Becoming Centered podcast

30:17

This episode is the second in a three-episode arc that presents the Hierarchy of Interventions. This grouping of 10 interventions forms a core curriculum of counseling skills used by residential staff to encourage the development of kids' self-regulation abilities. Last episode focused on using Distraction, Engaging, and Verbal Redirection to interrupt and prevent kids from going down an off-track path toward increased emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dysregulation. This episode introduces the Aspect Compass model of the human mind. Understanding this metaphor for how the mind works, makes it easier for direct-care counseling staff to move beyond the behavior-management level of intervention and instead help kids development their self-regulation abilities. This episode revisits those three interventions from the perspective of the Aspect Compass Model and then goes on to present the labeling intervention. Different variations on the Labeling intervention are used to increase clients' self-monitoring of their own behaviors, their own bodies, their own feelings, and their own developing social skills. One variation on Labeling is also used in place of giving directions and setting limits. Those interventions are intended to encourage compliance, where labeling encourages kids to chose cooperation.…

Becoming Centered

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51. Supervision7 - The Hierarchy of Interventions 29:51

6 weeks ago29:51

29:51

This episode on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway moves away from a focus on managerial skills and switches to a focus on counseling skills to be taught to direct-care Child Care Counselors. It presents 10 interventions, or techniques, for Counselors to use with kids when they become off-track, dysregulated, and uncentered. Skillful use of this package of interventions starts with understanding the ways in which they can be thought of as forming a hierarchy. That includes the higher up interventions being increasingly disruptive to the group environment of the residential unit, being an increasingly heavy-handed display of the staff being in charge, and requiring more judgement and skill from staff so that the intervention de-escalates the situation rather than causing an ecalation. However, these ten interventions are not like a true hierarchy in that staff can start anywhere on the scale, can use the interventions in various combinations, and even that some of the interventions can be thought of as just examples of the other interventions. This episode goes on to take a closer look at three interventions at the bottom of the hierarchy: distraction, engaging, and verbal redirections. Distraction is frequently the first intervention used for interrupting an emerging pattern of dysregulation. Engaging is the most frequent intervention that should be used by residential staff in that it provides the kids with practice at co-regulating with a calmer and more psychologically and neurologically organized person. Improved co-regulation skills leads to improved self-regulation skills. Verbal Redirection is regularly used to support the development of kids' self-awareness, and is frequently used with having kids Practice or Over-Practice a desired behavior and in combination with Listening Checks.…

Becoming Centered

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50. Supervision6 - Leader, Superior, Boss, Mentor 26:27

7 weeks ago26:27

26:27

This episode is the sixth on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway. It’s also the third of a three-episode arc that focuses on how to structure an individual supervision meeting. It also goes beyond the supervision meeting and explores the seven different roles Unit Supervisors have with their Supervisees. As a Counselor, the Supervisor is concerned with the emotional well-being of their Supervisees. As a Teacher, the Supervisor keeps a checklist of subjects (primarily policies, procedures, practicies, and training topics) that are reviewed with each Supervisee over the course of their tenure as a direct-care Child Care Counselor. As a Coach, the Supervisor individualizes their focus to address each Supervisee's professional development. Fundamental residential staff skills include Executive Skills, Engagement Skills, and Teamwork Skills. More advanced counseling skills are the focus of the next episode arc on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway. As a Leader, the Supervisor takes a strategic approach to presenting each supervisee with an inspiring vision, an analysis of current skills and a plan for what skills to work on in the next short-term period. That plan is then implemented on the floor of the residential unit, directly in working with the kids. In the next supervision meeting there's feedback and collaboration around the next steps. As an organizational Superior, the Supervisor has to represent the agency. Any problems with basic employment expectations, such as professionalism, basic performance expecations, adherence to company policies, and dependability need to be addressed in the supervision meeting. In consultation with the Unit Supervisor's superior, and potentially H.R. department, it might be appropriate to take some personnel action. Solid boundaries are the biggest help in balancing the role of Superior with the other Unit Supervisor roles. As their Boss, the Supervisor has to give out assignments and coordinate a large number of tasks that all are necessary for the professional administration of the residential program. In crisis situations, the Supervisor often times needs to function as a direct and clear Boss, which can create a balancing challenge with the other roles. As a Mentor, the Supervisor expresses some level of interest in their Supervisees' career and life outside of work. It's up to each Supervisee how much they will come to see their Supervisor as a Mentor, but spending some time relating as a Mentor helps balance the seven roles that define the relationship between a Unit Supervisor and their Supervisees.…

