Triggers and grounding

My care co-ordinator said this past week that I was engaging well with treatment - meds, Stabilisation group therapy, no further A&E visits and harmful dissociation to report, sleeping ok.. She said they will look at extending my prescriptions to fortnightly rather than weekly now. Another little win to celebrate.

I tried to engage more in the Stabilisation group this week. I do find it difficult doing it online, but I guess we have to work with what we've got. We did a lot of different grounding work and talked about grounding with our senses in the session and discussed what works well for us and what doesn't. I know in sensory grounding, taste and smell get to the threat system the quickest, but these don't work so well for me. When I'm having a flashback or the voices are getting too loud and out of control, I use deep breathing. I've tried re-orientation grounding but it doesn't always work because my brain can't process very well when I feel distressed. Same goes with mental grounding - it's too difficult to concentrate. There are a lot of sensory toys on the market today which is great. I've realised that my strongest sense is touch and, looking back, it always has been. In hospital, I ordered some silicon earplugs but I ended up pressing the silicon between my fingers a lot to calm myself down. I've carried on doing that outside of hospital. I have some on my desk right now. It's very therapeutic. I also like the idea of a calm box. We had them on the ward during my first hospital stay in 2018. 

I've finally worked out what my triggers are. This was stressing me out big time. Sleep deprivation, wrong medication and taking on too much. Another piece of the puzzle in place!