Finding Your Footing
What signals in your body, emotions, mind, or spirit help you understand when you find yourself out of step? Confusion, dissociation, emptiness, fatigue, irritability, intrusive thoughts, numbing, stomach pains, tight muscles, overwhelm, panic attacks, etc. provide crucial information about you. Take a moment to assess what happens to you.
If your family system taught abuse, emotional toughness, no openness, perfectionism, and/or rejected the idea of asking for help, parents and caregivers modeled minimal comforting, forgiveness, listening, and processing of feelings. Perhaps the family motto was hurtful, and phrases come to mind like, “suck it up,” “seen but never heard,” or “no mistakes allowed.” Maybe, you recall positive ones such as, “kindness matters,” “seek resolve,” or “stand together.” What message(s) represent your family system? Such internal dialogue is not often considered.
When family systems teach members to deny signals, people learn to push them further down and distance themselves from valuable cues. Households where abuse and trauma show-up, devalue and silence expression and understanding. The fire alarm is always going off! Healthy coping and expression skills are never shown. In these environments, people live out, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” The opportunity to understand more about self and relationships is limited. Also, destructive imprints from families lead to toxic patterns with self and others, passing from one generation to the next.
How do you find your footing again? What are some practical ways to help you and your family? First and foremost, show up for yourself and your people! Learn to cultivate here and now moments, feel and deal, create an environment of personal and family trust, and foster openness. The concept of distress tolerance is one area to start practicing with yourself and your family. Distress tolerance skills involve learning how to:
Self-Soothe (find calming activities)
Distract (remove self from a situation to focus on something else)
TIPP (tipp the temperature with cold water, intense exercise, paced breathing and/or paired muscle relaxation)
STOP (prevent yourself from engaging in impulsive behavior)
Radical Acceptance (let go of the need to control)
Weigh pros and cons (evaluate both sides)
IMPROVE the moment (imagery, meaning, prayer, relaxation, one thing in the moment, vacay from thoughts, and encouragement)
Also, discoveries of self and family are made by evaluating family system expectations and rules, along with recognizing generational trauma patterns. As children become adults, imprints persist without a person’s reflection and awareness of their personal history. Exploration and intentionality are everything!
Finding Your Footing Journal Prompts
What are the spoken and unspoken expectations and rules in your family system?
As you look at your life, what expectations and rules no longer serve you or your family?
What expectations and rules need adopting, to grow and thrive?
What is the untold story you need to express about yourself or family relationship(s)?
How might you adjust your boundaries for yourself and in your family’s life, in order to achieve good mental health?
Finding Your Footing Resources
Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory, Deb Dana
How We Love, Expanded Edition: Discover Your Love Style, Enhance Your Marriage, Milan & Kay Yerkovich (Christian)
How We Love Our Kids: The Five Love Styles of Parenting, Milan & Kay Yerkovich (Christian)
Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage, Brene’ Brown
