Tag: ACEs

Defining Resilience Series: Step 6 – Find a Guiding Hand to Hold

Defining Resilience

Step 6: Find a Guiding Hand to Hold

Before diving into step 6, a reminder about resilience: it is defined as the ability to overcome adverse conditions; with healthy bonding relationships, guidance, support, and compassion as the catalysts. Basically, it entails having the capacity to bounce back from stressful or overwhelming experiences.

What are some steps we can take to ensure we are building resilience in our lives?

  1. Focus on the positives. 
  2. Seek out and nurture supportive relationships.
  3. Utilize self-care strategies. 
  4. Take action steps to create positive change.
  5. Work on healthy habit formation. 
  6. Find a guiding hand to hold.
  7. Learn to become our own hero. 
  8. Be gentle with ourselves.

Today we will cover Step 6: Find a guiding hand to hold.

I have been interviewing amazing guest after amazing guest on The Healing Place Podcast over these past few months. Insightful souls who offer coaching services, have created online courses, written books, host podcasts, offer presentations, run retreats, and so much more! All with the intent of helping others along their healing journey. I am in love with the idea of utilizing our own healing experiences to help those who are looking for guidance and a comforting hand to hold. I know when I was in despair, I was flailing in my efforts to find answers.

Finding both of my therapists (yes, I was seeing two at the same time at one point – one for talk therapy and another for EMDR therapy and trauma-processing work) was life-altering. I felt a sense of calm just knowing I had guidance as I started taking those first steps onto the healing path. However, I also started to reach out to coaches and non-traditional therapy professionals, as well. I attended a class on the Hawaiian healing technique, Ho’oponopono; had an EFT (emotional freedom technique) healing session conducted on two occasions in my home; started practicing yoga with a trained professional who had an understanding of trauma storage in the body; and other similar self-care strategies. Finding what works for YOU is the key to creating a plan and building your coping tool box.

Here are five suggestions for finding a guiding “hand to hold”:

  • Listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos related to your needs: I am a researcher by nature. My favorite question as a child, according to my parents, was, “Why?” Understanding your habits, fears, concerns, solutions, and just having a feeling of connection through the power of “Oh my gosh, me, too!”, can empower your healing quest. The trick is to search for key words (try typing the following in a Google search ACEs, EFT tapping, or Yoga YouTube . . . I personally LOVE Yoga with Adrienne!)  *Hint* My podcast has over 50 episodes filled with motivation, inspiration, and healing light and can be listened to at your convenience simply by visiting my website and scrolling to the bottom of the podcast page. If you have Bluetooth capabilities in your car, hit play and listen in while you drive!
  • Find an online course, webinar or summit: Some are free, some are free for a limited time and then available to purchase an access pass, some are fee-based and costs vary from minimal to what some may consider to be expensive. I know I recently watched a webinar and the presenter then offered me a package deal at the end for only two payments of $4,998.00. After I finished choking on my coffee, I exited out of the program a little wiser on my need to research before devoting an hour of my precious time. Make sure to review ratings and create a bookmark folder for yourself. I have folders labeled, “research”, “blogs”, “podcasts”, and so on. Some are geared toward professionals and others toward those seeking assistance. For example, an “addictions webinar” search will bring up both professional and personal webinar options.
  • Hire a therapist: This one can be tricky only because there are factors to consider such as insurance coverage, type of therapy, available providers in your area, and so on. Do not let it inhibit you, however. I promise you, the effort you put in to finding the right therapist will be worth it. I had searched for an EMDR therapist when my counselor first suggested I consider EMDR as a trauma-processing option and found someone close to home (I was experiencing pretty severe driving anxiety at that time). I did no further research before scheduling the appointment. And, wow, was THAT a lesson learned. He told me I was “cured” after three sessions and then advised me that the reason I had highway phobias was because “cars are big and scary”. Oh boy. Yes, I reported him. Yes, I stopped seeing him immediately. Then I searched again, researched the woman I found who most appealed to my needs, and promised myself I could drive the forty minutes to her office as I was so very worthy of the effort. Ninety-eight sessions and four years later, I was a new woman. It was truly a life-altering process and I am forever grateful to Dr. Barb Hensley of Cincinnati Trauma Connection. Find someone who specializes in your needs (if having someone who is LGBTQ sensitive is important, then specify that in your search, and/or perhaps you would feel more comfortable with a specific gender, or you would like to consider a therapy with minimal talking such as an art therapy modality). Again. . . do YOU and what works for your needs.
  • Secure a life-coach: This can also seem a daunting task. There are coaches for weight loss, general motivation (think Tony Robbins), relationship coaches, stress and mental health, career coaching, online coaching, Facebook coaching groups, coaches you can call or video-chat with weekly, and on and on. Many of my podcast guests offer coaching services. The key, again, is finding what works for you. Assess your needs and then research. Are you looking for someone who specializes in toxic relationships? Or maybe co-dependency? Perhaps you really want a guiding hand when it comes to emotional eating. Do you need time-management help? A goal of mine is to create a coaching plan for healing through the power of forgiveness. I look forward to creating a course and/or coaching plan in 2019!
  • Utilize the power of friendship and soul connections: I treasure those go-to peeps in my life that I can call at any time to cry, laugh, wallow, or celebrate. Whether it’s my sister or a close friend, my mom or my son who lives five states away, there is solace in connecting. As I discussed in my August, 2018 Hope for Healing Newsletter, make an effort to connect with others with similar interests and you will start to grow your support network. As I’ve stressed previously, however, be sure to reach for those who lift you up with positivity, avoiding (if not eliminating) those toxic relationships and the energy-vampires who will hinder your healing progress.
Coming up next month: Step 7: Learn to become your own hero.

