4 Mental Wellness Options: Self Care, Coping, Building Safety, and Getting Unstuck

You're probably doing a ton of trauma recovery and just general wellness kinds of things. It can get overwhelming. So in this episode, what I want to do is share with you four different buckets or, or pathways that you can place all of your efforts into. I want to help you compartmentalize and think about your efforts and what they're doing and maybe where you need to grow as well. Hey, my name is Justin Sunseri.

I'm a therapist and a coach who wants to help you live more calmly, confidently, and connected without psychobabble or woo woo. Welcome to Stuck Not Broken. This podcast is not therapy, nor is it intended to be a replacement for a therapy.

This topic comes up. consistently and predictably in my client work, also very often within the Stucknaut Collective courses and community. And that is, what is your goal and how are you going about doing that? Your goal is probably to get unstuck, probably to reduce anxiety or depression or anger or rage or overwhelm or fill in the blank. Maybe all of them. But what avenues are you taking to reach that goal?

And I want to help you to differentiate those and compartmentalize them into four different pathways, okay?

The first one is just baseline stuff. Uh, the things that you should have in place. And if you don't have them in place, all your other efforts are probably not going to be super helpful. They could be helpful, but not as much as possible. And that's just baseline foundational things like eating healthy enough, having enough water, um, getting enough sleep. We don't need perfection.

I don't need you to be hyper nutritional and drinking a certain amount of water every day and measuring that and, you know, wearing a backpack full of water to make sure you get a ton or whatever. But just - enough. You know, we need to do good enough, and I can't tell you what, what number that is. Um, but good enough. If you're living off candy, that's probably not good enough. If you're living off of fats and sugars, soda, Pizza like that's probably not good enough.

So make improvements that are in that area. That's that's foundational that is unbelievably important to the other efforts that I'm gonna lay out here and when I make that motion It's because I have three more three more pathways there for you, but but that has to be in place if you're not getting enough sleep, that's huge. I have sleep apnea- if I don't get good enough sleep, I feel it the rest of the day. Uh, everything just becomes so much more difficult when you don't have good enough sleep.

So, um, sleep and eat enough or eat well enough, drink enough water, be healthy enough, get enough movement, that kind of stuff.

. Alright, pathway two as far as healing or recovering or making change in your life, pathway two is I think where people get stuck a lot and typically where they start coming into therapy. And that is coping. You probably have some level of anxiety or anger or whatever, depression fill in the blank and you're trying to figure out how to cope with it. How do I make it go away or how do I reduce it? And I don't blame you. I don't blame you at all. I don't blame my clients.

I don't blame the people in the Stucknaut Collective. Of course, of course you want that to reduce, if not go away. But, what you're doing is decreasing defensive activation through, you know, hacks and whatnot that you're finding online, like jumping into frozen, freezing cold water, or taking cold showers, or putting a bag of frozen peas on your chest to reduce anxiety and those things might help you reduce anxiety. I'm happy, but um, those are temporary. Those are very temporary.

They do, they do not resolve the problem. And what they may do actually is trigger your dorsal vagal state, uh, dorsal vagal state and numb you out. Well, so in this, in essence, it puts you into a little bit of shutdown and so yeah, your anxiety is gone But are you more connected to the present moment? Do you love yourself more now? It just kind of helps to make the feelings go away after a while.

One of my clients says he grabs his or he tried from some psychiatrist told him Yeah, just when you're feeling anxious grab your your thumb nail squeeze on that and your fingers It's just a hack if anything to me it does nothing and I don't know for you maybe it does something but uh, if it does it's like does it help you love yourself more? Does it connect you with your loved ones more? Do you feel less guilt in your life?

Do you feel less perpetual anxiety probably not maybe in that moment because now you're causing yourself pain or distracting yourself and that there's value to that. So, that's that's pathway number two or bucket number two. What are you doing that fits into that? And it's, it's those things like counting backwards when you're anxious, um, playing with a fidget when you're anxious or when you're angry or depressed or whatever, those things are coping.

