Self-care is a popular term often associated with directing energy towards one’s own wellbeing and health, but the reality is that it can encompass as many different meanings as there are people who practice it. In the turbulence of life, it is natural to experience traumas and stressors that make self-care an essential tool to maintaining a happy and fulfilling lifestyle. Between those constant stressors and the oversaturation of advice out there, it can be hard to know where to begin. This May for Mental Health Awareness Month, we sat down with our own expert Carole Thompson, DVSN’s Director of Resilience & Empowerment Initiatives and co-facilitator of our Support Groups, to chat about her insights on self-care, the benefits and challenges of practicing self-care for domestic violence victims, survivors, and those who support them, and how anyone can incorporate elements of self-care into their life.
Thank you for talking with us about self-care. Can you tell us a bit more about your background and role with DVSN?
My background is in counseling psychology and higher education. I did a lot of wellness work in the higher ed realm and then came into the domestic violence field somewhat by accident. I earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology and then completed a certificate in trauma stress studies. About 20 years ago, I enrolled in a popular life coaching certificate program as well. Just like in domestic violence work, life coaching is based on the empowerment model. I borrowed terminology from life coaching to use in DVSN’s Advocate Training. We teach that the client is “creative, resourceful, and whole.”
I became interested in self-care practices and wellness during my graduate school practicum where I helped to schedule sessions on various healing and self-care modalities at the University Wellness Center. That position exposed me to many of the experts in the Wellness field at the time and gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in several techniques and topics. That was an eye-opening experience for me and inspired my work going forward.
In my [previous] position at an agency called The Second Step, I created a mentoring program for survivors rooted in the principles of Empowerment, Relational Healing, and Self-Care, with the core idea that in order for any of us to move forward in our lives, no matter what our trauma is, we need to find ways to pay attention in the moment, to trust our intuition, and to determine what we need in order to invite balance into our lives going forward. What we think about as “self-care” or “well-being practice” has been my lifelong passion and journey, as well as an ongoing challenge. Many of the self-care techniques that have become part of my day-to-day practice are also tools that I can use with clients in the moment, or in training with DVSN Advocates, police partners, and community members. All this stuff is very easily shared and it’s something that, once we learn it, becomes second nature.
What kind of self-care techniques do you teach in DVSN’s Advocate Training?
In general, I try to have people think about what they can build into their lives to bring themselves to better health. But also, what can we do every single day? In the moment, what are some little mini practices that we can do when we get an upsetting phone call or we’re faced with a crisis? What can we do to help ourselves pause, even if it’s just for two minutes, to take a couple of long, deep breaths, or to make sure that we process a little bit before we react to something? Again, it’s something that I’m challenged by, too, and I’m always trying to hone that practice.
And so, in training, we end each day with different types of breath work or stretches, little examples to add to our wellness toolboxes as we experiment, and then we have a segment where we talk about the different types of self-care and why it’s important. Some people really react well to those things. And for other people, what works for you is not going to work for me, but there might be something that works for me that’s really powerful that nobody else sees the benefit in. I think of it as a menu of options. Let’s try all of these items on the menu and then we have an array to choose from.
Oftentimes, especially for Advocates and police officers who are sitting witness to somebody who’s in extreme pain, their reaction is similar to somebody who’s experiencing the traumatic event firsthand. That secondary traumatic stress makes it important for us to take care of our instrument while sitting with people that are in distress. We talk about the importance of activating our parasympathetic nervous system as a means to calm and restore balance after experiencing trauma. The same goes for cultivating ways to stay in balance in order to do our work without harming ourselves or our clients.
Our brains are hardwired to protect us in the face of danger. Our survival brain releases cortisol and adrenaline automatically stimulating a Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn. That reaction works in the moment to protect us, but eventually it becomes maladaptive. Activating our vagus nerve and our parasympathetic nervous system allows us to trigger a switch in our brains so that we’re moving into that rest and digest stage instead of remaining stuck in survival mode.
It’s about building practices that you can do in the moment and in the long term. I try to challenge people to take a look at that and to begin to build that into their own lives.
What kind of self-care techniques do you teach the members of your support groups? And is that ever different from what you do with trainee Advocates, police officers, and people in other support roles?
