the person you’re talking with that there is actually a shared goal here. And that’s important, that’s really important to encourage them to participate and move along.

Adele: And also sandwich everything. There’s got to be acknowledging and appreciating something that they’ve done, then tackle something difficult, and end it with, again, acknowledgement and appreciation. So it’s not just, “You’re taking so much time. You’re wasting time. We have no clarity. What’s happening? When are you going to get back to me?” That is a bit aggressive, and it doesn’t really lead to a good outcome. From a financial perspective, taking time to unwind finances is a smart negotiating tactic. Sometimes people collapse the unwinding and conclusion of the divorce settlement and the finances and all that stuff, they think if they do all those bits, they’re going to get closure emotionally. It’s totally separate. You’ve got two camps. You’ve got the business side of this thing and you’ve got the emotional side of this thing. The one has actually very little to do with each other. People have signed agreements, the ink has dried and they’re still crying, because they don’t feel emotionally complete about anything. It’s because these things are totally separate.

Simon: Which kind of reverts to the previous question as well, doesn’t it? Yeah, which talks about someone had gone through, got the agreement she wanted, but still hadn’t got over the trauma. That’s good.

Simon: Next one. Will I ever, sorry, yes, will I ever have a love relationship again? That’s all it is.

Adele: This kind of makes me sad when hear a question like that. I’m just like … I mean, obviously, we have no context. We’ve got to imagine a context, you’re trying to answer the question, but-

Simon: Well, I guess we could kind of come up with some context and answer that.

Adele: I will assume the person, maybe it’s been some time since they’ve had somebody. They’re feeling a bit sad, feeling a bit lonely. And when there’s been some time, you begin to make things up in your head. “Oh, there’s no one there. There’s no one for me. I’ll never meet anyone. It’s never going to happen. All the good ones are taken.” And we start to enter into these cliché thoughts about things. The thing is, certainly with my research into how thoughts become things, and really, the link between mindset and manifestation in reality, these things are so interlinked. When you start to get into a negative mindset, it’s quite dangerous. You really begin to find evidence for the negative mindset to be true. And you begin to manifest things that you really don’t want.

Adele: There’s a saying that when you worry about things, you’re almost praying for what you don’t want, because you’re fixating and focusing so heavily on this thing that you don’t want, panicking almost superstitiously like, “I don’t want this thing to happen, but all I can do is think about this thing happening.” Thinking about that thing happening obsessively is really dangerous, because you’re actually at risk of creating it.

Simon: You’re really focusing on it, right? I mean, you’re almost kind of making it.

Adele: Exactly. And I mean, from a quantum physics perspective, there’s this really, go and research and check it out, there’s this thing called the Double Slit Experiment, which is basically shooting electrons at a board behind a screen, and basically … I’ll try and summarise. I’m not a quantum physicist, I’m just going to totally blow the way that I explain this. But I want to kind of do it in layman’s terms as much as possible, which is that scientists have found that, in many many experiments, electrons behave in different ways. One minute they looked like a wave, and they can kind of hit the back screen in a wave of potential and possibility and that anything’s possible, the electron can go anywhere. But sometimes, they act like particles and they can quite specifically land in a particular location. And the most fascinating part of that experiment is that when they put an observer … When there’s no observer, particles act like waves, and they can go anywhere. When there’s an observer observing the way that electrons land, they actually fixate very particularly on a particular point. And that the observer’s thoughts completely influenced the way that the experiment ended up. Meaning the way that you are thinking, the way that your mindset is geared is totally influencing what shows up in your world, how it shows up, what’s possible for you, what isn’t possible for you.

Adele: So if you’re like, “Oh, I have no money.” You’re just thinking, “I have no money. I have no money.” You will start to actually create having no money. Money will get lost, bills will suddenly come in, boilers will blow up. Things will start to occur, where you’re like, “I’m just losing money. What’s going on?” “Oh, there’s no partner for me. Will I ever find love again? Never. There’s no love. All these other people are so lucky. They find love, I don’t find love.” You begin to actually create that, because this thing in your head is not actually separated from your reality. From an actual particle, physics perspective, it’s very very connected. What you’re thinking about the most, actually begins to really expand in your universe.

Adele: So my coaching for somebody like that would be like, “Go get a coach. Go and examine this. Go have a look at it. Where did you come up with this idea that you will never find love again? Get out of your own way by putting that really limiting belief to bed, so that anything becomes possible again.” I’ve coached so many people who have been single their whole life, 40 years single, and within six months, they meet the love of their life, get married, and have a wonderful time. How did that happen? That’s got nothing, it’s actually just removing the limiting belief and seeing that ocean of possibility in front of you and taking actions congruent with manifesting what you want.

Simon: I’ve seen hundreds of people go through your programmes and at the start, there’s absolutely no way in the world they’re even remotely considering another partner. I mean, and I do a dating service, just like alien. And that’s not what the course is about, right? You move through them. At the end of that course, two weeks later you get an email going, “I’ve just found a new guy. Or I’ve just found a new chick. And he’s awesome. She’s awesome.” Because once we are actually clean of that stuff, 99% of us actually do want to be to somebody. And then they’re open to it and then, guess what, they find it. So I find that-

Adele: And I think part of it is, just a final point, is that really what you’re saying, “Will I ever find love again?”, you’re actually, that’s what we call a scarcity mindset. So there’s various mindsets. In our mentoring programmes, we discuss mindsets and the danger of falling into them, because you do. You wake up one day and you go, “This is now my model of the world. Will I ever find love again?” That’s called a scarcity mindset. When you’re coming from a scarcity mindset, you now begin to do calculations in your brain like, “Oh, there’s only like three people in the universe for me. I already had the love of my life. He’s gone. There’s no one else there.” Now you go to the shopping mall, everyone looks married. “Everyone’s happy except me.” You really start to feed this thing.

Adele: And actually the reality is there’s an abundance of people in the universe. And if there’s an abundance of people in the universe, that actually means that you don’t need to feel so afraid. You don’t have to put up with things that don’t work. You can actually end things, because you know that you’ll find something that fits your needs more appropriately. And you can set things free, because you know things are going to move in and out as they should. You don’t need to put up with negative situations. “Oh well, she’s fine. She’ll do.” Or “I have friends. I don’t have love in my life, but I have so many friends. These people are wonderful.” It’s like, “No. Where did that come from?” Examining these limiting beliefs and getting out of your own way. That’s really critical.

Simon: And okay, we don’t have the context here, but if I were a betting type man, I would say that this person hasn’t done anything active about it. I mean, just reading it again. Will I ever have a love relationship again? Just sounds so passive. And they’re not actually doing anything about it, and they’re not going to environments where there’s going to be other single people.

Adele: Well, actually it’s worse than that, because a lot of the people we’ve worked with in our dating programmes and stuff, they have tried. They’ve gone to a few speed dating events, or they went to a party and they tried to talk to somebody, or they went on a date and the person didn’t call back. So they have taken action, and they’re now resigned, “It’s never going to happen for me.” But you’ve got to understand, again, there’s a formula. There’s a formula for everything. And I love coming up with formulas for stuff, because I’m like, “Let’s try and make this simple for everybody.” The formula is really you can take actions until you’re blue in the face, if your mindset is wrong, the actions you take are inside this container that is totally disempowering and is designed incorrectly to actually manifest the wrong thing. You have to have that combination of good mindset with action appropriate to the intention and the thing that you’re trying to create and generate. The combination of the two is what gets you the results that you’re looking for.

Adele: Bad mindset, you can take actions until you’re blue in the face, yeah, you’re not going to find love, because ultimately, underneath everything, you don’t believe that you’re lovable. You don’t believe that the person is out there for you. You think there’s not enough people out there. You have scarcity, you don’t have abundance. I mean, there’s a host of stuff in that negative mindset, which needs to get, like a thorn, you need to extract that, so that the actions that you take are more effective. It’s about effectiveness, not just taking no action. I mean, there are definitely people that take very little action, but it’s probably because they’re resigned. They’re probably like, “It’s never going to happen. I’ve tried everything.”

Simon: And is that person being the person they need to be to attract the best person into their lives. I mean, unless someone’s in what appears to be a depressed state to somebody else observing that, well, that’s not a particularly attractive person to most people. Try and become the person you think you’re ideal partner would want to be or want to meet. I think that’s quite a nice-

Adele: We call it raising vibration. You need to imagine … if people can … Ninety percent of the time, if you’re going to a party or whatever, there are people at the party, you don’t know why, your eyes just are fixated on them, there’s something about them. They just seem so alive and colourful.

Simon: [crosstalk]

Adele: And it’s basically like there’s something about them, you can’t explain it. They’re just shiny, they’re exciting, they’re exciting, their butt or whatever. And you’re attracted to this person and you don’t know what it is. Really what it is is their vibrating at quite a high level. And you’re drawn to them. They’re magnetic. That really means that they’re out of their own way. They’re in flow in their life. They are processed, dealt with. There isn’t drama and issues and crises going on over there. They’re done the work. And those people are very enigmatic and magnetic people, because there’s no stuff really going on there. I think that’s really what we aim to achieve in our programmes is to kind of get yourself to be in a place where your stuffless, for whatever better expression, it’s [crosstalk 00:40:20]. You’ve gone through the stuff and you don’t have all this stuff in the way, so you can connect and bond with people at an epic level.

Simon: And I’ve seen people in that state and it’s an incredibly alluring state. I’ve seen it in men and women. Obviously, I’m a straight guy, I don’t get attracted sexually to the guy. But you can see them in their state. And in a conversation with a female friend and there was a singer on stage. Just a small, local band basically. And she was fancying the pants off this guy. And it did appear to be a good looking guy to me, and I thought, I was just really intrigued. And she like, “There’s just something about him.” And it was like, “Actually, yeah, now I see.” Just the energy, sort of freedom he was expressing and was just in his zone, in his flow. And she said, and yeah, I could see it was totally alluring. And of course, that can be from anybody. And yeah, very captivating. I have seen that.

Simon: Cool. Good. Slight change of topic, but still very valid. It’s particularly around New Years theme, which we are approaching as we record this. Do vision boards work? Suppose we should explain what a vision board is, actually start there.

Adele: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Not in isolation though. Let me just say that as a caveat. So, okay, goal setting, massive topic, huge, rife with complications. A lot of people, we always get these messages. I think one of your questions will undoubtedly be, “Why don’t New Year’s resolutions not work? My goals don’t stick. What am I doing wrong?”

Simon: Dumb question, but yeah.