Becoming Centered

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49. Supervision5 - Supervisor as Teacher and Coach 30:10

8 weeks ago30:10

30:10

This episode continues to present a model for how to structure a supervision meeting. Last episode focused on how a Unit Supervisor sometimes functions primarily as a Counselor. In that sub-role, the Supervisor is most concerned with the emotional well-being of their Supervisees. Although that can fill the entire supervision meeting, generally, after five to ten minutes the meeting agenda will usually move on to the Supervisor sub-role of functioning primarily as a Teacher. Being an effective Teacher means having an organized curriculuum that typically draws from your agency's policies and procedures manual. The Supervisor is tasked with making sure that each staff person has the necessary knowledge to properly implement the program. Some of that can be addressed in staff meetings, however, becuase new staff are hired throughout the year, the supervision meeting serves as a place to individually make sure that every staff has the necessary familiarity with the program's and the residential unit's policies, procedures, practices, and philosophy of care and treatment. However, the bulk of the supervision meeting time is typically best spent with the Supervisor in the sub-role of a Coach. As a Coach, the Supervisor focuses on the skills that each staff person needs to excel at their job. The fundamentals of residential care and treatment can be divided up into three categories: Executive Skills, Engagement Skills, and Teamwork Skills. Work on these skills, especially for newer staff is the foundation for their professional development as caregivers. These fundamental skills are different than specific counseling skills that will be the focus of a future podcast episode. Those counselor skills, such as Verbal Redirection, Labeling, Change of Environment, Limit Setting, Forced Choice, Weighted Choice, and Centering Breaks are treatment skills that will also need coaching to learn and master. However, the use of fundamental skills (Executive Skills, Engagement Skills, and Teamwork Skills) are a great place for a Unit Supervisor to start with coaching since their use will create a therapeutic environment on the residential unit.…

Becoming Centered

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48. Supervision4 - Structuring the Supervision Meeting 33:23

9 weeks ago33:23

33:23

Today’s episode, which is the fourth on the Unit Supervisory Learning Pathway, focuses on a model for how to structure the typical supervision session. In the context of working on a residential treatment unit for children and youth, there are many sub-roles that define an effective relationship between a supervisor and their supervisees. A Supervisor encompasses the roles of Counselor, Teacher, Coach, Leader, Superior, Boss, and Mentor. This episode focuses on starting supervision meetings with the Supervisor focuses on the role of Counselor. In that role, the Supervisor is most concerned about the emotional well-being of the direct-care staff being supervised. This initial focus on emotional wellness, which starts with simply asking a person how they're doing this week, makes sense as a basic display of good social skills. However, the Counselor sub-role goes far beyond good manners and tries to attend to helping your Supervisees manage the high level of exposure to traumatic stress that is a big part of their jobs. Just expressing concern helps. Beyond that, there will be times when engaging in psychological debriefing will be an appropriate way to help your Supervisees take the edge off of the more stressful encounters they've had that week. Attending to the basic human emotional needs of your Supervisees also means trying to help them find inspiration and meaning in the work, celebrating their successes, and reinforcing examples of their good teamwork and their demonstrating strong executive skills in their work. Sometimes, it makes sense to spend an entire supervision meeting primarily in that Counselor sub-role. However, that should be the exception and not the rule. Supervision meeting time is incredible valuable and a skilled Supervisor consciously designs their supervision time to be strategic about how many minutes to devote to the domain of emotions, before moving on to the other sub-roles (Teacher, Coach, Leader, Superior, Boss, and Mentor) that are also essential aspects of being an effective Supervisor.…