In the support groups, we do a lot of grounding. As the conversation goes on, people start to get a little activated. We’ll stop the conversation. We’ll do some breathing, get up and do the “Breath of Joy” or something else to let the tension dissipate so that we can come back and be present. We do a lot of laughing, too. You know, laughter is incredibly healing and very much a stress reliever. There’s a lot of gallows humor and very challenging language in our groups, which can be cathartic.
We do a lot of writing, too. A couple of the folks [in support groups] have kept journals or they enjoy writing poetry. Sometimes we open the group session with a piece hoping that participants would feel inspired by the message and thus guide the conversation. A few years back, we created a program called “Can You Hear Me Now?” [as part of DVSN’s Speaker Series]. We compiled everybody’s art and writing and created a presentation that wove together spoken word, poetry, art, and music. When you think about examples of self-care and well-being practices, the creative process is certainly another avenue for that.
We always leave 15 to 20 minutes at the end of each session to try different modalities. We have a couple of online folks that we really like. Jessica Ortner is a therapist out of New York who does a lot of work with the emotional freedom technique (EFT), where you tap on the meridians to release stress. There’s another woman, Emma McAdam, who is a former Marine and a therapist. She has a lot of videos that talk about trauma, where it manifests in the body, and techniques to release overwhelming symptoms. We try to find people that our clients will connect with.
We really believe there are so many ways to get at this, and there are many ways to explain it. So we try to find different techniques. Sherry, who is my co-leader in the [support] group, works with me to develop guided imageries and meditations for use in our groups. And we source many wonderful practitioners like Belleruth Naparstek, a researcher and clinician who has created a library of guided imagery videos that a lot of folks respond really positively to.
In training, I try to be mindful that we’re also in a room with some skeptical trainees who may already be rolling their eyes when we introduce the topic and some of the niche terminology. I want to make it as normalized as possible. And that’s why I bring in the science [behind self-care] and make the case for why this is important for everyone.
How do you find that self-care can look different for victims of DV compared to people who are not experiencing it?
I’m not sure it manifests differently. Every one of us, because we’re human, has experienced trauma in our lives. Looking at self-care through a trauma-informed lens means being mindful that we might want to think a little bit differently or more deeply when working with somebody who may be triggered in doing some of the self-care work we introduce them to. When we’re doing a guided imagery that encourages us to go within, it’s typical to close your eyes. But for somebody who is raw, in crisis, or has experienced trauma, it might be hard for them to close their eyes and be comfortable. We want to be mindful that the goal is to reduce stress and anxiety. We want to make sure that whatever tactic we’re trying or whatever modality we’re engaging in, we’re being mindful of the fact that we don’t want to trigger somebody’s trauma. The last thing we want to do is harm, so we must keep thinking that through.
How do you find that in-the-moment regulation techniques differ from larger scale self-care rituals?
It’s really about expanding our understanding of what this whole self-care thing is all about. It’s about what you can do in the moment. What are the tools that you have right now? Imagine you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t get back to sleep. What are some of the things that you can do right then and there, in the moment, to soothe yourself? How do you consciously get back into your body and ground yourself? What are some breath work techniques that we can do right now without having to think about it?
Finding these simple, easy-to-implement strategies is different than joining a Zumba class to get into shape. Zumba can also be a self-care technique, but that is quite different than focusing on grounding yourself and bringing yourself into balance in the moment. Certainly, the Zumba class and getting into shape is going to bring you into balance eventually, so that is a long-term goal. They are all part of the continuum, different flavors of the intention to build self-care rituals.
Self-Care is an accumulation of all these strategies, and it’s an ongoing practice of the things that work best for you. I think it’s a missed opportunity for so many people who are waiting for the time to join the boxing gym or do the big long-term goal. They’re losing the everyday opportunities that they could be using to build a calmer, more balanced life in the interim.
Could you walk us through some different types of self-care, such as physical, emotional, and environmental modalities?
With so many self-care modalities, the goal of most of them really is to balance body, mind, and spirit. Allowing ourselves to be in the moment and to be present through grounding work. As we are sitting in a certain posture, being thoughtful about taking that time, there’s a physicality to that. In different yoga postures, like downward dog, mountain pose, and all the different stretches, the goal is to move the body in such a way that maximizes each breath and grounds us. So, there’s a physical part of it, but there’s also a psychological part. I’ve been in yoga classes where a certain posture would bring on a release of emotions. I’ve held the child’s pose for a prolonged amount of time and burst into tears because it released some kind of grief. So, there’s a way in which, if done well and intentionally, self-care techniques can help us to get deeper into our unconscious selves releasing pent up emotions and stress.