Adele: There’s been a lot of studies, some of them Harvard, Stanford, loads of studies being done on goal-setting and [inaudible 00:42:15]. And ultimately, there’s a few principles. Number one, if you write something down as a goal, you will outperform anyone who’s just thinking about something and hasn’t written it down. So that’s number one, if you write down your goals and you write them down in a particular way, where it’s as if it’s already happened, so there’s that formula-

Simon: “I have done X, Y, Z.” I think proved, yeah.

Adele: SMART. We’ve all heard this thing, the SMART goal: specific, measurable-

Simon: Action?

Adele: Actualized, and then realistic and times based. Can’t remember the exact thing, but it’s basically, write the thing down as if it’s already happened in time. Then, if you involve other senses in the articulation of a goal, you, again, outperform anyone who has then written the goal down. That’s where vision board comes in. Vision board-

Simon: What you smell, what you hear, what you’re seeing at that time, right?

Adele: Vision board is now you’ve taken your goals and you’ve created pictures on a board, you’ve like, “by this time, 31st of December 2020,” or whatever the date is that you’re aiming for and these pictures of what you’ve achieved and there’s pictures of what you’ve achieved. There’s a house, there’s a- And I mean, I’ve created vision boards where I dust them off years later and I’m like, “Holy cow. Almost all these pictures on here have come true. How the hell did … What?” It really is like eerie when you create these things and you forget about it. You put it in a drawer. You really actually, your ability to manifest outperforms just the written goal thing.

Adele: So I’ve always been incredibly goal-focused and orientated. All our programmes are like that. Naked Divorce is massively goal-focused and orientated. And there’s a technology within Naked Divorce, the Break-up Reboot, where people are listening to this audio programme, and in the theatre of their mind really visually, experiencing the end state of what it is that they’re looking for. And I used a lot of interesting technology and things in developing that audio. It’s like clinical hypnotherapy, timeline therapy, there’s binaural beats. There’s all sorts of hemi think technology and stuff inside that programme.

Adele: And we had so many clients that were like, “I fricking love that thing. Literally, the healing goal is exactly what I manifested in the programme. Can you do it- Can you make this thing in another way?” And that’s where we came up with the GOal Getter programme, because we were like, “If you want to make it more generic, where it’s like ‘I have these goals and I want to manifest them.’ Can we use the same technology to achieve that?” So really the thing is write them down, brilliant. It’s better than people who didn’t write them down. Put a vision board together, yeah, that’ll totally outperform those who have written them down. Create the goal in every sense: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, gustatory, olfactory created in this theatre of your mind where this thing is coming alive and you enter this parallel reality where you are totally single-mindedly visualising, experiencing that goal, now you have outperformed all of them together. I would say, it’s kind of yes, vision boards work, but not in isolation. You’ve got to actually have, if you go into the theatre of your mind, you really can see, feel, hear, experience that thing coming alive. That’s really where the rubber begins to hit the road.

Adele: In addition to that, the importance about goal-manifestation is congruence. Like I’ve sort of talked a little, I’ve touched on some things around limitless potential, manifesting, the focus on whatever you’re thinking in your mind is what expands, your mindset, all these things. If you have congruence, again, you will outperform everybody put together. That single-mindedness, almost dogged single-mindedness, “This is what I am manifesting to here and no further. This is what I’m going to do. This is the life I’m going to live. This is how it’s going to be.” That doggedness is really key. If you are like, “Well, it would be nice if I could have that. I’d really love that. I’ll try my best to get that.” That kind of language is like a limp biscuit, nothing’s happening. It’s like when you dunk your biscuit in coffee and it just disintegrates, that’s what happens to your goal, it’s just meh, just goes meh. You actually got to be dogged and single-minded and focused. And when a negative thought enters your mind, you need to know what to do about it. That’s part of what we cover in our mentoring programmes, all our programmes, is how to have that doggedness with what you achieve in life. So the outcome and the goal at the end of it, your ability to actually create and manifest that, you can kind of predict reliably that it’s going to happen.

Simon: Yeah, something that comes up for me there, I remember asking a group of young kids actually who would want their dreams to come true. And everyone sticks up their hand and yeah, I know all want their dreams to come true, but then when I actually interrogate that, none of them had actually dared to dream. Literally, none of them had actually created a conscious dream about where they want to go. So they all wanted their dream to come true, but they didn’t have a dream. Well, you’ve got to have the dream first, right? So you’ve got to pick what you want to achieve and then your dream has a small chance of coming true, doesn’t it?

Adele: And actually on that point, I want to give credit to you, Simon. So many of you don’t know, Simon runs this event called Play Brave. It’s an event that he runs a few times every year for underprivileged kids that live in orphanages and that kind of stuff. And on your point, Simon, about some people don’t dare to dream. And a lot of the kids in orphanages, they’ve learned to just make due with life happening to them. They get removed from their homes and things happen to them. Their victims of the Rohingya massacre, their parents become drug addicts and suddenly they end up in this orphanage. And how do you dream when life just happens to you so cruelly?

Adele: And what I love about the event that you run is that it’s designed to break through those negative mindsets and give people the ability to dream again and to think of being creators of their future and their destiny, and actually that they can author their lives a little bit, or a lot actually. And to kind of give them the skills and techniques to do that, like negotiating, creating products, creating businesses. It’s been really beautiful to watch the progression of the kids and the teens that, almost the same group that you’ve worked with over the years, and just to see them becoming more bolshie and getting smarter with the games. Where they’re actually coming up with stuff where we’re like, “Oh crap. We didn’t see that coming,” is really really cool. It’s really great.

Simon: Yeah, I’ve always really … I mean, it was quite nerve-wracking the first time I did it to 300 kids, but I’ve really enjoyed delivering it. Then for me, I get a lot of value out of delivering it. It’s not a selfless thing at all. I really get a lot of value … I learn about myself, about them. And one of the things that, because we’ve touched on it, one of the things that really stands out … I know we remember this last time, I think there was a particular game, which we found really hard. I really found this game hard. And I’d given it to you and other people as a test, and no one got this game. And it could have totally backfired, but I had this idea that actually with less education, we can actually be more creative and actually … Education has very good mindset of trying to achieve very good things, but it’s really controlling, and it really strips out a lot of our creative thinking away from it.

Simon: And some of the youngest kids, I mean, I have usually ranging between eight to 18, there’s usually a couple a little bit older, couple a little bit younger. And you’ve got these six to eight, and they did it in like three seconds. We got problems that we could give to some of them mid-forties, you could give them a day and couldn’t solve it. All right? And I’m not joking. I’m not, because I don’t I think I’m an idiot either, just wired differently. It’s kind of tragic that we lose a lot of that. And particularly in Thailand where I run the event, their education system is very very rigid, and that the teacher is like a god and everything they say is never criticised or interrogated. There’s some benefit to that, but there’s also some harm in it sort of loses that creative thinking. And that’s what I was trying to do. I don’t teach them in the sense that I tell them anything. You know already. I just give them environments and problems and we just sit back and watch them come up with solutions. And it’s really stunning to see them do that. They teach us some stuff.

Adele: I think a lot of people that have kids can attest to the fact that your children teach you. You just learn your whole world from that. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to have kids. But I absolutely love being around them for that reason. I think as adults we can really learn from this concept of daring to dream. And then actually dreaming is a really important facet of life. And if you’ve got so resigned about life and life happening to you that you’ve stopped daring to dream, you need to interrupt that pattern. Because one thing we’re really aware of in our company and the way that we live our lives is that life is short. We don’t know how long we’ve got here. And I think when you get that at a really intrinsic, deep level, you want to make the most of the journey. And you don’t put up with things that don’t work at 100%. You don’t settle for second best. The world is full of people that have just settled for second best, and they’re not fighting for limitless potential in their lives. And I think there’s a lot to get from that concept. When you bed in really deeply, you take that trip, you go on that motorcycle ride, you go do those things, you go on that date, you ask that girl out. You go and do what it is that is scary, because life is short.

Simon: Absolutely. Okay good. Thank you for the Play Brave plug. Unexpected, unintentional, but thank you very much.

Adele: It’s awesome.

Simon: Yeah and I’m proud of that event. New Year’s resolutions, staying on this theme, New Year’s resolutions don’t work, so why bother doing them? So this is obviously, a little bit related. I guess you’ve already gone into some detail about-

Adele: I kind of feel we’ve sort of answered that. I think they don’t work because you just did them in one modality, being you thought about them in your brain. Like if you wrote them down, or if you did something more evolved with it or you actually created a project plan, you’re, probably a lot of your New Year’s resolutions actually happened. But if you just thought about it and sort of made a quiet commitment to yourself where you didn’t even declare anything on your social media, where other people are like, “Oy. You said you were going to do this. What happened?” Don’t expect them to stick. They don’t stick because there’s not enough of an existent structure to bring them into being.

Simon: Just thought that literally just come up to me for this second. We call it New Year’s resolutions, right? And by, let’s say, end of January, February, well, it’s no longer New Year anymore. No wonder that thing evaporates and leaves us.

Adele: That’s a really good point.

Simon: If we called it This Year’s resolutions that would be very very different, right? This Year’s resolutions-

Adele: Because actually there was a study done. I think it’s the 17th of February is the sweet spot. That’s when all the people, everybody joins the gym on the 2nd or 3rd of January and then by the 17th of February everybody’s vacated again.

Simon: Because it’s no longer New Years.

Adele: I think that’s a really good point. We’ve actually in the labelling of it being a New Year’s resolution, we actually make it a, failing at it a forgone conclusion.

Simon: Yeah, for me This Year’s resolution sounds so much more, I don’t know, solid somehow, instead of just temporary. I think we’ll probably wrap it up there. The last one though, I think to finish is what are your, let’s call it resolutions for next year?

Adele: Oh goodness. I have this little procedure. I have this little process that I do. And Thailand’s really great for it, because there’s this kind of temple of beginnings and endings. It’s really cute. It’s called Doi Suthep, it’s high up in the mountain, overlooking the whole of Chiang Mai. They have this little ritual that you do around the temple and things like that. Even if you, I’m not a massively, I’m not Buddhist or anything like that, I just like the little thing that you do around the temple. It feels like a very spiritual little place. So I do this little thing every year. And I’ve done it in a very committed way. I always complete my year. I always powerfully look at, “Right. Let’s look at the year, everything. What are the high points, the low points? What can I learn? What wasn’t good? What do I want to do differently next time?” I think it’s really important to have that kind of stuck take, honest assessment of a year and actually review a year, rather than just stumble into the next one after four bottles of wine or whatever. I always complete the year and then I kind of take a look at ultimately what I’m aiming to achieve in my life. And I look back if I’m aiming to achieve that legacy of my life, looking back of what do I want to kind of get out of the year ahead.