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47. Supervision3 - Delegating and Organizing 27:06

10 weeks ago27:06

27:06

This episode, the third in the Unit Supervisor Pathway, focuses on the essential managerial skills of effectively delegating tasks and projects and keeping organized. I'm hoping that you've already followed advice in previous episodes and created clearly defined Unit Coordinator roles for all the residential staff on the unit. Residential treatment is a team sport; and you need every member of your team to not only work directly with the kids, but to also help administer a quality program. However, even with clear role descriptions outlining various administrative and operational responsibilities, a Unit Supervisor still has to become effective at verbally delegating tasks and projects. Effective delegation will make a huge difference with how many tasks and projects the residential team can simultaneously be addressing, a huge difference in the quality and timeliness of task completion, and a huge difference in how direct-care staff are lead in developing their professional skills. This episode presents a 5-step model for effective delegation. Now that you've delegated scores of tasks and projects, a Unit Supervisor has to keep all these tasks, deliverables, projects, and deadlines organized. This is a major way in which a Unit Supervisor sets up their people for success!…

Becoming Centered

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46. Supervision2 - Giving Feedback 24:45

12 weeks ago24:45

24:45

Episode 46 of the Becoming Centered Podcast focuses on the essential managerial and coaching skill of giving feedback to others. Individual supervision and individual coaching is, by far, the most effective way to inspire and guide the professional development of direct care child care counselors. This individual attention is much more powerful than in-service training, articles, podcasts, or other ways to train staff. The heart of coaching is being able to give feedback to supervisees in a way that effectively influences how a staff person thinks about their work, how they feel about their efforts and experience, and how they develop their own executive skills and counseling skills. Giving feedback to others, in a way that the other person can process and incorporate into their own professional development, is both a core leadership skill and is very difficult to do. Defensiveness when receiving feedback is normal and natural. In this podcast I set out to raise the listeners awareness of techniques for compensating for that normal level of defensiveness and techniques for making positive feedback more sophisticated and effective.…

Becoming Centered

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45. Supervision1 - Unit Coordinator Roles 36:51

15 weeks ago36:51

36:51

In residential treatment programs by far the most effective way to train direct-care staff in how to effectively care for the kids and to provide counseling is through on-the-job coaching and individual supervision. However, there's a lot of very real barriers to providing quality supervision. The nature of the work, especially at more intensive programs, means that there is a high frequency of behavior-problems on the residential unit. This drives staff toward a short-term focus on getting through the shift, or perhaps through the week, with as few safety issues as possible. The kids needs are essentially infinite and supervisory staff easily get pulled into intervening with the children and youth and just trying to provide all the care they need. The first managerial challenge to providing quality supervision involves carving out the time for a supervisor and a direct care staff person to regularly meet in an office, away from the kids. I advocate for staff responsible for unit supervision to devote at least four hours per week to providing individual supervision. The best way to do that is to delegate as many routine administrative tasks to direct care staff as is possible. The best way to achieve that level of delegation is to clearly define unit coordinator and other roles. This approach both frees up time for unit supervisors to provide coaching and supervision, and provides real training to direct care counselors in how to organize and implement various components of the residential program, from keeping track of hygiene supplies, to designing and scheduling activities, to planning birthday celebrations, and hundreds of other necessary parts to running a quality residential treatment unit.…

Becoming Centered

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44. Processing3 - Chaining 21:14

17 weeks ago21:14

21:14

Episode 44 of the Becoming Centered podcast presents the third installment of the Processing Pathway, covering the technique known as "chaining." Chaining is a great way to add a visual element to cognitive processing. It lays out a series of links representing a chain of behaviors and feelings that led to a child or youth having to be separated from their peers. Once the sequence of links has been clarified, the key link that represents a realistic "choice point" is identified. This link represents the point in the sequence where the client could have made a different choice that likely would have resulted in a better outcome. Typical choice point behaviors include things like, asking for a check-in, asking to take space, or using some established coping mechanism. An explanatory handout and illustration is available at https://www.bearclanllc.com/podcasts/the-processing-pathway/ .…

