What skills can't you do without?

[Abstract]

Should have said "function without".

What day to day week to week skills keep you going - and when you stop have you start falling apart? To do with any aspect of functioning. I'm realising more and more that complacency does not work. Thank you everyone. :inlove:

 

[Vee]

I learned a great skill in grief counseling called, "Is this feeling useful?" So after a tragic death happens, we get a lot of feelings. When you get a feeling you're supposed to ask yourself, "Is this feeling useful?" So if it is, you pay attention to it, if it's not, you dismiss it. The goal is to not let certain feelings control you.

 

[honeymask]

I know this sounds cliche, but meditating is one of mine. Whenever I feel the anxiety and panic starting to creep back in, I remind myself that though my mind is capable of such chaos, it is also capable of the calm I feel when I am meditating. Sometimes this is enough to help pull me out.
Another is staying hydrated, I've noticed that when I get dehydrated my anxiety gets 10x worse so I always have a bottle of ice water with me.
The last is staying on a sleep schedule and having a nourishing night routine. If I am lacking in sleep all my symptoms get so much worse. I've noticed that watching ASMR or doing a guided mediation before bed reduces my nightmares and improves my sleep quality.
I am interested to hear what others use to help them!

 

[Abstract]

Thank you so much @Vee and @honeymask
Vee, I imagine acknowledging the feeling to start is good and thereafter can see how it is great to see what you keep and discard. Totally get when there is something that is said that really hits home and helps you.

Honeymask, when it comes to this stuff I didn't think anything is cliche. All this things are also important for me. Except I didn't know what ASMR was!

I'm trying to figure some new stuff out and reconnect with old realisations and understandings so this is already helpful. :tup: Also starting to think that some things will continue to need me actively and consciously being aware of them and doing them rather than what I had previously started to think - that they eventually happen completely automatically. It seems 10 years of practice doesn't automatically win over 40 odd year life. Partial rather than full neuroplasticity.

 

[Vee]

Remember, when doing something new, there is always a learning curve. Don't beat yourself up when you don't get the results you want right away. We are usually our own harshest critics.

 

[whiteraven]

The practice of mindfulness. It saved my life once and only when I can keep it up on a moment-by-moment basis am I able to function.

 

[ILoveLife]

Nature.
Just walking with fresh air is often enough too.

 

[Ronin]

Sense of time / purpose / movement (ability to move? Both having a purpose, and time passing).

Lot of personality, interpersonal, and other skills falling into locks with these three constants.

 

[grit]

Such a great post. I am very new to recovering this...I feel like a baby who walks for the first time without any help!

I have had a very functional side that got me through a lot of things but what I learned or figured in therapy: That functional side is at present moment and at peace. Every time I mediated in my life it was precisely because I ventured out from that centered, authentic side of me. So what skill that keeps me function?

Knowing my panic, anxiety, comatose like state, critical, strong defense and all my other baby parts are just branches and the centre is where I belong and the route to that is being kind and compassionate to all my other branches until they find their rightful corner in my functional and central state.

It is like I am an octopus and I realized all my symptoms/states/baby parts/primitive states were my legs and I had a centre!

Now I meditate not to bring any down but to keep the peace more mindful.

a lot to say about this but I will leave it at knowing and acknowledging my authentic centre self (that was too scared all these years).

 

[bigstrongtree]

Grounding.
Using an imaginary dial to turn up or down my emotions.

 

[Changing4Best]

Painting pictures and sharing them with folks. I especially love giving them to people IRL and watching their faces as they receive them. I often include a gift card too, so they open the card to find a post card sized painting, rather than a check or money. This cheers me up so, and keeps my focus off of me and on others. It takes some doing to think up a painting that this particular person (or that one) will love. Keeping my mind active with all that is healthy. This is my "Art Therapy."

This one is called Camille's Mountains.

 

[Abstract]

Gosh. Thank you @Vee @whiteraven @Sietz @Ronin @grit @bigstrongtree @Changing4Best for sharing. So much of what you describe resonates with me. Its good for me to ground what I know works for me by discussing it here. Hearing what works for you. I had fallen off the wagon in some respects in recent months. Am learning new things all the time too of course. Or having deeper realisations.

Keep wanting to post mine and then can't chose. Think of more and more going right back. Like the foundations that underpinned the rest. I did a whole lot of work before I was diagnosed or even considered trauma. Years and years of work. Then the huge changes happened in my life after this and after identifying and treating dissociation.

Moment by moment mindfulness? Absolute ife changer. Fundamentals such as basic self care? Essentials.

Consciously identifying and acknowledging emotions was a total life changer for me and incredibly hard to do at first. Sadly, so far along, it seems I still need to do this consciously and speak about it to myself. I have not been facing my emotions as I need to do, with consequences.

Loove the tentacle analogy.

Miraculously I can at times be genuinely self caring towards myself these days. That took about 10 years of active hard work to get to that point. Other than the many years before that of all sorts of other work on it, in a different way. I need to take this to the next level somehow.