Simon: [crosstalk]

Adele: Exactly. Next year is really, there’s some kind of themes that I’m looking for. I always have something around health and fitness, so sort of looking at the wheel of life, like health and fitness. Next year, I’m, after 22 years, taking up my squash again. Terrified, because you know obviously spending more time in New Zealand, literally everyone and their mother seems to play squash. So I’m like, “Damn it. Good time to get into that and get a kind of fitness goal.” I’ve decided I want to be a really hot 45 year old. So I’m on this mission. Get back into my triathlons, get back into, because I haven’t done any this year. My last was a marathon swim. So health goals and focusing on being young, vibrant, hot 45 year old. Like, “Let’s do it. Let’s go for it.”

Adele: And then I think definitely some goals for the business. We grew the business 20% this year and to kind of keep on that growth mission, keep missioning on that. Expanding, we’re moving our online programme to a different platform. So we really want to have new web technologies and things we are offering to people. I want to really launch in New Zealand and Astro Asia. It’s an area of the world that we’re quite passionate about now. So I think that kind of launching of that part of the world.

Adele: From a personal finance perspective, I’ve got some goals around investments, finance, properties, that kind of stuff that I’m looking at. And kind of from a personal perspective it’s just spending time with people that I care about, love, more time with my family, more time with friends, connecting with people that I really care about. I’ve got some trips planned next year to connect with people I haven’t seen in a while.

Adele: Yeah, very specific though. I get very specific and then I use my own audio programme, even though you’d think, “God, aren’t you tired of listening to your own voice?” Yes, but if I could get someone else to record the damn thing, I would. I could listen to someone else.

Simon: [inaudible]

Adele: Yeah, so that’s kind of my plan. What’s yours?

Simon: Actually, I’ve yet to it, honestly. I do, as you know, still focus quite a lot around the business and can echo some of the things you’ve stated. So yes, we’ve got a lot of real solid plans next year, which are already well-firmed up, I think. So yes, we are building a new platform. It’s going to take some time to build, and it’s definitely going to be some evolution to that putting our staff a little bit at an MVP, minimum viable proposition, and grow that. But I have very specific goals about where I expect to get that to. I tend to be a little bit shy about revealing that, but yeah, I have very … I think it will be the best platform of its type in the world, quite frankly, in our niche. It will take some time to get there, but I feel we can achieve that. And so excited about that. Excited about the Discovery, excited about you in New Zealand and the possibilities that’s going to bring. This is a business as well, and I love that we’re going to have, in particular, South Africa, New Zealand, and Thailand as three beautiful locations that people can escape to and do some of the programmes, as well as other locations as well. That’s just touching on some of them.

Simon: Me, personally, I haven’t gone into that as much. I have another little project I’m working on at the moment, sort of just filling that up a little bit. Skiing, putting skiing back on my radar. I’m off to Switzerland for 10 days in a little bit, which I’m looking forward to. And some health and fitness stuff as well, which is also, I’ve dropped five kilogrammes in the last month or so. That wasn’t a particular goal, it’s a consequence of some of the stuff I’ve been doing. So, yeah, not doing New Year’s resolutions. I’ve just realised how bad that is, but I’m doing Next Year’s resolutions. And I’m-

Adele: 2020 resolutions. I think let’s all look at that as a really good statement for the year. It’s like, let’s actually create 2020 resolutions, as opposed to New Year’s resolutions-

Simon: 2020 eyesight, 2020 vision,

Adele: I like that.

Simon: We can do something around that. Let’s wrap it up here. Just a quick mention, because it is relevant, actually really relevant. You touched on GOal Getter. We will put out a message, but I know it’s one of my chores. Need to put out a message pretty sharpish about that. That is actually to help people in this process. Perhaps you can just give us a little bit of a-

Adele: Yeah, let me just talk a bit about it. Every year we run, we have various modules within our mentoring programme. One of them is GOal Getter. It’s this really important starting off a year very powerfully, where you do a full, kind of like the exercise I was talking around. You run through the previous year, learnings, ups, downs, all that kind of stuff. And then really assess where you’re at in your life and create some goals for the future year. And then we break it down and work out how you’re going to get that done. So, we automatically do that with all of our clients, but we’ve had a few messages and people on the website and friends of clients who are like, “Oy, I want to do this thing as well.” So we actually make GOal Getter available to anyone. If people want to come and book in a GOal Getter, it’s like a two to three hour assessment where we actually run through everything, we set it up, we give them the complimentary audio programme that goes with that so that they can listen to it for the full month, and actually quadruple the possibilities of manifesting their goals.

Adele: We’ve got an offer on that. If people are interested, they can take us up on it. But it’s such a powerful programme. In our mentoring group, we’ve, about, a ridiculous number, over 80% of the goals that the group have come up with have been manifested, it’s now December, have already been manifested for the end of the year. It’s so … I love it. I think it’s a very very powerful-

Simon: We ran it for the first time last year, and it was already very quickly producing real significant results in people said it was amazing. To clarify, Adele said all our clients, what she actually means is all our mentoring clients. So, we have some of our clients, usually after they’ve done a programme with us, will be invited to actually join an ongoing monthly programme with you. There’s different levels. And those clients get that included. It’s just part of their package. They get that as a sort of honorary, for free. But if you’re not in that programme, we have to charge, because it takes so long to do. But it’s really really valuable. I’ll get a message out probably in the next few days about that. We can go ahead and book you guys in. You can start creating this vision in the right, the best, most powerful way that’s going to get the results that you need. And at the end of the day, we’re a results-based business. It’s where we’ve always separated ourselves out from many of the life coaches out there. Tell me your story and stuff. We’re much more interested about folks achieving results. Adele works incredibly hard with her clients to achieve that with great results.

Simon: Cool. I think that it’s it. Thank you Adele for your time. Always awesome. I will be working on this and getting this out there pretty soon.

Adele: Brilliant. Yeah. Fantastic. So thanks for that. And again, for all our listeners out there, if you’ve got questions and things that you want answered in the next Ask Me Anything send those in. We always keep everything confidential. We’ll never mention who you are or anything about you, but it’s an opportunity to get answers to anything you want to know.

Simon: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Over and out. Thanks guys.

Adele: Okay, brilliant. Thanks. Bye.

Simon: Bye.

Understanding PTSD:

My PTSD symptoms

The first step in coping with PTSD is to understand how it affects you. Look at the symptoms below, and tick any that have affected you at least twice in the last week.

• Upsetting thoughts or memories about the event that have come into your mind against your will [  ]
• Upsetting dreams about the event [  ]
• Acting or feeling as though the event were happening again [  ]
• Feeling upset by reminders of the event [  ]
• Bodily reactions (such as fast heartbeat, stomach churning, sweatiness, dizziness) when reminded of the event [  ]
• Difficulty falling or staying asleep [  ]
• Irritability or outbursts of anger [  ]
• Difficulty concentrating [  ]
• Heightened awareness of potential dangers to yourself and others [  ]
• Being jumpy or being startled at something unexpected [  ]

My thoughts and beliefs

Trauma affects how we think about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. These thoughts and beliefs can powerfully affect how we live our lives. It is helpful to reflect on how trauma has affected us.

Write down your answers to the following questions.

• Things I thought as I was experiencing trauma
• How my trauma has affected the way I think about myself
• How my trauma affected the way I think about other people
• How my trauma affected the way I think about the world
• Calming the threat system: Relaxed Breathing

Controlling your breathing sends a signal to your threat system that everything is ok. Calm breathing is slow, relaxed, and from the diaphragm (‘belly breathing’), whereas anxious breathing is quick, tense, and high up in the chest.

1. Begin by sitting somewhere comfortable but supported
2. If you feel comfortable to do so close your eyes, otherwise stare off into the middle distance
3. Breathe in slowly and steadily for a count of 3
4. Breathe out slowly and steadily for a count of 5. Our bodies relax most on the out-breath
5. Repeat for a few minutes. It’s normal for your attention to wander off. If it does, just gently bring it back to focus on your breathing.

Calming the threat system:

Colored Breathing

Another technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind is to use imagery while you breathe. Some people find it helpful to imagine breathing colored air. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

1. Imagine a color representing tension, or tense feelings
2. As you breathe, calmly and steadily, imagine breathing out air tinged with that tense color
3. See the colored air in your mind’s eye, and watch as you breathe it out and it floats away
4. Allow the tense colored air to become paler and paler, as you breathe out all of the tension
5. Now bring to mind a color representing calming, soothing feelings
6. Imagine breathing in this relaxed colored air
7. Just notice what happens in your body as you imagine breathing in the relaxed air
8. Continue breathing this way for a few minutes

Swing Breathing

Swing breathing is another imagery technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

Allow your breathing to become slower … and more regular. Just focusing your attention on your breath … on the air flowing in … and out … of your mouth and nose.

Your breathing finding a steady rhythm. Breathing gently from low down in the belly. Taking slow steady breaths. Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling … Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling.

And as you continue to breathe slowly and gently … in a rhythm that’s comfortable to you … I’d like you to imagine … and then begin to feel … that you’re on a swing. Gently swinging backwards … and forwards … backwards … and forwards … finding that you’re swinging in rhythm with your breathing … just gently swinging … relaxed and peaceful. Pay attention to how it feels to swing gently forwards … and backwards … peaceful … relaxed … at ease. Just swinging gently … and smoothly … smoothly .. and gently.

And you can carry on breathing calmly and gently for as long as you like. Relaxing into this gentle rhythm more and more as time goes by.

Muscle relaxation

When we feel under threat our muscles tense up – ready to fight or take flight. Keeping the muscles tense is one of the body’s ways of trying to keep you safe. One way of letting your body know that you are safe is to deliberately relax all of your muscles.

Progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing, then relaxing, all of the muscle groups in turn. Find a comfortable spot, sitting or lying down. Then, for each of the muscle groups in turn, follow this pattern:

1. Tense the muscles
2. Notice the tension for a few moments
3. Release
4. Notice the sensation of relaxation as the tension drains away

Relax each of the muscle groups in turn:

• Fists
• Upper arms
• Shoulders (lift up slightly)
• Upper back (shoulders back slightly)
• Stomach
• Buttocks
• Thighs
• Lower legs / calves
• Feet
• Neck (gently move neck back)
• Forehead
• Muscles around eyes (scrunch face up)
• Jaw

Creating a safe place

A safe place is somewhere that you create using your mind and imagination. It is a place that you can go anytime, wherever you are.