Becoming Centered

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43. Processing2 - Basic Cognitive Processing 31:38

18 weeks ago31:38

31:38

Episode 43 of The Becoming Centered Podcast is the second episode in the Processing Pathway series. This episode introduces a 4-question outline for formal cognitive processing. Basically, the four parts include helping the child or youth to take responsibility for the behaviors that resulted in their being separated from their peers; identify at least some of the feelings that drove the probelm-behaviors; identify how those behaviors might have impacted peers and staff around them; and identify a possible plan for how to handle things better in the future. One size doesn't fit all, and there are several factors covered that will change how much detail and how much time a counselor should devote to processing with a client. There are also some general goals of processing presented to the listener, that also apply for informal cognitive processing (that doesn't use a written form and likely only covers some of the outline of formal processing). Perhaps the most over-arching goal of cognitive processing is to help kids become more thoughtful human beings (who think before simply reacting to their own emotional states). There are several supporting goals of processing that are covered in this episode that can also be found in handouts available at https://www.bearclanllc.com/podcasts/the-processing-pathway/.…

Becoming Centered

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42. Processing1 - Introduction to Processing 17:23

19 weeks ago17:23

17:23

Episode 42 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is the first episode on the Processing Pathway. Processing involves a structured approach to helping children and youth to mentally process their incidents of problem-behaviors. This episode introduces the concept of there being different ways that different parts of the brain process sensory data, personal experience, and the communications received from the other parts of the brain. This can result in various parts of the brain experiencing different types of confusion after a significant incident of problem-behaviors. Processing is intended to clear up that confusion. It's intended to help kids become more thougtful people who think before they automatically react to their own strong feelings with extreme behaviors. This is achieved through leading kids, once they are generally calm, through a structured process of analyzing their own incidents. In formal processing, there's typically a written form that guides children and youth through a meaningful way to understand an episode of problem-behaviors. The formal approach focuses on four goals: having kids own their own problem-behaviors, identifying feelings that drove those behaviors, identifying how those behaviors may have impacted people around them, and developing a plan for handling themselves better in the future. Residential Treatment Programs are encouraged to require formal processing, at a level appropriate for each individual child, for incidents involving serious problem-behaviors such as violence, major threats, and major disruptions. Informal processing typically doesn't use a form but has the same general goals. Informal processing makes sense for less significant problem-behaviors like instigating and refusing to follow basic program expectations. Informal processing is likely to be conducted only on a verbal level, and the counselor uses their judgement to decide how many of the four processing goals will be a focus of the conversation.…

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41. Season 2 - Overview 17:38

20 weeks ago17:38

17:38

Episode 41 of the Becoming Centered Podcast kicks off season 2 of this effort to spread knowledge about professional residential treatment of children and youth. This season is organized into two different educational pathways, mirroring consulting work being done. The Processing pathway is all about how to help kids process their own use of problem-behaviors. Typically, their own incidents and experiences leave parts of their brains confused about what has happened. They will come up with some way to understand, but often times their framing of what led to their misbehaviors doesn't support positive character development and increased self-regulation. With structured guidance from staff, they can learn how to understand their own patterns of behaviors in a way that leads to increased self-control and self-regulation of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. The Unit Supervision pathway starts with a focus on how to create the time for all direct-care staff to receive several hours of individual supervision each month. It then moves on to how to structure the supervision time and then what content to cover in supervision. It presents a combination of management training and techniques, tools, and perspectives for how to teach counseling skills. This pathway recognizes that in-service trainings, and podcasts, are not the most effective way to promote professional development among residential staff. Rather, in-the-moment coaching and regularly individual supervision sessions are, by far, the most effective way to raise the skill levels and performance of direct-care staff. This series will focus on the management and counseling skills needed to provide quality individual supervision. This episode also presents a couple concepts for residential staff to consider. The first is the distinction between providing Care and providing Treatment. The second is a way to distinguish between providing Counseling and providing Therapy. While the podcast episodes will continue to be available on most podcast hosting sites, this season's episodes will tend to have more written support materials that listeners can download from the www.BearClanllc.com website Podcast page.…