You're, you're trying to reduce defensive activation -totally has a place. If you need to numb yourself out because you're feeling suicidal, go ahead, watch TV until you feel less suicidal and can do something about it. I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. So coping definitely has a place, but it is not the answer. And if you're going into therapy seeking more coping, that's fine, but hopefully therapists can do more for you and, um, you know, get you to the next two paths.

so we've got the foundational path one, we got the coping path two, path three is practicing safety. And this is what we're Um, therapists, and I'll honestly miss, and this is probably what you're missing to your listener and in your efforts. How do you feel safe? What triggers feelings of comfort for you? What helps bring you to the present moment? What helps you to breathe easier? What helps you to feel maybe appreciation? Maybe gratitude? Love? Gratitude?

Maybe, maybe not happiness, but yeah, maybe happiness. Maybe just contentment? Awe? Some of these are might be more easier to reach than others. But yeah, what helps you feel safe and connected to yourself or connected to the environment or connected to others? Connected to yourself would be having enough self compassion to look inward and Be open to all of your experiences, even the ones that are uncomfortable. Connection to the environment would be through your senses.

So do you know what senses, um, bring you to your safety state or what sensory triggers bring you to your safety state? Do you know what tastes or what smells, what textures help you to just be just to be and breathe and that's enough. I'm not saying it's easy, but. It's important. I think it's actually extremely important.

The coping stuff is fine, but if you can practice feeling safe and build that up and like literally build up the strength of your safety pathways, your biological, ventral, vagal pathways. If you can do that, the need for coping is It's gonna be less, like you just won't need it as much. It'll probably still pop up, sure. But the, your level of distress tolerance will grow up, go up, not grow up, go up.

Distress tolerance goes up, your level, your feelings of connection to yourself and others in the environment, that goes up. Your ability to be mindful of your experience, positive and negative, that goes up. And yeah, the defensive activation that you're stuck in, flight, fight, shut down, freeze, that eases up too. It doesn't solve, exactly, it doesn't solve the problem, but. It makes life way more manageable without relying on coping skills or hacks or whatever.

It makes life more manageable, and it really reduces the intensity and frequency of your defensive activation. So that is extremely important and something we don't pay attention to in life in general, honestly. Nobody thinks this way, no one talks this way. Um, except, well, except for us, I suppose. But even in therapy, we don't think this way, we don't talk this way. We focus on what's the problem and how do we make the problem go away.

Well, part of making the problem go away is to practice feeling safe. And as we do that, things kind of get better little by little by little. It's a long process. It's not a hack. It is a long process.

Pathway number four is directly feeling and relieving your stuck defensive state. Whether it's flight, fight, shutdown, or freeze. Pathway 4 is hugely dependent upon Pathway 1 and Pathway 3. So just, you know, basic sleep in, you know, healthy enough, blah, blah, blah. But also Pathway 3, which is feeling safe, feeling grounded, staying connected to yourself in the present moment, even when uncomfortable things come up.

In Pathway 4, where we're directly feeling and experiencing our stuck defensive state or defensive activation. It might be momentary anxiety. And so rather than coping it away through some TikTok hack or whatever, we actually say, okay, I'm feeling anxious. Not why am I feeling this way, but let me feel this way. I can, I can handle this. I can permit myself to feel anxious or angry or irritated or depressed and numb.

I have enough safety activation because I've put that daily work in to feel or practice being safe. Now I have such a strong foundation of safety, I can actually. allow myself to feel defensive activation and maybe it's the momentary anxiety spike, but you could also use pathway for, for intentionally feeling stuck defensive activation. So not just the momentary anxiety, but the stuck flight activation that the momentary anxiety comes from.

Pathway four is hugely important for truly recovering from a stuck defensive state for relieving trauma. You know, you can practice being safety, and I highly encourage you to do that. You can do that every day and build up the strength of your safety pathways.

And a lot of good can come from that, but that next level of getting unstuck and finding more emotional freedom and deeper connections with yourself that, that has to come through pathway four, and that, that relies entirely on your ability to stay grounded in the present moment, in your safety state, and then to validate your experiences your even the difficult ones.