For some people, it is a place that they remember from their past as being particularly safe and calm. For others, they cannot easily remember a time like this from their past and so they work on creating one for themselves now. Either way, the same process applies. You can have more than one safe place and it can change over time as you wish. It is your creation and your own personal ideal.

It is useful for your safe place to have certain qualities though: it needs to be a place you feel calm, not judged, warm, free and above all safe.

How to create a safe place:

1. If you feel comfortable enough, close your eyes and take a deep breath in and count to three. Then breathe out slowly to the count of five. Do this several times. As before, spend some time slowing down and controlling your breathing until you reach a calm and soothing rhythm. As you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in a sense of safeness and relaxation. As you breathe out, imagine you are breathing out all of the tension in your body.
2. Begin to imagine a place where you feel calm – where are you?
3. Focus on what you can see, take a minute to look all around you in your mind. You may perhaps even turn around to see what’s behind. Concentrate on any objects that you can see, the colors around you and areas of lightness and darkness.
4. Focus on what you can hear, take your time to notice the noises, even the subtle ones. What noises can you hear close by? What noises can you hear in the distance?
5. Focus on what you can smell. Again, take a minute to really notice the smells around you.
6. What can you feel? Is it hot or cold? Are there textures under your feet?
7. Focus on any taste in the image and notice this for a minute or two.
8. Now focus on how you feel in your body, feelings of calm and safety in this image. Focus on the release of tension. Where do you feel this feeling in your body?
9. Keep imagining your safe place in as much detail as possible and revisit that feeling of calm and safeness over and over, noticing where you feel it in your body.
10. Is there a word that might remind you of your safe place? If so, what is it? If you have a word, repeat it in your mind over and over as you keep your safe place in your mind.
11. When you are ready, take some deep breaths in again and slowly open your eyes, trying to hold onto that calm feeling.

Remember, you can come back to it whenever you want to. The easiest way to do this is to start by slowing down and controlling your body and to repeat the word that you picked that reminded you of your safe place. In doing so, it will be easier to return to your safe place whenever you would like.

Safe place:

Write a description of your safe place in as much detail as you can. Remember to include information from all your senses. What word have you chosen to remind you of your safe place?

Coping with memories:

Use all of your senses

When we are having a flashback, or as we wake up from a nightmare, our awareness of the things around us in the here-and-now can be diminished. Just as we can re-experience traumatic memories in all of our five senses, we can use those five senses to try and ‘ground’ us back in the present.

Sight

Look around you and use those sights to remind yourself that you’re in the present and that you are safe.

Touch

It can be helpful to carry an object with us that remind us that we are safe, such as a stress ball, a pebble, or a flower.

Hearing

Focus on all of the noises around you in the present moment. Use them to remind you of where you are.

Smell

Smell can be one of the most powerful ways of learning to soothe and comfort yourself Try using essential oils, your favorite plants, or any comforting aroma.

Taste

Strong tastes such as chewing gum can be helpful. For people who re-experience ‘taste memories’ it can be helpful to focus on the absence of taste in the present moment.

Coping with memories: 5-4-3-2-1

When our minds and bodies feel as if they are fully immersed in the past, using all of our senses at once can be a very effective way of bringing ourselves back into the present. Focus on:

5 things you can see

1:

2:

3:

4:

5:

4 things you can feel / touch

1:

2:

3:

4:

3 things you can hear

1:

2:

3:

2 things you can smell

1:

2:

1 thing you can taste

1:

Reminding yourself it was in the past

When a memory is triggered it can feel as if the traumatic event is happening all over again. Our minds and bodies can feel like we are back in the moment the trauma took place, rather than recognizing that we are revisiting a memory.

During a flashback, we often describe what we can see or sense in the present tense. For example, Alex said “he’s standing right in front of me and I can see him” whilst he was having a flashback.

To help put the memory in the past, it is useful to practice rephrasing your common thoughts about the event in the past tense, particularly whenever you have a flashback memory or after having a nightmare. This technique is most helpful while we are in the midst of a flashback. It may seem simple but it can be a powerful technique to help your brain, in the heat of the moment, remember that it is not happening all over again. Here are some examples

Write your most common thoughts when you’re having a flashback and then rephrase them so they are in the past. Practice saying them to yourself often.

Current thinking:

Remembering the past:

It’s just a memory

Remember, our brains (particularly our amygdala) don’t care whether something is happening in real life or whether it is a memory – our minds and bodies react in the same way by activating the threat system.

A simple yet effective technique is reminding yourself that you are responding to a memory rather than the actual event. This can be helpful in reminding your brain that you are not, in fact, back in danger. Try writing a statement down on a card to carry round with you.

For example, Alex would write down and look at the phrase:

When I was attacked the man stood right in front of me, he is not in front of me now. I am just remembering the memory of when I was attacked. THIS IS MY MIND AND BODY REACHING TO A MEMORY. IT IS NOT HAPPENING AGAIN.

If you feel comfortable with it, you may also consider asking your partner or a friend to gently remind you that you are responding to a memory, that the trauma is not happening again, and that you are safe.

Fast forward to safety

When we are bothered by flashbacks we often forget that we can have control over the memories and that we can control our own minds. It is very important to remind ourselves that we are safe, and that the events are over. One way to do this is to think of our memories as being like a video tape, and to remember that we can fast forward it.

Here are some steps in helping you train your mind to ‘fast forward to safety’

1) Think of your traumatic event

2) Think about the first time you felt safe afterwards – really picture this scene as clearly as you can in your mind. Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? How did you know that you were safe? Don’t forget to think of all five of your senses.

3) Write down a description of this moment of safety.

4) When you have a flashback, practice ‘fast forwarding’ to this safe time. Quickly see everything that happened after the moment in the flashback, and then focus on the feeling of safety telling yourself that it is in the past. Try and focus on how this safety feels in your body. Try and stay with that feeling of safety for as long as possible.

The more you practice this, the better your brain will get at putting these memories in the past.

The differences between then and now

Remind yourself of things that have changed since the time of the trauma. For example, if you have had your birthday you can remind yourself “I am 45 now and was 44 when I was in a car accident”. You may have changed your physical appearance and remind yourself “I have long hair now but it was short when I witnessed the robbery”

What has changed for you since you experienced the traumatic event?

Grounding the date

Remind yourself the current date, where you are, the time of day etc. For example, “today is Thursday 5th May 2017. I am at work. It is 10:55am. It is spring and it is sunny outside. I am safe. I survived”. You may take this further by writing down and reminding yourself that the traumatic event took place at another time. For example, it took place on a winter afternoon in December.

When did the traumatic event take place? What is the current date? Can you describe the here-and-now?

Noticing triggers for flash backs

Flashbacks and intrusive memories can be triggered by reminders that are linked to the traumatic event: someone who has been in a car accident might be triggered by the sight of certain cars, the sound or traffic, or sirens.

Like trauma memories, the mind and body doesn’t seem to be able to recognize that these things (i.e. sights, sounds, smells etc.) are no longer signs of danger. Instead, the mind and body react as if they are under threat.

It is important, therefore, to try to train the brain to break the link between then and now and to help the brain recognize that these things are no longer signs of danger.

The first part is to first identify what might trigger your flashbacks and intrusive memories.

Some of Alex’s triggers were:

• Knives
• People standing behind me
• Dark streets

Some of my triggers are:

Flashback triggers – breaking the link

Next, systematically think about the differences between what you experienced during the trauma and how different things are now.

Helping with self-harm

People self-harm for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is to cope with powerful emotions, to distract from something overwhelming, or to feel something instead of feeling numb.

Unfortunately, it can come with severe unintended consequences, such as causing lasting physical damage to our bodies. This can be a dangerous way of trying to cope.

Self-harm often serves a purpose, so just trying “nor to do it” can feel impossible. It can be helpful to find out more about the reasons why you self-harm and then try a different behavior instead of harming yourself.

Working out why I self-harm

• To express pain and strong emotion [  ]
• To deal with anger [  ]
• To feel something when I feel numb and disconnected [  ]
• To calm down [  ]
• To see blood [  ]

Any other reasons:

What are my triggers?

What could I substitute instead of self-harm?

If you self-harm to… express pain and intense emotion, try writing down your feelings, drawing or painting how you feel, writing down difficult feelings then ripping them up, or listening to music which expresses how you’re feeling.

If you self-injure to… deal with anger that you cannot express openly, try working through those feelings by doing something different – running, dancing fast, screaming, punching a pillow, throwing something, ripping something apart.

If you hurt yourself in order to… feel something when you feel numb inside, hold ice cubes in one hand and try to crush them, hold a package of frozen food, take a very cold shower, chew something with a very strong taste (like chili peppers, raw ginger, or a grapefruit peel), wear an elastic rubber band around your wrist and snap it (in moderation to avoid bruising).

If you inflict physical pain to… calm yourself, try taking a bubble bath, doing deep breathing, writing in a journal, drawing, or doing some yoga.

If you self-harm to… see blood, try drawing a red ink line where you would usually cut yourself, in combination with any of the other suggestions above.

Remember, understanding and knowledge are key. Try to make a note of every time you feel the urge to harm yourself. Write down what was happening at that time and what was going through your mind. Also, make a note of what you did to cope, taking care to write down which behaviors you found helpful and which ones were less helpful to channel and soothe your feelings of distress.

Sleeping better:

Sleep hygiene

PTSD often affects our ability to sleep. We may have difficulty getting to sleep if we lie in bed thinking about how our life has changed and wondering if things will get better. We may avoid going to sleep for fear that we might have more nightmares. If we do manage to get to sleep we may then wake up after experiencing nightmares. It is normal to have difficulty getting back to sleep.

The tips and ideas below have been selected to try and help you increase the chance of getting better sleep.

1. Bed is for sleeping and sleeping happens at night-time

• Try and keep your bedroom and bed for sleeping only
• Avoid sleeping in the day
• Develop a routine before bed time such as having a relaxing bath or listening to some relaxing music and go to bed at around the same time each night. Try and wake up around the same time each morning. Small children find habits and routines comforting, and the same things work for adults too. As adults, we forget that these things apply to us as well
• If you cannot sleep after 30 minutes, get up and try an activity such as listening to some music. Do this for about 15 minutes then return to bed and try and sleep. Repeat this as often as is necessary until you go to sleep
• Make your bedroom a nice place to sleep – try smells or flowers (or some new bed sheets!)

