I'm doctor Benjamin Keyes.
I'm a professor here at Divine Mercy University, and I'm also the executive director of Green Cross Academy for Traumatology, and, the director of the center here for trauma and resiliency studies at Divine Mercy.
You know, there are a lot of things that, are being offered as ideas, ways of coping, ways of dealing with things.
I'd like to cover just just a few, and and and some have already been pointed out to you by doctor Wines.
The idea of of of keeping a schedule, very, very important.
It's it's a way of organizing your time.
It's a way of structuring your time, and it's a way of of making a difference in the family structure.
Going out for walks privately, or at least keeping social distance, but, being outside, doing exercise, getting back to, as much as possible, your original routine before this, pandemic hit.
So if you were exercising on a regular basis, but you can't go to the gym, go outside and push ups and jumping jacks and whatever you can do within the structure of, of of what you were doing before.
For children and quite honestly, for adults, coloring, is a great stress reliever.
Just sitting there with a few crayons and sketching things out, or, if you, go to Target or one of the box stores that are still open, then, buy a a couple of coloring books to work through.
Hobbies, cooking, You finally have the time, take a long bath with candles and, music in the background.
Ways of destressing, ways of calming down, are all part of this.
Home projects, gardening.
One of my, one of my good friends is, are they are doing Lego projects.
They're going out and buying these, very large Lego projects that's going to take them forever, and, and systematically taking the time to, put them together and spending two, three hours a day, doing this.
Catching up on television programs, a little bit of binge watching.
Not that I recommend television, but, it's a way of sort of catching up to your life and catching up to what's around you.
You're gonna hear, you've already heard, but you're gonna hear all the way through this, connecting to other people, connecting to old friends that you haven't heard from from for a while, and maybe trying to get, get on virtually through Skype or Zoom and and having a face to face meeting or or even FaceTime.
I have seen people do family reunions online, where they get together all parts of the family, even extended family, and they have this, one and a half hour family reunion where everybody sort of talks with everybody else.
And you get to tell stories, and you get to be with each other, and and you get to reinforce the the happy things that are in your life, the good things that are in the in, in your family, taking a class online, doing some training or a workshop, reading stories to children, both if you have children.
And if you don't, you have nieces and nephews, get online, get on the phone, read stories, talk about, talk about the family with each other, cleaning projects.
One of the things that I've been doing, at home, and mostly my wife has been doing at home, is cleaning out closets and straightening up the kitchen, putting order to chaos.
Let's see.
For others, job hunting.
Prayer, spending time in prayer, spending time in meditation, using music as a way of, reconnecting to, to yourself, and, just relaxing.
Art does the same thing.
Journaling does the same thing.
Any type of movement does the same thing.
As a practicing traumatologist, the big four, we I I often call it anyway, is to make sure that you're eating right.
You know, it's very, very important to eat, good foods, fresh produce, lean beefs, and chicken, and fish for protein, green leafy vegetable vegetables to oxygenate the blood and get oxygen to all parts of the body.
I think during, during situations like this many times, we sit in front of the, the screens that we're in, we're on, whether it's a computer or a television or, any kind of, phone or, communication device.
It's important that, that that we we eat properly so we're not becoming fully sedentary sedentary.
And that brings up the next piece.
The second piece is is exercising.
Getting out and getting a walk, getting out and stretching, yoga, whatever you happen to use as your way of exercising, as best as you can, please do it at least thirty minutes, three to four times a week, because this is what's going to keep your body in shape and your mind clear.
The third piece to this has to do with sleep.
A lot of people have trouble with sleep, especially during situations like this because your anxiety is very high, and your, sometimes your thoughts, you can't slow them down enough.
But getting into a regular pattern of sleep becomes very very important, and it's very very important to maintain that.
And the fourth is hydrating.
Making sure that you're drinking enough water in the day to make to keep your body healthy and to keep things going.
These are the four things that any disaster, any crisis situation, any traumatic, situation at all that all traumatologists will recommend to you to do.