To normalize them and even give them permission to be and to feel them, not just lightly, although that might be a starting point, but even deeply to deeply go into your stuck defensive activation and feel it and experience it, the memories and images and sense and all the things that come along with it, the textures that you recall, you know, memories might be a part of that. Yeah, Pathway 4 is really important. And you can do that in doses. Actually, it's pretty, pretty on a good idea.

We don't want to go all the way into defensive activation all at once. Little bit, you know, little doses here and there are probably really good idea. Um, to me, I, I liken it, especially maybe with freeze activation. I liken it to skipping stones. You know, you throw a stone across the water and it just sort of touches upon the water before coming back up.

I think, um, it's, that's probably a good metaphor for how to handle defensive activation if you're starting down path four and feeling into it, it's probably a really good idea to lightly touch upon it and then come back to safety, lightly touch upon defense, come back to safety. That's called pendulation. You can purposely do that. Pendulate back and forth. And that's as an intro to it. It's probably a really, really good idea to do that.

Hopefully that helps you to think about your efforts, where you're at, maybe where you need to be and where you'd like to get to. If you're coping day in, day out, good for you, do what you got to do. But can you find moments to include a tad more safety into your life? And I think you can. I had a session today where the person said, I have no time for any of any mindfulness. I have no time for practicing safety. I have no time for this, that, or the other thing.

And I asked him, okay, well, let's, let's do a, Let's take inventory of your life, your daily life, your, let's, let's audit your daily life. Um, what do you do when you wake up? And he goes, well, usually I spend about five hours, um, on YouTube and social media. Yeah, there's five hours right there we can work with. That's a huge chunk of time. So this person and you may be and most of- many people will default to, I just got to cope. I got to get through this because I don't have time.

I don't have this. I don't have that. Uh, there's probably time. There's probably a moment and really it's these things can be practiced in micro moments and those have a ton of benefit to them. When you wake up in the morning, do you need to go for a walk outside? Would that feel safer than laying in bed and scrolling through TikTok for five hours? Probably. In the morning, can you go connect with a loved one and give them a hug? That's a moment of safety or your pet. That's a moment of safety.

Can you mindfully experience how your cereal makes you feel when you eat it or the smell of your coffee? The taste of your tea? These, like, these are tiny moments where you can practice safety. So if you're stuck in I'm coping day in, day out, I bet you can find tiny moments of safety. Micro moments. And practice those. If you're coping day in, day out, Okay, hey, do your thing. But can you also drink more water instead of soda? Can you eat something that's fresh and not from fast food?

Probably. Probably. If you could do all that and build up, if you can, you know, be healthier, a little bit healthier, maybe a lot healthier and cope your way when you need to cope your way through it. And also feel safety in micro moments. Eventually, would you be able to say, well, you know, what else do I feel? What's it really like to be me and to be stuck in whatever state I'm in? You might not be close to that right now. And that that's okay.

Down the line, that's a question you could ask yourself. And that's, that's pretty normal in my client work. We build up so much safety that. My clients will get to a point where they say, you know, I'm ready to feel just what it's like to be me completely. What else is within me? And to be open to that.

Thank you so much for joining me on Stuck Not Broken. I really hope this episode has helped you compartmentalize or think about your efforts and where they belong in those four paths and where you can grow, what you can maybe bolster if it needs bolstering. Your homework assignment is to look at all the things you're doing and put them into one of those four, um, pathways or buckets. If you're squeezing your thumb to feel better, what bucket does that belong into?

If tonight you're going to cook a fresh meal, what bucket does that belong into? If you're going to go hug your mom and tell her you love her, what bucket does that belong into? If you're going to meditate and feel what it's like to be you completely, what bucket would that be in? Actually, I created a free resource for you. It's just a really simple one sheet visualization of this four bucket thing with brief descriptions. You can download that in the free member center.

I'll put a link for you in the description. The link though is justinlmft.com/members and I have a free course and other downloads there for you if you like. Otherwise, thanks for joining me.