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Recovery Club

About Recovery Club
Share experiences and explore day-to-day coping strategies for complex mental health issues.
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rav3n||Last message about 18 hours ago
Wind-down Wednesdays

Welcome to Wind-down Wednesdays where we work through a new grounding or soothing tool on every second Wednesday! 🌺 The purpose of this thread is To learn more about various grounding/soothing strategies (can add them into your self-care toolbox) To understand why we do it and how it works in calming us down To create a safe space for members to visit whenever they need to wind down and catch their breath. You can work on the strategy by yourself here, or tag community members to join you (please be mindful of our guidelines - remember that members may not always respond immediately, and let’s not place pressure on others to respond) Promote self-care and self-reliance in regulating your emotions! Got a grounding tool/soothing strategy you’d like to share on this thread? Email us (team@saneforums.org) to let us know and we’ll save you a Wednesday slot! 😊   The first grounding tool we’ll be exploring is the 3-3-3 technique. 3-3-3: Name 3 things you see: scan the space around you. For each item you identify, really focus on the details of it – what colour is it? Is it heavy or light? Big or small? What’s the texture of the object? Name 3 things you hear: what are some sounds near you or far from you, are they soft or loud? Listen closely to identify them. Move 3 parts of your body: it can be light or dramatic movements such as slowly rolling your shoulders, clenching and unclenching your fists, wiggling your fingers and toes, jumping up and down, shaking your wrists, etc.   So how does this work? Well, when we’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed, it can sometimes trigger a stress response where our body’s fight-flight-freeze system is activated, which you can learn more about here: The Four 'F' Trauma Responses - SANE Forums. This system is typically activated when our body identifies a physical threat, our body enters a heightened state of arousal to help survive – this can look like increased heart rate, increased muscle tension, decreased appetite, etc. When our anxious thoughts keep activating this heightened state of arousal, it can lead to a very dysregulated nervous system where our bodies keep reacting out of proportion to the threat, making it hard to calm down. Moving our focus from internal things (like anxious thoughts/feelings) to external things (like what we can see/hear), helps us slow things down and calm the stress response. It gives our body a chance to focus on things that it perceived as non-threatening (i.e. identifying a cup or a bird flying around), which gives our body a chance to slowly calm down. Practicing grounding techniques regularly can help regulate the nervous system with time. For more information, feel free to read this article: 3-3-3 Rule for Anxiety: How to Use, Scientific Basis, Other Coping Strategies Now let’s give it a go! Feel free to share the 3 things you saw, heard and the 3 body parts you moved – and any other reflections you’d like to add. 

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avant-garde||Last message about 2 months ago
Mother's Day (TW)

So Mother's Day is on Sunday and if you're anything like me, it's a day you typically dread. Whether you're a mother yourself or you want to be a mum or your mum just wasn't great, it's a hard day isn't it?  You see all the beautiful gifts for mums in stores and it's hard, it's a day where you can and probably do, really miss your mum.    I'm a mother, my children are not on this earth, but I'm no less a mother. I can't be a part of my mother's life because it would put me in danger. But every mother's Day and special event I go to a public phone box and send her a message telling her that I love her and I'm ok.   5 years ago I wrote this   I am different in that I embrace my inner child and she is very much a conscious entity in me, and well she surprised me today. She made me pancakes and even bought me a present, and no I'm not crazy, she is the part of me that got neglected as a child, she never got to be that and she sees me as her mum, which is the sweetest thing and I love her like I do each of my angels in heaven.   I am generally a grieving mess on mothers day, but it's something different today, she made me feel like a mum and I love her all the more for it. I think she has started a new tradition today, and I think it might just be a healthy tradition. That the world may forget you or not count you as a mother, because you may not have actually have a child on this earth, but I now believe we deserve to be celebrated too. So yes, make yourself a nice breakfast like your kids would and get yourself a present, ask yourself 'what would they get me, something I wouldn't get myself' and take care of you!   You are no less a mother. The world may forget you, but don't forget yourself.   This tradition I am glad to say has carried on, even when I was homeless, to love myself as they would have loved me.    Yes I miss my mum on mother's Day and throughout the year, but do something she would have enjoyed and remember her in that moment, in the moments that she behaved like a mother.   Make space for her memory and make space for your grief.    @Ru-bee @RiverSeal @Jynx @rav3n @tyme 

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