2. Be kind to your body

• Do not go to bed hungry
• Try and avoid spicy food late in the day as this can act as a stimulant in our bodies
• Reduce caffeine but definitely avoid caffeine after 4pm- remember caffeine is also found in tea and fizzy drinks like pop. You can buy de-caffeinated versions of these drinks if needed
• Although alcohol can initially make us feel sleepy, it stops us from experiencing restful sleep and is not great for PTSD or Adrenal Fatigue. It can also make it harder to fall asleep again, if you wake up in the middle of the night

Coping with nightmares

Practice calming yourself down after a nightmare by using any of the previous techniques.

Having a card with the information from the tips previously tried may help ground you back in the moment. For example, you may have a card with the phrase ‘I am safe, it is May 2011 and I am in my bedroom’ by your bedside to read after you wake from a nightmare.

Having a picture that reminds you of the present can also be useful to have by your bedside if waking from a nightmare as it will help your brain focus on the present and calm your threat system quicker.

Taking a smell to bed and having it ready can, again, be a useful way to help your brain remember where you are following a nightmare. A calm and soothing smell can also help you get off back off to sleep after a nightmare.

Try: Any of the other grounding strategies that you have developed can be helpful if you wake from a nightmare

Re-scripting nightmares

If you experience frequent nightmares, especially the same or similar dream over and over, then research has shown that you can ‘rescript’ the nightmare to make it much less powerful. For example, someone who had nightmares about being in a road traffic accident imagined that the road was made of marshmallows and was soft and bouncy.

Method 1

Spend time in the day thinking of the nightmare but practicing a different ending: an ending you would prefer and that makes you feel safe. Practice the repeat ending over and over in your imagination. The more you can rehearse new ending the better chance your brain has of remembering it. It might also be helpful to talk through your nightmares with someone else. It doesn’t matter how odd the new ending might be, or that it didn’t really happen.

Method 2

Think about your nightmare from the perspective of a Hollywood script writer:

1. Write down your nightmare as though it were a story
2. Think about how you would want to feel different if you could change the nightmare
3. Change some of the events in the nightmare that would lead to the new feeling
4. Write the new ‘script’ for the nightmare. Rehearse it to yourself.

Written in association with the Berkshire Traumatic Stress Clinic, United Kingdom

Introduction

This document is for anyone who suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The first part helps you to understand what PTSD is, why PTSD develops, and why things may, at this time, not seem to be changing. The second part describes strategies to help manage some of the intense anxiety and distress PTSD can cause.

Part 1:

Understanding PTSD

Alex was walking down the street one evening after having dinner with some friends when he was mugged by two men at knifepoint. Alex tried to run away but they caught up with him and took his wallet and his watch. During the attack, Alex believed that those men were going to stab him and that he would be killed.

After this event Alex started to feel more panicky whenever he was walking alone on the streets in the dark. He was also a lot jumpier than before. Memories of the attack haunted him almost every day, as if a film of the attack was playing in his head repeatedly. Alex started to avoid going out because he only really felt safe in his own house.

Whenever something reminded him of the attack, like seeing a knife or having someone approach him from behind, he felt in his body that the attack was happening all over again. He would feel shaky, sweaty, and short of breath and sometime believed that he was going to die. At night Alex would have nightmares about being mugged.

Alex lost confidence in managing day – to – day tasks and stopped socializing with friends unless they came to his flat. He found he would get easily distracted at work and could not concentrate on reading book, which used to be his hobby of his. This left him feeling low at time, and he would get frustrated with himself for feeling unable to do the thing he used to.

The effect of the attack on Alex is typed of people who experience PTSD. When we live our lives feeling scared or threatened, it is common to react in ways that we wouldn’t if we felt safe, calm, and relaxed.

Do you experience any of the same symptoms as Alex?

What is PTSD?

Post – Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, is the name given to a set of symptoms that many people experience after traumatic incidents. These traumatic events might be things that have happened to us directly or things that we might have witnessed. After a threatening experience, it is common and understandable to be distressed for some time.

For example, people often say that they find it difficult to get the thoughts and images of what happened out of their mind, and they may even experience nightmares about the events. It is also normal to feel more jittery and emotional after a traumatic experience – you may feel ‘on edge’, or the verge of tears. Because the event is upsetting, it is natural to want to avoid thinking about it, and we may avoid reminders of what happened.

Everybody has natural abilities to cope with life’s struggles. Over time, our natural resources help us cope with these difficult events and we may feel that we are able to put the horrible experience behind us. However, some people’s personal resource seems to be completely overwhelmed, and these difficulties don’t seem to get any easier. In fact, they may even start to feel worse. People develop PTSD if these initial difficulties persist over a longer period of time.

The symptoms of PTSD come in three main groups. Not everybody experiences all of these symptoms, but you will, more likely than not, experience at least one difficulty from each group. The following list does not cover everything and you might have some other experiences that are not listed here:

Symptoms of PTSD

Re – experience symptoms

• Upsetting memories come into your mind when you don’t want them to (images, feelings, sensations, sounds, tastes, or smells)
• Intense memories where it feels as though the trauma is happening to you again. You may lose touch with your surroundings)
• Nightmares of the traumatic event, or dreams with a threatening theme.
• Feeling physically and emotionally upset whenever you are reminded of the trauma

Avoidance symptoms

• Staying away from reminders of the event
• Trying not to think or talk about what happened
• Feeling disconnected or ‘numb’, like you have no feelings

Hyper – arousal

• Constantly looking out for danger and being more easily startled
• Problems sleeping
• Problems concentrating or problem with memory
• Feeling angry and frightened

Other common reactions to trauma

• Feeling depressed, anxious, or irritable
• Withdrawing from family and friends
• Feeling of guilt, self – blame, shame, or self – criticism

Why now?

After a traumatic event, almost everyone will feel jumpy, and it is normal to have intrusive memories of what happened. Approximately two out of three of people will find that these symptoms fade over time. Other people may find that the symptoms of PTSD emerge sometime after the trauma occurred and almost seem to come “out of the blue”. This can seem very confusing, and they may ask themselves “why now?”

PTSD can be triggered if something acts as a reminder of the traumatic event. It could be that something similar to the original event happens again or that something happens in your life that reminds you of the traumatic event. Seeing someone go through a similar experience to your own can trigger traumatic reactions.

For example, someone who was in a car accident many years ago may have felt that they had ‘got over it’. However, years later they are involved in another minor accident and memories of the first accident can come flooding back. Our minds and bodies remember traumatic events in all of our different sense (sight, smell, touch, taste, sound, and feeling). 

This mean that any sensations that are similar to ones present during the trauma might trigger PTSD later. Bodily or emotional feelings that we experience during the trauma can also trigger PTSD. For example, if we felt helpless during the trauma, then symptoms of PTSD may be triggered during other situations that make us feel helpless.

The threat system

What is the threat system?

The most important task for all living thing is survival. Over millions of years, all species have evolved ways of quickly detecting and responding to threats, increasing their chance of survival. Human brains have also evolved to detect threat and we have a built – in threat detection system.

The Amygdala

The amygdala is the brain’s ‘alarm system’. It works to keep us safe by constantly being on the lookout for threat. A body – wide alarm system is set off if a threat is identified. The amygdala is very sensitive and lives by the rule ‘better safe than sorry’, so as soon as sign of danger are sensed it immediately kicks into action and prepares the body/mind to defend itself.

It also records information from our senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) about any dangerous situation. It all happens so quickly and automatically that sometime the amygdala has set off the alarm before we are even consciously aware of what is happening.

For example, if we are in a forest and see something move on the ground we might feel scared and quickly step back, before we realize that it is a harmless bird. This reaction is the amygdala keeping us safe and acting quickly, before the ‘thinking’ part of the brain identified the movement as something harmless.

What happens when the threat system is activated?

The main purpose of the threat system is self – protection. Our survival instincts tend to make us do one of four things: fight, flight (run away), freeze, or appease (try to calm down the threat). When the threat system is activated a hormone called adrenaline is released into the bloodstream. 

The adrenaline flows round our bodies very quickly, getting different body streams ready to quickly respond to the threat. The adrenaline increases heart rate so that there is more blood and oxygen going to our muscles. The adrenaline makes our muscles tense, making them ready to fight or to run away. 

The adrenaline speeds up our thoughts, so we can make quick (potentially lifesaving) decisions. All of these changes can affect how we are feeling. The diagram below shows some of the effects activations of the threat system can have.

Remember that when we feel under threat it is common to act automatically. We tend to act first and think later, and may behave in a way that we would not have if we were feeling safe or calm. We have very little, if any, control over these instinctual reactions and we rarely get to choose which ones we employ when we feel scared. Common instinctive reactions include:

• Fight
• Flight
• Freeze 
• Appease

These are all sensible and age – old ways of dealing with danger.

• Fight = fight a danger off
• Flight = run away from danger
• Freeze = stay still and the danger might go away
• Appease = bargain to try and make the danger spare us

The slow, deliberate, rational, ‘thinking’ part of the brain often takes a back seat when we rely on our basic survival instincts. This is very important to keep in mind as we can often blame ourselves for the way we may have reacted during the traumatic event and wish that we had done or said something different. However, we probably just reacted automatically to protect ourselves in the best way we could at the moment.

How does all of this relate to PTSD?

Our brain (and particular our amygdala) doesn’t care and can’t distinguish whether a trauma is happening now in the present, or whether we are remembering a past event in our minds – it reacts in the exactly the same way. The threat system is activated and the body reacts as if a real threat were occurring, it doesn’t realize that it is reacting to a memory. This is why memories of the trauma feel so fresh and why people often feel the exact same emotions they felt when the event was happening

The tricky thing for people who have experienced traumatic events is that the threat system often remains extra sensitive, and is always on the lookout for possible signs of danger. During the trauma, the amygdala was busy collecting sensory information so that it can detect any warning signs that further trauma might happen again later in life.

This means that anything that reminds you (even vaguely) of the trauma can trigger the threat system and result in an emotional reaction. It’s common to see reminders everywhere, and some people feel that with their threat system triggered frequently they can’t escape from unpleasant feelings.

Do you recognize any of these reactions?

Normal Memories vs. Trauma Memories

‘Trauma’ memories are different from ‘normal’ memories. To understand more, we need to know about another bit of the brain, the hippocampus, and to learn about how our memories are formed.

The hippocampus

Do you remember the job of the amygdala? Its role was to detect threats and to set off an alarm in the body to prepare it for action. In contrast, the hippocampus collects and sifts through factual information, such as who, what, when and where. Like a librarian filing books away in a library, it records information about when and where the event happened, and files the memory away in the right place so that you can retrieve it easily later.

