As discussed in our last blog, click here to catch up if you need to, trauma changes the brain. The amygdala is affected and given it’s known to mainly control fear we thought we would chat with you today on how and why our Black Leopard was designed in more detail so it can help you with communication, heal your nervous system and more in your everyday life so you can help pull your child, and likely yourself, out of the grips of trauma.
For more in-depth information on Trauma or Our Focus, visit our website. For now, what you need to know after having gone through a traumatic experience is:
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Changes have occurred and one of those changes is to the amygdala which is located in the brain where it is put on high alert so ‘what you think and feel’ can feel really big, I mean REALLY BIG! (see what I did there - hehe) Some other changes will be in how you learn so have patience with yourself and your child as you work together.
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Your child, and likely yourself, now understand how it feels to be ‘unsafe’ due to factors likely out of your control. This often means the nervous system is overloaded so your child, and likely yourself, can be put into automatic responses which happen in seconds as a way for the body to keep you safe.
- As a result of the traumatic experience, perception has been altered. This goes for anyone that has experienced trauma. Everything feels so big, so new and so unknown.
Our Black Leopard has been designed to remind you to step out of the darkness and to regain your power by helping your senses learn and relearn when you are safe. But, what does that really mean and how do you go about doing that?
Remember children learn well by mimicking so let’s go into some symbolic characteristics and values they can mimic of the Black Leopard. This will help remind them not only by having someone with them wherever they go, because let’s face it we can’t always be there, but it serves as a visual reminder of the skills they can use.
If you don’t know already, kids are right half thinkers, as in they think with the right side of their brain most of the time as do patients suffering from PTSD or C-PTSD, so working with an avatar is right up their alley on how they learn best.
Symbolic Values of Our Black Leopard:
For starters, when designing all our avatars we looked at the characteristics of what different animals have, what they represent and how they act in real life. For this particular skill to be learned, in healing the nervous system, the Black Leopard became our top choice. Check out the Skills & Characteristics below to learn why - you will need this.
Black Leopard’s Skills & Characteristics:
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THIS ANIMAL IS BRAVE
The first step in healing your nervous system is to embody the ability to be brave. A brave person faces dangerous or difficult situations with courage. This requires strength and determination. You will recall the amygdala is primarily known to control fear so if it’s heightened we need bravery to combat it.
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THIS ANIMAL USES ITS KEEN HEIGHTENED SENSES AND ACUTE PERCEPTION
We acknowledge that the brain has changed and that the amygdala is on high alert making what we think and feel really big often throwing us back into the fight-flight-freeze response, however, we use our 5 basic senses to teach the body and nervous system if we are safe while grounding ourselves.
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THIS ANIMAL IS A SOLITARY ANIMAL
We acknowledge that our perception has changed and that everything feels so big, so new and so unknown. In learning to embrace this change we learn different ways to function in both the light and dark moments. We do that well by learning to navigate the world by relying on our 5 senses in both the good (light) and bad (dark) moments.
All of these Skills and Characteristics we’ve outlined above can be built upon. We’ve simply put together three main skills and characteristics that are essential for learning this skill in healing the nervous system because when in trauma sometimes too much information simply cannot be understood - so come back to this blog post as many times as you need for a reminder - or, write the main skills to be learnt on post-its then put them on your fridge or walls in rooms until they get the hang of it. Having said that, if your child sees their Black Leopard as beautiful, unique, endangered, majestic, bold, happy - all of those are amazing characteristics and yes we also considered those into why and how we designed our Black Leopard.
How-to Use our Black Leopard with your Child:
To the big question, ‘how do I use our Black Leopard avatar in day to day life?’
To break this down well we will circle back to what skills and characteristics our Black Leopard is helping us learn: being brave, using our heightened senses and perception to our advantage (not seeing it as a bad thing) and learning how to ground ourselves into a new perception.
When you find yourself, or your child, becoming or being dysregulated we’d suggest in these moments that you recognize this not as an inconvenience as they had no choice in the matter nor did you but as a teachable moment. After a traumatic experience the nervous system messes with you and it requires patience, time, consistency and an open non-judgmental environment to work through some big stuff. The nervous system needs you to slow down so it can try a process.
Make a habit or routine of the following steps, this will create a new pattern in the brain allowing you to cope better.
Play a Game with your Child and Fox avatar:
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Begin by ‘Grounding Yourself’
- find a safe place for you and your child to work through some steps.
- if it’s not your child that needs grounding, ask for a ‘time out’ for yourself and find a safe place for you to work through some steps while making sure your child is safe while you do this.
- don’t make a scene publicly out of them or yourself, this only accentuates the trauma. Also, don’t trigger them by bringing up things that are actual triggers of theirs. Find a good safe place to work on this.
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Activate the Parasympathetic* Nervous System
- take 5 Coco Breaths, Box Breaths or Hand Breaths.
-You can consider changing up breathing techniques as we all like a bit of variety, just don’t take away breathing from the process.
parasympathetic* : Nervous system is a network of nerves that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger.
Breathing Instructions:
* 5 Coco Breaths sound great to kids when explained.
You breathe in while counting to 5 in your head, breathe out while counting to 5 in your head and this is done 5 times.
* Box Breaths also sound great to kids when explained.
It’s basically drawing a box while breathing. Breathe in for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, breathe in for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds. In the end you should have drawn a box.
* Hand Breaths also sound great to kids when explained.
It’s basically tracing your or their hand and breathing in and out for each finger while you trace it.
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Find 5 Things
- find 5 things each having to do with your senses and work together, or separately, calling them out:
* One for Sight
* One for Sound
* One for Smell
* One for Taste and
* One for Touch.
If this is too complicated for your child you can simply find 5 things.
If these steps are not working well at the beginning, that’s normal. And, if you’ve had patience and given it time, take your socks off and put your bare feet on the ground while trying to ground yourself and try those steps again. Sometimes there's a huge benefit for the physical body to actually be touching the ground.
- Determine 'Are You Safe'
- after grounding yourself with the steps above and you notice you are literally physically safe and the nervous system and brain are pulling a trick on you, tell yourself ‘I am safe’ this can be in your head or aloud and repeat this as many times as you need to. If that means you need to cry when doing this, then cry and keep reminding yourself that you are safe.
Now I know the above might sound completely crazy for some. For others, they understand the science, the facts and if they are connected to us they’ve likely done the work.
Believe me, repetition in the beginning is likely going to be what’s needed. It’s hard and feels so ridiculous at times but in the end it takes a lot to pull yourself out of automatic responses in order to feel safe and it generally takes 2 years for the brain itself to heal so it’s worth doing what you can upfront so you can make the most of the new patterns being formed. For us, we are always waiting for the left foot to drop, so it's hard sometimes to ever truly feel safe, however we know the values here so we repeat and continue to do our best everyday. This practice helps our nervous system and helps us show up as our best selves.
-The Lakunakai Team