You probably all heard of the Chinese water torture where a drop of water just keeps dripping on your forehead. It is not the drop that drives you insane but the endless drops of water and names are like that. It is not the wrong pronoun or calling you a name that gets to you but the use of the wrong pronoun over and over. There is a name for that, it is called microagression. It doesn’t have to be one person who does it but the sum of all of the wrong pronouns.
So we tell ourselves that it doesn’t bother us, but when we face it day in and day out it chips away at us and it becomes like a wound that never heals. So how do we counter that wearing away on our soul?
Back when I was in school for my Masters in Social Work, I did an Independent Study class and I developed a curriculum for a class working with transgender clients. As I was working on the project, my faculty advisor asked me to looking at having a class to teach coping skills and he gave me text book on coping skills. As I was reading it to see what I could use in my lecture I realized that on my own I had developed many of the coping skills that were mentioned in the book.
One of the problems that I had when I was transitioning was standing in-line at a checkout counter. To overcome my anxiety of the trapped feeling that I had standing there, I distracted myself by reading the magazine covers or the newspaper headline on the racks. That was one of the coping skills that the book mentioned.
So what are some of the grounding techniques (No not electrical grounding, but your inner self, to be present in the moment.) that you can use…
Well the first one is like I said distraction, do something to take your mind off of what is causing your anxiety. You can distract yourself like I was doing by reading, count the number of different types of candy & bubble gum in the racks. Count the number of people who are wearing blue or like the one time I was sent to the principal office in high school, count the number of holes in a ceiling tile. One of the recommended techniques is to wear a rubber band on you wrist and snap it to distract yourself.
You can use imagery or visualizing. That guy that is calling you a pervert, imagine him in a dress or that there is a big bird that is shitting on his head. Or imagine yourself in a safe welcoming place, in a field of flowers, sitting out on a beach or other peaceful locations for you. Mine is a waterfall that I have been to, I just imagine myself sitting and looking at the water and listening to the water as it splashes off the rock.
Breathing… square breathing, breathing from the chest, a sigh and other breathing techniques.
There is also something called Progressive Muscle Relaxation where you try to relax one muscle at a time in your body.
For me I use to get the fight or flight syndrome and most of the time for me was flight, I just wanted to run out of there as fast as I could. But over time I have learned that the vast majority of people just don’t care about you and the one or two that do are idiots.
Are there places that I avoid, yes. One place is the hardware store up near where our family cottage is in New Hampshire, the teenagers that work there are a bunch of jerks and I much rather drive 40 miles to the big box store then face those idiots again. No amount of coping skills would get me to go back there again.
There are a number of good websites that have grounding techniques; here are some of them…
So we tell ourselves that it doesn’t bother us, but when we face it day in and day out it chips away at us and it becomes like a wound that never heals. So how do we counter that wearing away on our soul?
Back when I was in school for my Masters in Social Work, I did an Independent Study class and I developed a curriculum for a class working with transgender clients. As I was working on the project, my faculty advisor asked me to looking at having a class to teach coping skills and he gave me text book on coping skills. As I was reading it to see what I could use in my lecture I realized that on my own I had developed many of the coping skills that were mentioned in the book.
One of the problems that I had when I was transitioning was standing in-line at a checkout counter. To overcome my anxiety of the trapped feeling that I had standing there, I distracted myself by reading the magazine covers or the newspaper headline on the racks. That was one of the coping skills that the book mentioned.
So what are some of the grounding techniques (No not electrical grounding, but your inner self, to be present in the moment.) that you can use…
Well the first one is like I said distraction, do something to take your mind off of what is causing your anxiety. You can distract yourself like I was doing by reading, count the number of different types of candy & bubble gum in the racks. Count the number of people who are wearing blue or like the one time I was sent to the principal office in high school, count the number of holes in a ceiling tile. One of the recommended techniques is to wear a rubber band on you wrist and snap it to distract yourself.
You can use imagery or visualizing. That guy that is calling you a pervert, imagine him in a dress or that there is a big bird that is shitting on his head. Or imagine yourself in a safe welcoming place, in a field of flowers, sitting out on a beach or other peaceful locations for you. Mine is a waterfall that I have been to, I just imagine myself sitting and looking at the water and listening to the water as it splashes off the rock.
Breathing… square breathing, breathing from the chest, a sigh and other breathing techniques.
There is also something called Progressive Muscle Relaxation where you try to relax one muscle at a time in your body.
For me I use to get the fight or flight syndrome and most of the time for me was flight, I just wanted to run out of there as fast as I could. But over time I have learned that the vast majority of people just don’t care about you and the one or two that do are idiots.
Are there places that I avoid, yes. One place is the hardware store up near where our family cottage is in New Hampshire, the teenagers that work there are a bunch of jerks and I much rather drive 40 miles to the big box store then face those idiots again. No amount of coping skills would get me to go back there again.
There are a number of good websites that have grounding techniques; here are some of them…
- Coping Skills for Trauma
- Progressive Muscle Relaxation
- Top 21 Anxiety Grounding Techniques
- Coping with Anxiety and Panic
And here is a video that I like…
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