The hippocampus is like a librarian who files memories away in their proper place in a filing cabinet

The hippocampus works best when we are a bit emotional, but not too stressed. For example, we are more likely to remember happy or sad events compared to boring events: a bit of emotion tells the hippocampus that the event is worth remembering.

When the hippocampus and amygdala work together, a complete memory with sensory, emotional, and factual information is formed.

However, when we feel under threat, hormones like adrenaline are released. This perks up the amygdala and it becomes more active in order to do its job. In contrast, the hippocampus shuts down and becomes less effective at its job.

This means that memories formed during these times of stress are filled with intense emotions and vivid sounds and images because the amygdala was so active. Because the hippocampus became inactive these memories sometimes lack precise details about where and when things happened, and in what order they occurred.

Normal memory

Think of a nice memory from your life, such as a fun day out. It is normal to be able to do certain things with this memory. If you were asked to tell someone about the memory, it will most likely be organized so you would start at the beginning, go through the main points, and finish the story at the end.

You probably have all the words you need to describe the memory, and can choose what bits you talk about. This memory came into your mind because you were asked to think about a nice time, it did not just pop into your head from nowhere. In this sense ‘normal’ memories are mostly under our control, and we can choose when to think about them. After we talk or think about them we can ‘put them away’ and are not bothered by intrusive memories of the event for the rest of the day.

Importantly, when you think or talk about this normal memory you will know the event you are thinking about happened in the past and you do not feel as if you are re-living the moment all over again. You don’t feel the same intensity and level of emotion you did at the time. For example, Alex may remember being excited the morning of his 21^st birthday, but he would be unable to feel the same amount of excitement as he did on that day.

Lastly, our ‘normal’ memories and the meaning that we give to events can change and get updated when we receive new information. Taking Alex as an example, he felt extremely annoyed that his best friend did not attend his 21^st birthday party. At the time, he thought that his friend didn’t care about him and felt angry every time that he thought of this.

Later, though, Alex found out the reason his friend did not come was that he had to rush his mother to hospital as she had suddenly fallen ill. Because of this new information, Alex felt differently about what had happened and his memory and understanding of the event was updated to include this new piece of information. Because of this, Alex’s feelings towards his friend also changed and he no longer felt anger towards him.

Summary of normal memories

‘Normal’ memories are like files in a well-organized filing cabinet. They are under our control (we can open a drawer, pull out a file for a particular memory, then put it away and not think about it):

• They are organized – they don’t just come in bits and bobs
• They are just memories. We can talk about them without feeling overwhelmed with emotion
• We can talk about them in a complete way: the memory is like a story with a beginning, middle and end
• We know and feel as though the memory and the event happened in the past – like it has a ‘time tag’
• We can change and update the memory when we learn different things
• It contains both emotional and sensory information (collected by the amygdala) and factual information (collected by the hippocampus)

Trauma Memory

When we experience a traumatic event, the thinking part of the brain shuts down (including the hippocampus) and the threat system is activated (the amygdala). The amygdala triggers the release of adrenaline and our body reacts to protect itself. With the hippocampus less effective and the amygdala hyper-sensitive, the memories that are created during a trauma are flooded with highly emotional content and vivid sensory detail. Our ‘trauma’ memories are therefore different to our normal memories.

The first thing you may notice about trauma memories is that they are not under our control. Memories about the event may pop into your mind at any time ‘out of the blue’. Little things around us, like a noise, a sight, a smell, or a feeling can mean you think about the event even if you don’t want to. It is as if the files in an overstuffed and jumbled filing cabinet are spilling over. Even though we try and close the cabinet drawer, the files keep popping out.

The other thing you have probably noticed about your trauma memories is that they are often in bits and pieces rather than a whole story. People often say they remember a part of the traumatic event, hear a sound, or feel a certain sensation, rather than remembering a whole story with a beginning, middle and end. It is like all the papers in one file have not been stapled together and different pages are popping into your memory, or like isolated pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

When we remember bits of the traumatic event, we feel the same intensity of emotion as we did at the time of the trauma itself. This is one of the hardest things about trauma memories. So, for Alex, every time an image of his attacker came into his mind he felt the same intensity of fear as when the attack happened. This is very distressing and frightening.

This happens because the brain has not recognized that the event is over, and in the past. The trauma memory is filled only with information from the threat system and it lacks factual and contextual information. It is as though no new information that you have learnt since the event has been filed away with the rest of the memory.

So, when Alex experiences an intrusive memory of the attack he believes that he is going to die, even though he knows rationally that he did not die and is safe now. His brain has not put this piece of information with the rest of the memory about the attack.

Summary of trauma memories

‘Trauma’ memories are like a messy and disorganized filling cabinet. The memory is in fragments so we may remember just a specific part, such as a smell or physical sensation, without remembering the rest of the event. We only remember the worst bits.

We don’t have control over when and where the files will pop out, or what pieces of paper from which files will come to mind

We have not filed away the memory properly in the past so it feels as if it is happening all over again when we remember it

Trauma memories are filled with sensory information and we can re-experience memories in any of our five senses

Trauma memories are easily triggered and brought into our mind by ‘triggers’: noises, smells, or sometimes small things that remind our brain in some way of the traumatic event

Why do trauma memories persist?

Our brains were not able to file away the traumatic memory at the time because they were so busy keeping us safe that they let all the paperwork pile up. Later on, because all the paperwork is disorganized, the brain gets confused when it tries to file it away. If a bit of information about the traumatic event pops out, the brain thinks the traumatic event is happening all over again, then stops filing and works on keeping us safe instead.

The job of trauma therapy is to help the brain file away the memory without going in to ‘threat mode’. In other words, one of the main aims of any trauma-focused therapy is to try and help make trauma memories into ‘normal’ memories. It is important to remember that ‘normal memory’ does not necessarily mean ‘good memory’.

Most of us will have had distressing events in our life that do not come back to us in the same way as our trauma memories. With ‘normal memories’ we might feel some distress when we remember unhappy memories. However, we don’t continue to experience the same intensity of emotion, or continue to feel as if we are reliving the worst part of it repeatedly. 

Summary of differences between normal and trauma memories

Now that the differences between normal and trauma memories have been described, what do you think might be the key tasks in helping ‘trauma memories’ become ‘normal memories’?

Flashbacks, Nightmares & Dissociation

Most people who have been traumatized experience flashbacks or nightmares, and some others may also experience periods of dissociation. What do these terms mean?

What is a flashback?

‘Flashback’ is commonly used to describe a sort of remembering that is characterized by a vivid intrusion of memory. Survivors of trauma are often troubled by unexpected intrusive memories of what happened. Sometimes these memories are so vivid it feels like the mind is ‘flashing back’ to the trauma.

These can be very upsetting, particularly at night-time when the memories can be especially vivid and difficult to manage. A flashback is not necessarily a complete memory and can represent a single aspect of the event (e.g. physical sensation of the incident, the sound of a voice, a particular smell, or a powerful feeling of danger).

Characteristics of flashbacks

• The sense that you are re-living the experience all over again
• A powerful ‘sense’ of something familiar and upsetting
• Sometimes re-experiencing physical sensations that were felt at the time
• It may be like watching a film of what you went through, or maybe still images of the key points
• We can re-experience the event in any of our senses
• Sometimes you might lose touch with your surroundings

Flashbacks are triggered by something that reminds your brain of the trauma (i.e. ‘matching trigger’), such as an image, noise, smell, or physical sensation. For instance, one of the men who mugged Alex was wearing a green jacket. Later, when Alex saw a similar jacket (or items of green clothing), he had a flashback of the mugging and felt very scared.

Sometimes it may feel that flashbacks ‘come out of the blue’, but they will always have been triggered by something that reminded our brain of the traumatic event, even if it’s so subtle we are not consciously aware of what the trigger is. We may have to do some detective work to identify our matching triggers.

Another way of thinking about flashbacks is comparing them to our experience when we watch a horror film. Which bits of horror films do you remember most? When you think back to the movie, you probably don’t remember everything in the correct order. Chances are that you remember the worst and most terrifying bits – it is these images which pop into your mind whenever you are reminded of the film.

It’s like these images don’t have any context and they seem to be more vivid and intense then the rest of the movie. Flashbacks are like this – the worst and most horrific parts, all jumbled up, that pop into your mind.

What about nightmares?

‘Normal memories’ get consolidated/processed when we sleep. At night, your brain is busy processing what you experienced that day, and moving memories into long term storage: filing the memories neatly away in the correct place in the filing cabinets. One theory about dreaming suggests that the content of a dream reflects this memory consolidation process – the brain trying to make sense of the event and file it away.

Nightmares can occur when the brain tries to process unpleasant memories. During the day, we often try to push distressing memories from our mind and feel that they are just below the surface. However, when we are asleep we can’t suppress these memories and they re-surface in the form of vivid and intense nightmares.

It might be that nightmares in PTSD keep recurring because it isn’t possible for the brain to process and ‘file’ the memory properly. This is often because we wake up at the ‘worst point’ stopping any further processing from occurring.

Nightmares often replicate aspects of the traumatic event and can contain images of the ‘worst bits’. However, sometimes the content of the nightmares do not relate to actual events, but rather contain themes of threat, violence and fear.

What flashbacks or nightmares do you experience? How often do you have them?

What is dissociation?

After surviving a traumatic event, some people might experience:

• Periods of time when they feel ‘spaced out’
• Time passing without noticing
• Periods of time that feels unreal or dreamlike
• Talking with someone and not being able to remember what they just said
• Finding themselves in places and being uncertain how they got there
• Finding they have belongings that they can’t remember buying

These are all examples of dissociation. Dissociation is a normal process and these experiences happen to everybody from time to time. ‘Dissociative experiences’ can range from daydreaming and being on ‘automatic pilot’ to observing yourself do things as if from the outside (an ‘out-of-body’ experience).

Dissociation is more likely to happen during trauma if a person experienced a high level of stress and could not escape. When the threat system is strongly activated some people may dissociate – mentally remove themselves from the threatening situation. Dissociation is like a safety valve on a pressure cooker – it is our mind’s way of protecting ourselves. Some might experience the event as unreal or dreamlike, and things may seem to go in slow-motion.

For others, it might seem as though they are watching the event without them actually being there. When dissociation happens in day-to-day life it can be frightening. It is helpful to remember that it is a normal process, and certainly nor an indication that you are going mad. Gaining control is a step-by-step process, which takes time but the first step may be recognizing whether this may be an issue for you.

Feeling Scared or Under Threat all of the Time: What Keeps This Going?