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40. Residential Counselor 101 Pt. 7 - Resilience to Traumatic Stress 30:55

48 weeks ago30:55

30:55

Psychological Debriefing is a technique for reducing the impact of traumatic stress after a neurologically intense experience. On a neuropsychological level that experience could be anything that triggers a release of certain hormones such as cortisol (known as “the stress hormone”) and adrenaline. On a behavioral level that typically includes situations such as being involved in a physical intervention, being exposed to aggressive posturing, being yelled at, or really any situation that triggers significant danger signals in your body. Exactly what moves a person significantly out of their comfort zone is going to differ from person to person based on individual physiology and psychology. Exposure to traumatic stress does not automatically result in serious mental health conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, traumatic stress has a cumulative effect and can trigger pre-existing PTSD. Symptoms of PTSD include: Aggressive or emotional outbursts Nightmares and/or flashbacks Heart palpitations, trembling hands, or sweating A sense of self-blame, worthlessness, shame, or guilt Acute or chronic unexplained physical pain Avoidance of people, things, or situations related to traumatic event Jumpiness Difficulty with sleep, eating, or physical intimacy Digestion disruptions Weakened immune system Low mood Headaches Social isolation Feeling empty or hopeless Loss of interest in activities Irritability Distrust of others or the world Dissociation The symptoms of traumatic stress are less extreme. However, because stress is stored in the body, impacting all sorts of neurological and physiological regulatory systems, it’s important to take steps to reduce its impact on staff. There’s something about being exposed to intense negative experiences that parts of the brain have great difficulty processing. Typically, during such incidents the parts of the brain that are responsible for your sense of time do not function at 100%. Thus, an objectively short incident might feel like it was much longer and have a bigger impact on you. Likewise, your ability to remember the exact sequence of what happened becomes impaired. The result is that afterwards, there’s parts of your brain that feel confused about what just happened. That sense of confusion can lead to perseverative thoughts. So, as you commute home, you keep running the incident over and over again in your head. Part of you is trying to process, to make sense of, what happened. However, memories of intense situations are stored based on their emotional impact. So, you start to feel emotional in thinking about what happened earlier, and that in turn impairs your ability to process it. Round and round your thoughts go, without any real resolution. In the meantime, the stress builds up, and is stored, in your muscles and nervous system, eventually impacting your immune system and other regulatory mechanisms in your body. One of the most effective and practical ways to lessen that effect is through the regular use of Psychological Debriefing. There’s four things that help reduce the impact of traumatic stress. Overwriting the emotional load of the traumatic memories. Clarifying the sequence of events. Feeling cared for and respected. Use of self-centering techniques. Neuropsychological research supports practice-wisdom suggesting that the exact timing of debriefing doesn’t matter, in terms of its effectiveness. Sometimes, it can be done right after an incident. However, it also works to reduce the impact of traumatic stress even hours later. Nevertheless, as a rule of thumb, it’s best if Psychological Debriefing can occur before the shift ends. Otherwise, perseverating, repeatedly running through what happened in your own head, tends to reinforce the traumatic emotions tied to the memory. You can try to debrief outside of work, but you’ll soon learn that family and friends can’t really relate to what you’re describing and are left simply questioning why you would do such work in the first place! Instead, what’s most helpful is to have a fellow staff person, ideally a shift leader or supervisor, but really it can be any staff person, simply attentively listen as you describe what happened. Overwriting the emotional load of traumatic memories: When you describe, in a relatively calm fashion, what happened in a stressful incident, you begin the process of overwriting the emotional load of traumatic memories. Essentially what’s happening in your brain is that you are taking the memory of the stressful event, with it’s intense emotional load, and overwriting that memory with a new memory of describing the incident to someone else, with a much reduced emotional load. In this way, some of the emotional power, the sting, of the memory is reduced. Later, recalling what happened is less likely to trigger the intense emotions originally experienced. Instead, that recall is tempered by the memory of calmly describing what happened to a colleague. To some extent, writing up the incident can serve the same purpose. However, on an emotional level, the memory of calmly writing an incident report is not as powerful as a memory of verbally describing what happened. Debriefing with an attentive colleague works best. The key is that the description of what happened should, at least initially, focus on the behaviors and not on the staff person’s emotions. The idea is to be able to recount what happened while