Now I also wanna talk to you about some things that will particularly calm you down, some techniques that will work really well.
But let me talk just a little bit about coping strategies for a minute.
Excuse me.
When we teach coping strategies, we teach it from the standpoint of looking at six basic areas that is very important to make sure you've got something going on in each one of the six within a week's period of time.
The first is cognitive.
Are you stimulating your mind?
Are you keeping engaged in something?
Now for some of us, that's work, and that's fine.
But for others of us, learning something new or, studying a language or, reading into an area that, necessarily we, we might not have explored, like anthropology or history or, given that we're dealing with medical issues, maybe even medical issues.
The second area is emotional.
Doing something that, we feel good about.
Ways of maybe connecting to others or talking, talking to people that we haven't connected with, came up earlier.
But anything that emotionally we feel good about ourselves in doing is real important for maintenance of coping strategy for long term.
What are we doing behaviorally?
Now I know for some, because I've heard from family and friends that, you know, they're, they're using this time to party in place, and I would, I would advise, you know, a glass of wine with dinner or, a beer with a sandwich or, even a couple of beers at night is not going to make a a a a significant difference, but for some, that leads to dysfunctional kinds of behavior that the drinking lasts through the day or through the weekend or through the week.
It's important that we keep our behavior in such a way that, we can maintain our calm.
I know one of the things that I used to I get very upset at, I'd be driving particularly in the interstate and somebody would come along and cut me off.
And I I've I've learned things over the years, so I've learned not to, get irrational about it.
But it just it's just annoying.
And now when I ride on, if I've gotta go someplace for a doctor's appointment or, something for work, there aren't enough cars on the highway to really care about who's cutting me off or not cutting me off.
And, you know, it's, it's scary.
Sometimes you get what you wish for.
In this case, be being able to maintain your calm.
I think, Mallory ended her piece with, maintaining a calm presence in the midst of chaos.
There are a lot of things we don't know about this, this pandemic, and I know most of us are getting our news from television or the the newspaper or the Internet, and we're hearing the contradicting things and conflicting things.
It's important that we maintain our calm.
We maintain our presence and peace, and this is particularly true if you've got children and particularly true if you have, family members that are living at home.
That calm presence is something that, will carry the day.
The, the other three spirit, healthy coping strategies, the first is around spirituality.
Having some sort of spiritual presence in your life is essential to balance ourselves.
Now I'm not necessarily talking about, a mass or a liturgy or, a service, and there are certainly those that are are not, that are not Christian that are listening to this, regardless of your tradition or lack of tradition, connection to, to to nature and the outside, connection to spiritually uplifting music, connection to things that bring us to a place that goes beyond ourselves.
The use of meditation, the use of prayer, all are just suggestions within that section.
Spiritually, it's important, but also physically, keeping ourselves physically active, and we've talked about that before.
And there's the word again, intrapersonally and inter interpersonally.
Excuse me.
Connections to others, being with other people.
Now that's a little bit harder these days, but there are ways of doing that.
There are ways of connecting, and those six areas keep us balanced in a healthy strategy for coping.
You know, anytime we intervene with crisis intervention, where our purpose is to decrease any kind of stress that we have and to increase our coping and our resilience.
And any activity that serves these functions, whether whether it's done through a a a a professional, a volunteer, a supportive family member, anything that does that is crisis intervention.
So calm and and and presence becomes very important.
I'm gonna shift and talk a little bit about stress and and destressing.
Stress is kinda like an unwelcome house guest.
It shows up on your doorstep when you least expect it.
It takes up all your time, all your energy.
It wants you to entertain it, as if you don't have other things to do.
It keeps you up at night.
It wakes you up early in the morning.
It just drives you crazy, and then it had doesn't have the decency to know when it's time to leave.
Sound like somebody may have visited your house sometime?
Anyway, stress is just one of those things that that, that gets to us in ways that we don't particularly like.
I know when I'm get getting stressful, my my shoulders start coming up here around my ears, and I know I've gotta do something about it.
It's important that we maintain balance, that we keep our stress levels low.