It’s hard to parse them out, but I think if I were to just take the question at face value, an environmental modality to me could be mindfulness, like sitting on the beach and watching the sunset, or really appreciating nature, listening to the birds. Involving all the senses is also physical and psychological to me, but I’d also point out the emotional, spiritual component of sitting in wonder and just looking at this breathtaking experience. There’s a way in which nature brings us into balance. For someone spiritual, just the act of praying and releasing to the universe whatever is challenging you at the moment, that sense of being connected to something bigger than yourself can be incredibly grounding, uplifting, and emotionally satisfying.
What is one of the biggest misconceptions about self-care and what do you wish more people understood about it?
I wish more people understood that inviting balance into our lives is really about our day-to-day practice. And it doesn’t have to be something outside of us. It can be something we’re already doing that we can do in a more thoughtful way. These practices allow us to create symmetry between body, mind, and spirit that will help us release anxiety and activate our vagus nerve. Activating the vagus nerve, which is the nerve that goes from the brain to somewhere in our guts, can help to calm down our different organs, our heartbeat, and the adrenaline and hormones that are released.
For me, it’s about approaching something with a beginner’s mind. We notice stuff we might not have understood before [when] we’re coming into something that’s new for us. We’re not going to be experts at it right now, but every time we try it, we notice that “oh, I did this a little bit differently” and “oh, it felt a little better”. When you’re learning how to play an instrument, it’s kind of lopsided and awkward, and it takes a little while for the sound to form a melody. But the more you practice, exploring the things that work for you, playing becomes seamless. You’re able to play in a way that is without thought and it really does enrich. And the more we do that thing, the more robust and complete the experience becomes.
How do you utilize self-care in your own life?
For me, I’m always challenged to reach for my balancing techniques. I have a practice in the morning where I’ve got a yoga mat near the TV and I throw the coffee on and I do my yoga stretches. Throughout the day, I’m doing my breath work — I keep a straw in my car for when I’m in traffic and really frustrated so I can do my straw breathing. Even sitting with a cup of coffee in the morning and looking out the windows at the bird feeder and watching the birds, there’s something calming about just watching nature in practice.
I try to find things every day that don’t take additional effort, because [self-care’s] not about forcing extra effort, it’s about paying attention and being purposeful about inviting balance. It’s my intention in my own life to keep that as a foundation, to be mindful of the ways that I can reduce stress by even 5%.
Do you think that you could walk us through one of your favorite techniques?
Let’s do one that I find really reassuring and calming. When we think about breath work, leaving the oxygen in our bodies longer is very healing. Another way of activating our vagus nerve is vibration. So, we put our elbows on the desk and rest our eyes on the heel of our hands to activate the ocular nerve. Let the weight of your head rest on the heel of your hands. And then slowly take a nice deep breath in. Keep your lips closed and hum as you breathe out. Then take another nice deep breath in and out while continuing to hum, allow that buzzing to go as long as your breath goes. This is called “Bee Breathing”. Continue this breathing technique for as long as feels natural.
Any last thoughts?
Over the years that I’ve done this work, I’ve found that it’s important for us to get back into our bodies as we heal. For so many, it’s an “aha!” moment when we notice the hypervigilance, the tension, and the stress manifesting in our physical bodies, in our emotions, disrupting sleep, messing with digestion, and causing all kinds of challenging symptoms. And so, I extend that invitation to come back within and to pay attention to what’s going on. We’re brilliant. We have all the answers. We have everything we need. We’re all creative, resourceful, and whole. We have everything within us. Self-care is really about the invitation, the reminder to pay attention to the importance of wellbeing, of building balance into our lives so that we can move forward in a thoughtful manner. Once you have the tools, it becomes a matter of enacting them.
Thank you so much to Carole for sharing her expertise! For further reading on self-care, its importance for survivors and those lending support, and its misconceptions and challenges, check out DVSN’s May 2021 blog post, “The Essentials of Self-Care”. Learn more about the DVSN Advocates who support our clients, including their own words on secondary trauma, in DVSN’s March 2021 blog post, “Profile of a DVSN Advocate”.
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