Traumatic events, and their aftermath, can also lead us to change the way we think about ourselves, other people, or about the world. For example, we might start to think that we are horrible, worthless, or powerless people as a result of what others have done to us. Some people develop the belief that others cannot be trusted, or that the world is a dangerous place.

If these thoughts and beliefs are rehearsed and not “checked out”, they become stronger and stronger, reinforcing the feeling of danger.

It is natural to want to avoid the things that scare us. We might do this physically by avoiding certain places or certain people or any reminders of the traumatic event. Alternatively, we might mentally try to avoid a scary memory by pushing thoughts out of our minds, or by distracting ourselves. We do this because avoiding whatever scares us is often the most obvious way of coping with it. This can lead to unintended consequences though.

For instance, after the mugging Alex stopped going out. As a result, he lost confidence in managing day-to-day tasks and stopped socializing with friends unless they came to his flat. This left him feeling low in mood and he would get frustrated with himself for feeling unable to do the things he used to. The memories still bothered him, and he stared to feel more distant from his friends.

How Alex’s trauma affected him:

The unintended consequences of trying to stay safe

We make our best efforts to cope with danger. The difficulty is that our instinctive best efforts to cope can often come with unintended negative consequences. For example

• If we avoid doing anything except ‘safe’ activities we never learn that we are capable of coping with normal levels of risk
• Fighting back or becoming angry as a way of defending ourselves may unintentionally push people away, or create conflict in our lives
• Appeasing others can, unintentionally, lead to the frustration of our own needs never being met
• Cutting off from people can, unintentionally, mean that others don’t understand what you are going through
• Drinking alcohol to cope (or to sleep) can feel like it is helping in the short term but tends to make things worse in the long run

These are just some examples of unintended consequences resulting from our best efforts to cope with distress. You may experience others that are not listed here.

How do you try to cope with distress caused by PTSD? Can you think of any unintended consequences to your best efforts to cope?

Part 2:

Coping with PTSD

Techniques to Cope with the Symptoms of PTSD

The techniques in the rest of this booklet are designed to help you to cope with some of the troubling symptoms of PTSD. We don’t expect that all of these techniques will be helpful for everyone, but would expect some to suit you more than others. Try them out, and see which make the biggest difference to your life.

Tips for practicing

• Don’t overload yourself. Pick one technique at a time and focus on that one for a while
• Try writing down a technique on a small card to take out with you. We don’t get much choice over what sets off our threat system and we need to be prepared to calm it in different situations
• If you feel comfortable, you could also ask friends or family to help you put some of these ideas into practice
• Don’t beat yourself up! These techniques are all about learning to calm yourself Do persevere, but if you find that a technique does not appear to be working for you, don’t worry and move onto another technique. Not every technique will be for you. Be kind to yourself and remember that you are doing the best you can

Understanding PTSD: My PTSD symptoms

The first step in coping with PTSD is to understand how it affects you. Look at the symptoms below, and tick any that have affected you at least twice in the last week.

[  ] Upsetting thoughts or memories about the event that have come into your mind against your will

[  ] Upsetting dreams about the event

[  ] Acting or feeling as though the event were happening again

[  ] Feeling upset by reminders of the event

[  ] Bodily reactions (such as fast heartbeat, stomach churning, sweatiness, dizziness) when reminded of the event

[  ] Difficulty falling or staying asleep

[  ] Irritability or outbursts of anger

[  ] Difficulty concentrating

[  ] Heightened awareness of potential dangers to yourself and others

[  ] Being jumpy or being startled at something unexpected

Understanding PTSD: My thoughts and beliefs

Trauma affects how we think about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. These thoughts and beliefs can powerfully affect how we live our lives. It is helpful to reflect on how trauma has affected us. Write down your answers to the following questions.

Things I thought as I was experiencing trauma

______________________________________________________

How my trauma has affected the way I think about myself

______________________________________________________

How my trauma affected the way I think about other people

______________________________________________________

How my trauma affected the way I think about the world

______________________________________________________

Calming the threat system: Relaxed Breathing

Controlling your breathing sends a signal to your threat system that everything is ok. Calm breathing is slow, relaxed, and from the diaphragm (‘belly breathing’), whereas anxious breathing is quick, tense, and high up in the chest.

1. Begin by sitting somewhere comfortable but supported
2. If you feel comfortable to do so close your eyes, otherwise stare off into the middle distance
3. Breathe in slowly and steadily for a count of 3
4. Breathe out slowly and steadily for a count of 5. Our bodies relax most on the out-breath
5. Repeat for a few minutes. It’s normal for your attention to wander off. If it does, just gently bring it back to focus on your breathing.

Calming the threat system: Colored Breathing

Another technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind is to use imagery while you breathe. Some people find it helpful to imagine breathing colored air. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

1. Imagine a color representing tension, or tense feelings
2. As you breathe, calmly and steadily, imagine breathing out air tinged with that tense color
3. See the colored air in your mind’s eye, and watch as you breathe it out and it floats away
4. Allow the tense colored air to become paler and paler, as you breathe out all of the tension
5. Now bring to mind a color representing calming, soothing feelings
6. Imagine breathing in this relaxed colored air
7. Just notice what happens in your body as you imagine breathing in the relaxed air
8. Continue breathing this way for a few minutes

Calming the threat system: Swing Breathing

Swing breathing is another imagery technique for slowing your breathing and calming your mind. You can memorize these instructions, you could ask someone to read then slowly for you, or you could record yourself speaking them and then listen to the recording.

Allow your breathing to become slower … and more regular. Just focusing your attention on your breath … on the air flowing in … and out … of your mouth and nose.

Your breathing finding a steady rhythm. Breathing gently from low down in the belly. Taking slow steady breaths. Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling … Breathing in gently … and slowly and smoothly exhaling.

And as you continue to breathe slowly and gently … in a rhythm that’s comfortable to you … I’d like you to imagine … and then begin to feel … that you’re on a swing. Gently swinging backwards … and forwards … backwards … and forwards … finding that you’re swinging in rhythm with your breathing … just gently swinging … relaxed and peaceful. Pay attention to how it feels to swing gently forwards … and backwards … peaceful … relaxed … at ease. Just swinging gently … and smoothly … smoothly .. and gently.

And you can carry on breathing calmly and gently for as long as you like. Relaxing into this gentle rhythm more and more as time goes by.

Calming the threat system: Muscle relaxation

When we feel under threat our muscles tense up – ready to fight or take flight. Keeping the muscles tense is one of the body’s ways of trying to keep you safe. One way of letting your body know that you are safe is to deliberately relax all of your muscles.

Progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing, then relaxing, all of the muscle groups in turn. Find a comfortable spot, sitting or lying down. Then, for each of the muscle groups in turn, follow this pattern:

1. Tense the muscles
2. Notice the tension for a few moments
3. Release
4. Notice the sensation of relaxation as the tension drains away

Relax each of the muscle groups in turn:

• Fists
• Upper arms
• Shoulders (lift up slightly)
• Upper back (shoulders back slightly)
• Stomach
• Buttocks
• Thighs
• Lower legs / calves
• Feet
• Neck (gently move neck back)
• Forehead
• Muscles around eyes (scrunch face up)
• Jaw

Calming the threat system: Creating a safe place

A safe place is somewhere that you create using your mind and imagination. It is a place that you can go anytime, wherever you are. For some people, it is a place that they remember from their past as being particularly safe and calm.

For others, they cannot easily remember a time like this from their past and so they work on creating one for themselves now. Either way, the same process applies. You can have more than one safe place and it can change over time as you wish. It is your creation and your own personal ideal.

It is useful for your safe place to have certain qualities though: it needs to be a place you feel calm, not judged, warm, free and above all safe.

How to create a safe place:

1. If you feel comfortable enough, close your eyes and take a deep breath in and count to three. Then breathe out slowly to the count of five. Do this several times. As before, spend some time slowing down and controlling your breathing until you reach a calm and soothing rhythm. As you breathe in, imagine you are breathing in a sense of safeness and relaxation. As you breathe out, imagine you are breathing out all of the tension in your body.
2. Begin to imagine a place where you feel calm – where are you?
3. Focus on what you can see, take a minute to look all around you in your mind. You may perhaps even turn around to see what’s behind. Concentrate on any objects that you can see, the colors around you and areas of lightness and darkness.
4. Focus on what you can hear, take your time to notice the noises, even the subtle ones. What noises can you hear close by? What noises can you hear in the distance?
5. Focus on what you can smell. Again, take a minute to really notice the smells around you.
6. What can you feel? Is it hot or cold? Are there textures under your feet?
7. Focus on any taste in the image and notice this for a minute or two.
8. Now focus on how you feel in your body, feelings of calm and safety in this image. Focus on the release of tension. Where do you feel this feeling in your body?
9. Keep imagining your safe place in as much detail as possible and revisit that feeling of calm and safeness over and over, noticing where you feel it in your body.
10. Is there a word that might remind you of your safe place? If so, what is it? If you have a word, repeat it in your mind over and over as you keep your safe place in your mind.
11. When you are ready, take some deep breaths in again and slowly open your eyes, trying to hold onto that calm feeling.

Remember, you can come back to it whenever you want to. The easiest way to do this is to start by slowing down and controlling your body and to repeat the word that you picked that reminded you of your safe place. In doing so, it will be easier to return to your safe place whenever you would like.

Safe place:

Write a description of your safe place in as much detail as you can. Remember to include information from all your senses. What word have you chosen to remind you of your safe place?

Coping with memories: Use all of your senses 

When we are having a flashback, or as we wake up from a nightmare, our awareness of the things around us in the here-and-now can be diminished. Just as we can re-experience traumatic memories in all of our five senses, we can use those five senses to try and ‘ground’ us back in the present.

Sight

Look around you and use those sights to remind yourself that you’re in the present and that you are safe.

Touch

It can be helpful to carry an object with us that remind us that we are safe, such as a stress ball, a pebble, or a flower.

Hearing

Focus on all of the noises around you in the present moment. Use them to remind you of where you are.

Smell

Smell can be one of the most powerful ways of learning to soothe and comfort yourself Try using essential oils, your favorite plants, or any comforting aroma.

Taste

Strong tastes such as chewing gum can be helpful. For people who re-experience ‘taste memories’ it can be helpful to focus on the absence of taste in the present moment.