And when we're in crisis, when we're in a a a a psychologically critical situation such as a pandemic, our normal coping mechanisms have failed when we start really taking on stress.
The evidence of that is our our significant distress or impairment or dysfunction in some way really goes to show that.
Relieving the stress is intervention.
It's it it targets the response, not the event.
It targets what's going on with us, not what's going on outside of us.
No one who sees a crisis is untouched by it, so everybody is affected by this.
And there are are two types of crisis situations, individual and community.
And so it's not just us, it's everybody around us.
Now, most people pull together, we function we function during the time of disaster or or crisis, but our effectiveness overall is diminished.
Stress, grief reactions, these are normal responses to abnormal situations, and that's what we're in right now.
Many emotional reactions of disaster and crisis survivors stem from problems of living, problems that we're seeing in the stores of of accessing, excuse me, accessing, groceries.
I don't know if you've been to the store lately, but I've, noticed at least five items the last time I went to the store that, were not in stock, that weren't available.
I don't know what happened to all the toilet paper in the country.
You know, it's interesting that most most people going through a crisis, they don't see that they need help going through a crisis.
And usually, they don't seek out services like counselors, to get through that.
In fact, many people reject assistance of any kind.
Mental health assistance often is more practical than psychological in nature.
Sometimes it's just somebody talking to you, somebody touching in, somebody caring enough to reach out to the other person.
So let's talk a little bit about what we can do about the stress.
First of all, I wanna say that there are certain groups that are at risk.
Children, the elderly are at risk because of their age.
People with serious and persistent, medical and mental health issues are at risk.
And the one group that we've been starting to hear a lot about are are the the, first responders that are working in the crisis, doctors, nurses, medical, but also people that are working in this in the grocery stores, people that are working in the banks, people that are serving us while going through this, they are still at work providing the services that we need to get through.
All of these groups are prone to stress, and and then when you when you have all families that are are are are in place, they are sheltering in place for weeks, which may turn into months, it's important to reduce that stress.
So let me just, let me just talk a little bit and, show you a little bit.
I'm going to put a couple of slides up on the screen.
So breath work becomes very, very important in in in working with, maintaining stress.
If we do certain breath work, it does a couple of things.
It it helps to relieve anxiety, depression, irritability.
Yeah.
It'll help with muscle tension and also will help with fatigue.
Simple things, just like a a relaxing sigh.
Have you ever noticed when you and and you just let go with a sigh, we find that it, it helps to, relieve just a a little bit of tension.
I, I took the, the share screen off for a minute because I I wanna show you diaphragmatic breathing.
Diaphragmatic breathing just means that we're breathing through the diaphragm.
And so what we do is we breathe in deep, we have our stomach fill up first, then our chest, and then we exhale through our mouth.
So we breathe in through our nose, we fill our stomach, then our chest, and then we exhale through our mouth.
So would you do this with me?
And I'm gonna do this to a fast count of six because I know a lot of you have been sitting a lot, and you're not used to that deep breathing.
So, again, breathe in through your nose, stomach, chest, and then out through your mouth.
Ready?
Do it with me if you would.
Breathe in, two, three, four, five, six, and then out, two, three, four, five, six.
Breathe in, two, three, four, five, six.
Breathe out two, three, four, five, six.
One more time.
Breathe in two, three, four, five, six.
Breathe out, two, three, four, five, six.
Now if you did this right, you're feeling a little dizzy right now, and that's normal.
But what it does is it gets that oxygen all the way out to your feet and to your hands, and, it helps your body to function right and well.
Breathing is, probably the number one thing that we can do from almost anywhere.
And so, I'm I'm breathing breathing meditation.
You know, some people, their exercise pattern is to go for a run.
And when they run, they have to breathe in deeply and they get into a pattern, a rhythm of that breathing.
Running is actually a form of meditation, especially for runners that get into that pattern over time.
There are other breathing, breathing meditations where you just follow your breath in and out and in and out, and you do that for about ten, fifteen minutes.
For those of you that are just starting, one to three minutes.