The Healing Place Podcast Interview: Sarah Guilfoy – Heart to Heart

Welcome to The Healing Place Podcast! I’m your host, Teri Wellbrock. You can listen in on iTunes, Blubrry or directly on my website at www.teriwellbrock.com/podcasts/
I thoroughly enjoyed my connection and laughter shared with my guest Sarah Guilfoy – founder and managing director of the non-profit, Heart to Heart. Sarah’s background includes teaching, a degree in Psychology, and a personal ACEs score of 8/9 (so very similar to my own background!). Please join us as we discuss Sarah’s beautiful passion of providing a parent support line via phone, text, and email as a way of offering free emotional support for caregivers. Heart to Heart is partnered with Healthy Beginnings in the state of Oregon.

As shared from the Heart to Heart website:

“Heart to Heart is a free telephone, text, and email service for parents and others experiencing family life or parenting challenges.

This nonjudgmental service provides a listening ear, support and guidance to parents and caregivers who are upset or troubled about a family issue, or just need someone to talk to. Heart to Heart is staffed by parent volunteers. As parents, they truly understand that parenting is hard work! They are available to help ease some of that workload, by offering support.

LEARN MORE AT 541-322-2019″

Thanks for tuning in!

You can also watch our interview on YouTube. So exciting!

Broken Trophies & Nature Hearts

I want to share a story of hope. And love. And forgiveness. But, before I share the happy part, I want to tell you about my dad and our history. For those needing it, *trigger warning for physical abuse*.

My dad hit me, quite violently at times, using a belt most days (the jingle of a belt buckle used to make those little hairs on my neck take notice). I was the oldest of two girls and, fortunate for me, but not my younger sister, I could scurry behind a locked bathroom door before being caught. I would spend my moments of terror, counting dingy white tiles in our tiny apartment bathroom, trying to tune out the sounds coming from outside my temporary safe space.

However, sometimes I was caught. Dad was six foot six, two-hundred and eighty pounds, and angry. At life. At his circumstances. At his alcoholic wife screaming for him to silence the children. At financial woes. At his boss. Whatever it was, he was angry about it. And we were easy prey, my little sister and me.

Sometimes he would throw something. Once he beheaded a statue of Jesus. My sister glued it back on. Another time, he broke my soccer trophy in half. I taped it back together with masking tape. The soccer player looked like she was playing with a cast on. Symbolic really. Keep on striving, even when broken.

When I was ten years old, my dad called me into his bedroom (my parents slept in separate rooms). He sat me on his lap and told me the following: “Teri, I’ve been seeing a doctor. A counselor. And I now realize I never should have hit you. I’m sorry. I promise to never hit you again. From now on you get to decide your discipline.” There was more, but that’s all I can remember.

And he never hit me again. My first lesson in forgiveness. And what a beautifully powerful one it was.

You see, my dad was also my saving grace. He was the one who took us to Burger Chef for a Fun Meal after our soccer games on Saturday mornings. Mom was at work and rarely came to our games. Dad tucked us in with stories of dragons and spaceships and talking dogs. He was the one who taught me how to count with raisins. And sat me on his lap when he would draw. He ran alongside my purple bike with the flowered banana seat as I wobbled around the school playground until he felt safe enough to let go, cheering me on with an exuberant, “You’re doing it!”

He was a good dad. Who was hurt as a child and didn’t know the impact of his violent actions on his own children until someone came along to show him the error of his ways. I thank God he had the compassion to listen. And apologize.

My dad died in January, 2009, of complications resulting from his diabetes.

This morning I went for my morning hike and said, “Dad, you should join me” (he loved his ‘exercise walks’ as he called them). I truly believe his spirit tagged along.