experiencing a relatively calm state-of-mind. Clarifying the Sequence of Events: Because the parts of the brain that keep track of time tend to get shut off during intense situations, the more cognitive parts of the brain can be left feeling somewhat confused about the exact sequence of events that took place. Again, sticking to a description of the actions that occurred during the incident being debriefed can be helpful for restoring that sense of sequence which helps the person being debriefed feel more oriented and centered. It's not uncommon to debrief a group of people simultaneously who were all involved in some intense incident. Often times some staff people will not have been aware of what was happening with others on the team. Again, a review of that together is orienting and centering. It should be a clear expectation that shift leaders will debrief any critical incidents before sending staff home. Debriefing can, sometimes, be done very briefly, in just a minute or two. It can also be done as a small group, and sometimes can be blended with the writing of the incident report. Feeling Cared For and Respected: To some extent simply attentively listening to a staff person’s description of what occurred will make them feel cared for and respected. That has a huge impact on reducing the impact of traumatic stress. However, it may make sense to ask a few questions. After incidents that involved physical intervention, it’s helpful to ask the staff if anyone was hurt or injured. Frequently, staff members will ignore minor scrapes and bruises that don’t require medical attention. However, being able to share these sorts of minor injuries has psychological / emotional benefit. In some cases, staff will have become injured to an extent that should be reported and they need to be encouraged to do that follow through. Sometimes a staff person will be embarrassed that they received some minor injury. Normalizing that performing physical interventions are difficult can be helpful. Likewise, sometimes a staff person is very unhappy about some aspect of their own performance during a physical intervention. Again, normalizing that this is an extremely difficult part of the job can be emotionally supportive and helpful. Simply asking the staff person how they’re doing can be helpful. From a trauma mitigation perspective, their answer is less important than their experiencing being asked. Having supportive teammates who care about your well-being is a huge trauma protective factor. As the debriefer, it is not your role to solve any problems, to brainstorm other things the staff person could have done in the incident, or to analyze the actions or motivations of the clients involved in the incident. Instead, it is the debriefer’s role to attentively listen and to be generally emotionally supportive. Sometimes a staff person may be so emotionally impacted by an incident that follow up in individual supervision would be helpful. Psychological Debriefing is intended to help, but is intended to be relatively brief. Suggesting that a staff person bring up what happened in their next supervision may be good advice, or in some cases letting the person’s supervisor know that some follow up would be helpful is part of being a caring and professional colleague. Use of Centering Techniques: The impact of traumatic stress can be greatly lessened by the use of various centering techniques. Staff members should be encouraged to use these sorts of strategies to help manage their own stress. Psychological Debriefing can reinforce the use these actions and of acquiring a sophisticated understanding of traumatic stress. Immediately after a traumatically stressful incident, it’s helpful for staff to attend to their own basic needs. Sometimes, it’s helpful to be cued to do this by a colleague. Basic needs include things like hydrating, using a bathroom, stretching a little, or perhaps taking a short break. These things signal your body that the crisis is over and that your physiology can return to baseline. During Psychological Debriefing, the debriefer can ask if the incident took that staff person by surprise or was something they were able to partly anticipate. Intense situations that occur without anticipation tend to be more traumatically stressful. Likewise, the debriefer can ask if the staff person felt that their training prepared them for the incident. Feeling trained and some level of competence in an intense situation will tend to result in less traumatic stress being experienced. Gaps in training can be brought to the attention of supervisors for future improved training. Asking the staff person about their own body awareness during the incident can be helpful. Maintaining an awareness of your own muscle tension, breathing, heart rate, and other internal reactions can help you feel in control and can reduce the impact of the traumatic stress. Asking the staff person if they felt supported by their teammates during the incident can also be helpful. Many times the staff person will report that they did feel supported and their recognition of that will help to lessen some of the lingering effects of the traumatic stress. If a staff person didn’t feel supportive, that’s important information for the rest of the team and for supervisors so that teamwork improvements can be made. There are numerous relaxation, meditation, and mindfulness exercises that can be helpful after exposure to traumatic stress. Staff members should be taught some of these techniques and encouraged to use them after being exposed to traumatic stress.…