Okay?
But you just breathe in, breathe out, and follow that pattern.
The second technique is visualization.
It helps to eliminate headaches.
It really does help with muscle spasms, chronic pain, and anxiety.
Now there are all kinds of visualizations.
I know doctor Erwin is going to be doing, one with you, about, safe place.
For those of you that are trauma survivors, sometimes, safe place is a is a no go because you feel that there's no place that's safe.
So what I would invite you to do is to create a place that's of your own that you make safe, that you, create an inside, place that is totally of your own making.
My favorite, quite honestly, is, actually, I have two, either at the beach or at the top of a mountain.
And, of course, at the top of the mountain, there's this little clearing, and I'm standing on a nice grassy patch, and I'm overlooking the valley.
It's a bright sunny day.
It's 80 degrees out, and I am just awed by what I see and completely, safe and contained because I know no one else is on the top of that mountain with me.
So what I would like to do is I would like to take you in a in a different direction on visualization.
This is a guided journey visualization.
There's all kinds of ways of doing this, but I'm gonna take us on a journey of just looking at, different with different ways and different forms of of scenery.
And so what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to close your eyes if you would and just join me for a few minutes.
And in closing your eyes, I want you to visualize yourself standing, in a in a, a meadow of some sort.
The meadow should be maybe a farm or, just out in the country somewhere.
It's a wonderful day, and I I I'd like you to see if you could visualize, the blue sky and the sun, and, if you can get a sense of the warmth of the sun coming coming towards you.
And as you're looking at the sky and enjoying the sun's warmth, you notice there's some clouds out to the distance, white fluffy clouds in the distance and some birds that are flying by.
As you look around you, you see the meadow, and you see the different shades of green, and there seems to be some different kinds of shrubs.
And in the far distance starts an area of forest, trees that are just coming up sort of in a line by the meadow.
Notice that you're standing on a path, and that path is is a dirt path that slowly goes through the meadow.
I'd like you to visualize yourself walking on that path.
And as you walk on that path, just take in the day, the sun, see yourself relaxed.
Walking, causes you to be a little bit sweaty, but it's comfortable.
There do not seem to be mosquitoes or bugs out to bother you.
You hear the birds off in the distance.
If you take in a breath of air, you can you can smell the grass that's been cut off to the side.
And as you start to approach, you notice that in the meadow, just off in the distance, are apple trees.
The apples are ripe and they're red.
You see squirrels running around.
And just keep walking on the path.
And as you get to the path, you begin to come up on the trees that lead into the forest.
Notice the changes in hue of the greens to browns as you begin walking into the forest.
Notice the change in shrubbery, maybe logs on the ground, small animals moving back and forth.
See yourself moving through the forest, just enjoying the sun as it shines through the trees, little patches of sunlight in different places.
Notice also that as you keep walking, you seem to be going up slowly.
And as the path winds around, you keep getting higher and higher, and and the shrubbery changes.
It starts to, the trees start to get a little smaller.
The shrubbery gets to be a little more sparse.
You see more rock formations off to the side of you.
Notice the difference also in temperature between the shade and the sunlight.
And as you walk through the path and through the forest, you begin to see an opening at the far end.
Walk toward the opening, just enjoying the day, enjoying the calm, enjoying the peace and the tranquility that this exercise brings.
You walk on the path, and as the clearing gives way, you notice that you're coming out on a clearing that is a a just a beautiful patch of green grass.
It seems like it's been mowed, but you can tell that it it's just grown short.
The green is vivid as the blue sky is vivid, and you notice that it's brought you to a place, almost as a plateau that overlooks the valley below.
Notice the things in the valley, the different forms.
Notice the shadings of the sun.
Continue to feel the warmth of the sun around you and realize that God, as you know him, is there with you.
If that's not a safe thing for you right now, experience it at a distance.
But if it is a safe thing for you, experience him with you and around you.
Sit down on the grass and just just take in the day, the sun, God's presence with you.
Notice this feeling of calm and peace.
In a moment, I'm going to ask you to come back.