I was walking along a path strewn with hundreds of leaves when I sensed an excited energy urging me to “look down!” Sure enough. There in that mix of decaying brown, yellow, red, and orange tints was a tiny heart.

This continued throughout my hike. I would smile and send out an “I see it! Thanks!”

As I was headed to my car, the last of the sun on a blue-sky morning, now turning grey, was peering through a yellow-leafed tree. I felt a “Look up!” energy. I did and couldn’t help but laugh. There it was ?

#thanksDad

The Healing Place Podcast Interview: Cortney Edmondson

Welcome to The Healing Place Podcast! I’m your host, Teri Wellbrock. You can listen in on iTunes, Blubrry or directly on my website at www.teriwellbrock.com/podcasts/
I thoroughly enjoyed this enlightening interview with Cortney Edmondson – advocate, speaker, survivor, activist. Please join us as we discuss Cortney’s healing journey from trauma to triumph, her mission to provide others with a space to share their stories, her speaking joys, and much more!
Cortney shared the following information (and totally made my day with the compliment!):
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share tonight.  You are an incredible host! Below are the links to my instagram profiles and my website.
 
Instagram: @cortney_edmondson    &    @embracing_ACEs

Please be sure to follow, visit, and reach out.

Peace to you all!
Teri

 

 

 

The Healing Place Podcast Interview: Emily Daniels – Here This Now

Welcome to The Healing Place Podcast! I’m your host, Teri Wellbrock. You can listen in on iTunes, Blubrry or directly on my website at www.teriwellbrock.com/podcasts/
I loved this interview with Emily Read Daniels, founder of HereThisNow! Please join us as we discuss trauma-informed trainings, workshops, speaking, blogging, and so much more. Be sure to check out their course offerings and upcoming retreats.
Emily kindly shared the following information for us.
Thank you, again, for the interview this morning! It was an honor and a pleasure and I do hope we have reason to connect again.
Please find the links you mentioned:
* Website:  www.herethisnow.org
* Upcoming October 21-24th Retreat:  The Trauma Informed School 2.0 with Lara Kain
Peace to you all!
Teri

The Healing Place Podcast Interview: Teri Barila – Community Resilience Initiative

I was thrilled to have Teri Barila of the Community Resilience Initiative in Walla Walla, Washington, join me on The Healing Place podcast to discuss their beautiful mission of “Mobilizing the community through dialogue to radically reduce the number of adverse childhood experiences while building resilience and a more effective service delivery system.”
Please visit their Resilience Trumps ACEs website to find out more about this organization and the incredible work they are doing!
Their products for parents can be found on their online store. Some pretty awesome products including calendars and posters!
You can listen into to our wonderful conversation on iTunes, my website, or Blubrry.

The Healing Place Podcast Interview: Stacy Brookman – Resilience & Life Storytelling Expert

During a recent episode of The Healing Place podcast, I sat down with ACES Connection member, Stacy Brookman, host of the Real Life Resilience Podcast, to discuss her role as a resilience and life storytelling expert, finding clarity, her upcoming Emotional Abuse Recovery and Resilience Summit (of which I am one of forty-five featured speakers . . . yay!), and more.

Follow the links below to learn more about Stacy, life storytelling, to register for free for the 12-day summit starting September 1st, and the FREE guide listing the 35 most impactful books for emotional abuse.

Stacy Brookman

Life Story Laboratory – Summit Registration

FREE Guide – 35 Most Impactful Books for Emotional Abuse

 

stacy brookman

Listen in on iTunes, Blubrry, or directly from my website as Stacy discusses her important work in the field of resilience.

Peace,

Teri Wellbrock

www.teriwellbrock.com

 

* I am excited to have more therapists, trauma-gurus, and ACES experts lined up over the next few weeks for podcast interviews. I would love to have YOU join me, as well. If you are interested, please send me a private messages through this site and I will send you my podcast interview questions for you to review.

I am a huge fan of lifting one another up as beacons of light for those who are struggling, looking for guidance, or lost in the dark. I would love to offer my podcast as a platform for your voice about your mission and passion. My goal is to provide motivational, inspirational, and healing stories for my listeners.

The Angry Saint

I recently received a coupon for a free 8X8 Shutterfly photo book. Coolio! I was going to make a memory book of kid pics for my son who moved to Denver earlier this year. Then I realized I had made him one this past Christmas. (Darn menopause brain!) I looked up to see a black and white photo of my dad hanging on the cork board next to my computer. Perfect. I decided, I’ll make Mom a memory book of Dad’s life.

I started by adding photos of him from his childhood, years in the Jesuit seminary, and wedding photos. Then I filled the remaining pages with pics of his daughters and grandchildren. Easy-peasy.