Coping with memories: 5-4-3-2-1

When our minds and bodies feel as if they are fully immersed in the past, using all of our senses at once can be a very effective way of bringing ourselves back into the present. Focus on:

5 things you can see

1:

2:

3:

4:

5:

4 things you can feel / touch

1:

2:

3:

4:

3 things you can hear

1:

2:

3:

2 things you can smell

1:

2:

1 thing you can taste

1:

Coping with memories: Reminding yourself it was in the past

When a memory is triggered it can feel as if the traumatic event is happening all over again. Our minds and bodies can feel like we are back in the moment the trauma took place, rather than recognizing that we are revisiting a memory.

During a flashback, we often describe what we can see or sense in the present tense. For example, Alex said “he’s standing right in front of me and I can see him” whilst he was having a flashback.

To help put the memory in the past, it is useful to practice rephrasing your common thoughts about the event in the past tense, particularly whenever you have a flashback memory or after having a nightmare. This technique is most helpful while we are in the midst of a flashback. It may seem simple but it can be a powerful technique to help your brain, in the heat of the moment, remember that it is not happening all over again. Here are some examples

Write your most common thoughts when you’re having a flashback and then rephrase them so they are in the past. Practice saying them to yourself often.

Coping with memories: It’s just a memory

Remember, our brains (particularly our amygdala) don’t care whether something is happening in real life or whether it is a memory – our minds and bodies react in the same way by activating the threat system.

A simple yet effective technique is reminding yourself that you are responding to a memory rather than the actual event. This can be helpful in reminding your brain that you are not, in fact, back in danger. Try writing a statement down on a card to carry round with you.

For example, Alex would write down and look at the phrase:

When I was attacked the man stood right in front of me, he is not in front of me now. I am just remembering the memory of when I was attacked. THIS IS MY MIND AND BODY REACHING TO A MEMORY. IT IS NOT HAPPENING AGAIN.

If you feel comfortable with it, you may also consider asking your partner or a friend to gently remind you that you are responding to a memory, that the trauma is not happening again, and that you are safe.

Coping with memories: Fast forward to safety

When we are bothered by flashbacks we often forget that we can have control over the memories and that we can control our own minds. It is very important to remind ourselves that we are safe, and that the events are over. One way to do this is to think of our memories as being like a video tape, and to remember that we can fast forward it.

Here are some steps in helping you train your mind to ‘fast forward to safety’

1) Think of your traumatic event

2) Think about the first time you felt safe afterwards – really picture this scene as clearly as you can in your mind. Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? How did you know that you were safe? Don’t forget to think of all five of your senses.

3) Write down a description of this moment of safety.

4) When you have a flashback, practice ‘fast forwarding’ to this safe time. Quickly see everything that happened after the moment in the flashback, and then focus on the feeling of safety telling yourself that it is in the past. Try and focus on how this safety feels in your body. Try and stay with that feeling of safety for as long as possible.

The more you practice this, the better your brain will get at putting these memories in the past.

Coping with memories: The differences between then and now

Remind yourself of things that have changed since the time of the trauma. For example, if you have had your birthday you can remind yourself “I am 45 now and was 44 when I was in a car accident”. You may have changed your physical appearance and remind yourself “I have long hair now but it was short when I witnessed the robbery”

What has changed for you since you experienced the traumatic event?

Coping with memories: Grounding the date

Remind yourself the current date, where you are, the time of day etc. For example, “today is Thursday 5th May 2017. I am at work. It is 10:55am. It is spring and it is sunny outside. I am safe. I survived”. You may take this further by writing down and reminding yourself that the traumatic event took place at another time. For example, it took place on a winter afternoon in December.

When did the traumatic event take place? What is the current date? Can you describe the here-and-now?

Coping with memories: Noticing triggers for flash backs

Flashbacks and intrusive memories can be triggered by reminders that are linked to the traumatic event: someone who has been in a car accident might be triggered by the sight of certain cars, the sound or traffic, or sirens.

Like trauma memories, the mind and body doesn’t seem to be able to recognize that these things (i.e. sights, sounds, smells etc.) are no longer signs of danger. Instead, the mind and body react as if they are under threat. It is important, therefore, to try to train the brain to break the link between then and now and to help the brain recognize that these things are no longer signs of danger.

The first part is to first identify what might trigger your flashbacks and intrusive memories.

Some of Alex’s triggers were:

• Knives
• People standing behind me
• Dark streets

Some of my triggers are:

Coping with memories: Flashback triggers – breaking the link

Next, systematically think about the differences between what you experienced during the trauma and how different things are now.

Helping with self-harm

People self-harm for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it is to cope with powerful emotions, to distract from something overwhelming, or to feel something instead of feeling numb. Unfortunately, it can come with severe unintended consequences, such as causing lasting physical damage to our bodies. This can be a dangerous way of trying to cope.

Self-harm often serves a purpose, so just trying “nor to do it” can feel impossible. It can be helpful to find out more about the reasons why you self-harm and then try a different behavior instead of harming yourself.

Working out why I self-harm

[  ] To express pain and strong emotion

[  ] To deal with anger

[  ] To feel something when I feel numb and disconnected

[  ] To calm down

[  ] To see blood

Any other reasons:

What are my triggers?

What could I substitute instead of self-harm?

If you self-harm to… express pain and intense emotion, try writing down your feelings, drawing or painting how you feel, writing down difficult feelings then ripping them up, or listening to music which expresses how you’re feeling.

If you self-injure to… deal with anger that you cannot express openly, try working through those feelings by doing something different – running, dancing fast, screaming, punching a pillow, throwing something, ripping something apart.

If you hurt yourself in order to… feel something when you feel numb inside, hold ice cubes in one hand and try to crush them, hold a package of frozen food, take a very cold shower, chew something with a very strong taste (like chili peppers, raw ginger, or a grapefruit peel), wear an elastic rubber band around your wrist and snap it (in moderation to avoid bruising).

If you inflict physical pain to… calm yourself, try taking a bubble bath, doing deep breathing, writing in a journal, drawing, or doing some yoga.

If you self-harm to… see blood, try drawing a red ink line where you would usually cut yourself, in combination with any of the other suggestions above.

Remember, understanding and knowledge are key. Try to make a note of every time you feel the urge to harm yourself. Write down what was happening at that time and what was going through your mind. Also, make a note of what you did to cope, taking care to write down which behaviors you found helpful and which ones were less helpful to channel and soothe your feelings of distress.

Sleeping better: Sleep hygiene

PTSD often affects our ability to sleep. We may have difficulty getting to sleep if we lie in bed thinking about how our life has changed and wondering if things will get better. We may avoid going to sleep for fear that we might have more nightmares. If we do manage to get to sleep we may then wake up after experiencing nightmares. It is normal to have difficulty getting back to sleep.

The tips and ideas below have been selected to try and help you increase the chance of getting better sleep.

1. Bed is for sleeping and sleeping happens at night-time

• Try and keep your bedroom and bed for sleeping only
• Avoid sleeping in the day
• Develop a routine before bed time such as having a relaxing bath or listening to some relaxing music and go to bed at around the same time each night. Try and wake up around the same time each morning. Small children find habits and routines comforting, and the same things work for adults too. As adults, we forget that these things apply to us as well
• If you cannot sleep after 30 minutes, get up and try an activity such as listening to some music. Do this for about 15 minutes then return to bed and try and sleep. Repeat this as often as is necessary until you go to sleep
• Make your bedroom a nice place to sleep – try smells or flowers (or some new bed sheets!)

2. Be kind to your body

• Do not go to bed hungry
• Try and avoid spicy food late in the day as this can act as a stimulant in our bodies
• Reduce caffeine but definitely avoid caffeine after 4pm- remember caffeine is also found in tea and fizzy drinks like pop. You can buy de-caffeinated versions of these drinks if needed
• Although alcohol can initially make us feel sleepy, it stops us from experiencing restful sleep and is not great for PTSD or Adrenal Fatigue. It can also make it harder to fall asleep again, if you wake up in the middle of the night

Sleeping better: Coping with nightmares

Practice calming yourself down after a nightmare by using any of the previous techniques.

Having a card with the information from the tips previously tried may help ground you back in the moment. For example, you may have a card with the phrase ‘I am safe, it is May 2011 and I am in my bedroom’ by your bedside to read after you wake from a nightmare.

Having a picture that reminds you of the present can also be useful to have by your bedside if waking from a nightmare as it will help your brain focus on the present and calm your threat system quicker.

Taking a smell to bed and having it ready can, again, be a useful way to help your brain remember where you are following a nightmare. A calm and soothing smell can also help you get off back off to sleep after a nightmare.

Try: Any of the other grounding strategies that you have developed can be helpful if you wake from a nightmare

Sleeping better: Re-scripting nightmares

If you experience frequent nightmares, especially the same or similar dream over and over, then research has shown that you can ‘rescript’ the nightmare to make it much less powerful. For example, someone who had nightmares about being in a road traffic accident imagined that the road was made of marshmallows and was soft and bouncy.

Method 1

Spend time in the day thinking of the nightmare but practicing a different ending: an ending you would prefer and that makes you feel safe. Practice the repeat ending over and over in your imagination. The more you can rehearse new ending the better chance your brain has of remembering it. It might also be helpful to talk through your nightmares with someone else. It doesn’t matter how odd the new ending might be, or that it didn’t really happen.

Method 2

Think about your nightmare from the perspective of a Hollywood script writer:

1. Write down your nightmare as though it were a story
2. Think about how you would want to feel different if you could change the nightmare
3. Change some of the events in the nightmare that would lead to the new feeling
4. Write the new ‘script’ for the nightmare. Rehearse it to yourself.

Part 3:

The Future

Recovering from PTSD

What we know about PTSD is that symptoms continue because the trauma memory only contains information from the threat system, instead of information from the thinking part of the brain. Because of the distress caused when our threat system gets set off we do our best to avoid thinking or talking about the trauma, or avoiding certain people and places.

Whilst this makes us feel better in the short term, avoidance keeps the trauma memory stuck and means that our threat system continues to get set off at even the smallest sign of danger.

Therapy for PTSD involves reprocessing trauma memories – approaching them instead of avoiding them – and making sense of what they mean. This is often best done with a skilled therapist, when you feel safe and ready enough.

Treatments for PTSD

Many different treatments have been developed for PTSD. Research has shown that they can be extremely effective. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends a few therapies :

1. Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) Involves talking in detail about the events you experienced. Your therapist will go through the events with you and will help you to make sense of what happened.
2. Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) is suitable for people who have experienced multiple traumas 
3. Compassion-Focused CBT is helpful for people who experience a lot of shame or self-criticism.
4. Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) – Involves holding an image of your trauma in mind while your therapist guides you in making specific kinds of eye movements. This method can be effective but the previous 3 methods are the most effective for processing trauma.

Your coach or therapist will be able to talk you through different treatment options.