Self-Soothing Parasympathetic Coping Skills

This was designed for a group format, but can be used in individual therapy or by an individual who wants to learn these skills on their own. These skills are useful for an array of symptoms or conditions including self-improvement, distress tolerance, coping skills, anxiety, stress, anger, improving focus and getting "in the zone." Skills include deep or diaphramatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), grounding, and guided imagery. Such coping skills work by activating our parasympathetic nervous system which serves to down-regulate our sympathetic nervious system. The sympathetic nervous system gets our bodies prepared for fight or flight, but often this is not necessary for our current life situation and, in fact, may be determinental to our functioning and focus, our long-term health if we have chronic stress response, and uncomfortable in terms of short-term or acute anxiety response. With chronic stress response, our Sympathetic Adrenal Medular (SAM) axis reponds to immediate stressors and eventually results in chronic activation of our Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis, resulting in inflammation, worsened regulation of future stress response, memory issues, mood and anxiety issues, and issues with focus and concentration.