One of the pages, however, prompted me to write memories of my father. I started to type out my happy memories, but they were interrupted by flashes of his outbursts. I sat there staring at the computer screen, contemplating how I am currently in the process of finishing up a book about my adverse childhood experiences, including a violent history with my dad during the first ten years of my life. How hypocritical of me to write a happy paragraph about my Dad for a photo book, right?

So, I did what I always do and called my sister to talk it out. She gets it. She lived it. Right alongside me. Kind of. I was usually cowering behind a locked bathroom door while she was being hit with the belt, but the terror was still the same.

She brought up some valid points. It’s okay to focus on the happy times, the heart and soul moments. Dad and I had reached a place of forgiveness and had made our peace before his passing. Reliving his violence in the book is a tool for teaching. I am painting a picture of repeated trauma exposure in order to enlighten others on overcoming and conquering past demons. Yet, I can choose to highlight his many positive parenting traits alone in this  photo album . . . soccer dad, best cinnamon toast maker ever, our good-night story teller, defender against a fifth grade bullying nun, teacher of raisin-counting math skills, piggyback riding muscle man, and more.

My dad was a man of deep faith, praying his rosary almost daily, wearing his scapular, engaged in reflection and prayer in a little nook in the back bedroom of Mom and Dad’s apartment. He grew up witnessing moments of violence, married a severe alcoholic who demanded he silence the children whenever she was too tired to deal with us, and used his belt and frustration to obey her commands.

So, Dad, in honor of you, here is the brief summation of happy memories I wrote in the photo book I am gifting to mom: “Saturday mornings, after soccer, Dad would take us to ‘Burger Chef and Jeff‘ for a treasured Fun Meal. I loved it that he tucked us into bed at night, telling us fanciful stories about German Shepherds, aliens or flying cars. His imagination always at play, he would scare us by tying a glove to the end of the vacuum hose, having it appear around a corner as he’d throw his voice, or have us look for the “river sharks” as we’d pass over the humming bridge, or turn off all the lights during a slumber party and grab our ankles, dragging us screaming and laughing from our fort. He taught me to count with raisins, always picked me up from a friend’s even at 3 a.m. if needed, engaged in deep philosophical conversations, and gave the best hugs ever! Thanks most of all, Dad, for believing in me.”

I miss you.

I love you.

I forgive you.

 

 

 

 

 

The Power of Self-Care

As I continue on this journey of healing, I am amazed on a daily basis by the number of resources coming across my path. Articles on ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) will show up in a Facebook news feed or I’ll receive an email discussing trauma recovery. I love when the universe aligns the stars just so and the answer I was seeking magically appears.

I worked in school settings for years, as a teacher and in a mental health professional role. Helping children learn to cope with anxiety, bullying, overwhelming emotions, unstable home environments, the after-math of abuse, and so much more, had my own inner-child longing for more solutions.

The kids and I would work on filling their “tool box” with coping skills, such as using manipulatives like stress balls to ground themselves or release energy, simple breathing exercises for centering, free art to express something they might not have words to convey, and so on. Allowing kids the opportunity to express themselves in whatever way they were comfortable, while I listened respectfully and without judgment, created a space filled with compassion and tranquility. I once had a fifth grade child, whose home life was in the midst of chaos, tell me, “I like your energy. You have white light around you. I feel safe here.” To say I was blown away by that message would be an understatement. Knowing this child was picking up on the energy I was sending to her as she learned to cope, heal, and empower herself, made my sappy heart dance with joy.

This morning as I scrolled through the amazing articles on ACEs Connection, I came across an article titled, Why Adults Need Social and Emotional Support, Too by Mathew Portell. In it, he discusses the needs of his school, not just in regards to the students, but in relation to the staff and parents’ care, as well.

Pointing out norms they have implemented in their school structure, this blogging principal sets a shining example of trauma-informed care in action. Self-care is critical in all aspects of our lives. I think about those funny memes that state, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!” #truth

The point being . . . when we learn to take care of ourselves, we fill our own coping tool box with beneficial energy we can share with others: compassion, understanding, patience, kindness, and love.

As you move toward healing in your own life or reach out a helping hand to others who may be struggling to find their footing along their path, make sure to heed the advice offered in 25 Self-Care Tips for the Body & Soul.  Learning to live in the “now” and allowing myself to experience joy on a soul level has been life-altering. A great read, and a catalyst for change in my own life, is the book, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, by Eckhart Tolle. In it, the author advises us, “All the things that truly matter-beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace-arise from beyond the mind.”

Empower yourself with self-care and watch your life transition. Then share your tranquility with others as we move toward a world filled with compassion and joy.

Peace to you,

Teri