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39. Residential Counselor 101 Pt. 6 - Empathy vs. Processing & Coping Activities 31:32

50 weeks ago31:32

31:32

Coping Activities Diversions – any hobby or activity that engages your attention . Writing, drawing, painting, crafts Listening to music, playing an instrument, singing, dancing, acting Gardening Taking a walk, or going for a drive Watching television or a movie Guided Imagery Meditations Playing a game Shopping Reading Taking a break or vacation Tension Releasers Going on a walk Exercising Breathing Exercises Playing sports Systematic Muscle Relaxation Playing a musical instrument Taking a hot shower or bath Eating a little chocolate Crying Laughing Singing Organizing Tasks – any activity that involves ordering things. Cleaning Organizing your environment Putting things away Sudoku, Crossword puzzles, Jigsaw puzzles Update your calendar Outline the steps in a project Cognitive Coping Skills Making lists (Pro-Con, Goals, Ideas) Brainstorming solutions Managing your expectations Considering an inspirational quote Being flexible Consciously changing your attitude Rewarding yourself for successes Analyzing a situation Reframing a problem to be an opportunity Social or Interpersonal Coping Strategies Talking to someone you trust Writing a note to someone you care about Spending time with friends or family Serving someone in need Caring for or play with a pet Role-playing challenging situations with others Encouraging others Physical Maintenance Strategies Getting enough sleep Eating healthy foods Getting into a good routine Limiting caffeine and alcohol Taking medication as prescribed Deep / slow breathing Limit Setting Dropping some activities if you’re over-extended Setting boundaries and saying "no" Prioritizing important tasks Scheduling time for yourself Being assertive to the demands of others Spiritually Fulfilling Activities Praying Meditating Enjoying nature Getting involved in a worthy cause Experiencing appreciation or gratitude Negative Coping Actions Diversions Procrastination – putting off important tasks Misusing drugs or alcohol as self-medicating Wasting time on unimportant tasks Tension Releasers Tantrums Throwing things at people Hitting people Yelling at others Destroying property Speeding or driving recklessly Social or Interpersonal Strategies Blaming others Isolating or withdrawing Mean or hostile joking Putting down others behind their back Criticizing others to their face Manipulating others Refusing help from others Lying to other people Sabotaging other people’s plans Being late to appointments Provoking violence from others Enabling others to take advantage of you Physical Suicidal Gestures Self-harm Excessive exercise Developing illnesses Abusing drugs or alcohol Over-Indulging Spending too much Gambling Eating too much Continually crying Cognitive Strategies Denying any problem Stubbornness or inflexibility All or nothing, black or white, thinking Blaming yourself and others Catastrophizing Unproductive Repetitive Thoughts Hiding or Burying Your Feelings Withdrawing or Isolating Name-Calling Self-Diminishing Making excessive fun of yourself Self-sabotaging behaviors Blaming yourself Thoughts and behaviors that suggest that you deserve to feel bad or overwhelmed…

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38. Residential Counselor 101 Pt. 5 - Scout Skills & Processing 27:38

51 weeks ago27:38