Seeking Safety
Identify signs of danger and safety for trauma and substance abuse
What are red and green flags
The idea that two conflicting statements can both be true at the same time.
What is dialectics.
The ability to respond to a challenge and adapt to changed circumstances.
What is resiliency?
Muscle tension, stomach knots, clenched fists, pounding heart, grinding teeth, blood rushing to your face.
What are common anger cues?
Magnification/minimization, catastrophizing, overgeneralizing, magical thinking, personalization, jumping to conclusions, emotional reasoning, disqualifying the positive, "should" statements, all-or-nothing thinking.
What are cognitive distortions?
What to do during mild, moderate, and extreme levels of emotional distress.
What are safety plans?
Communicates to another person that his or her feelings, thoughts, and actions make sense and are understandable in a particular situation.
What is validation
It undermines our ability to bounce back (be resilient) from stressful situations and can often make situations more stressful
What is substance use?
"Take some space", "it's not worth it", "in a year will I care about this", "does this really matter in the grand scheme of things".
What are reminders?
Speak assertively, body language, suggest an alternative, change the subject, confront the aggressor
What are refusal skills?
Abusive partners/parents/friends, and emotional obstacles (i.e. if I don't get help right now I will go into crisis).
Communicates through words or actions that another person’s feelings, thoughts, and actions in a situation make no sense are manipulative or “stupid” or an overreaction or not worthy of your time, interest or respect.
What is invalidation
Practicing them helps you achieve goals like saving for a new car, living a healthier life, achieving abstinence, or performing harm reduction
What are habits?
Deep breathing, backwards counting, pleasant imagery.
What are reducers?
Challenging or making an active effort to change maladaptive thoughts.
What is cognitive restructuring?
A healthy risk, essential to recovery that often becomes more difficult with trauma and substance use.
What is asking for help?
Helps us reduce emotional and physical arousal, reduces vulnerability to emotion mind and thus helps us access wise mind and helps in processing information.
Which in turn enhances our ability to access and select effective responses
Why do we self-validate?
Two methods used to manage stress during a transition.
What are deep breathing and help yourself?
Can be long term, short term, internal, or external
What are types of consequences?
What is the Functional Analysis of Substance Use (FASU)?
Building up to danger (not all or none events, rather gradual buildups that allow time to save yourself)
What is BUDDING?
Acknowledging an experience as significant without surrendering your stance.
What is the difference between validating and agreeing?
Things we do automatically that often do not align with our overall goals.
What are mindless habits?
The formula/framework used to consider potential consequences of your actions.
This should only be done as a last resort if the person is not listening to your assertive communication and is not respecting your boundary.