Resourcing & Coping Skills Are More than Tools for Hard Times: an Eco-Therapy Perspective
If you have ever been in psychotherapy, my guess is that you have heard about resources and coping skills. My other assumption is that you have learned to associate these words with tools to use when things are difficult and/or you are feeling something intensely. While intense and difficult moments are great times for resources and coping skills, there is so much more to them than that.
Resourcing can be Nervous System Support
Have you ever stopped and just sensed (looked, heard, smelt, felt, tasted) around you, especially when outside? What did you notice happen in your body and mind? What did it feel like? For many people, when we orient or sense around our environments, it can allow for some easing up of stress and a greater sense of presence and connection to the current moment. This can definitely be helpful if you are already feeling stressed out and it can also be useful if you are not. Resourcing ourselves by orienting and being present to the current environment can begin to teach our nervous systems that it is okay to notice something positive or to slow down. It can teach us that it is okay to turn towards something nourishing before turning towards something stressful, especially in moments where we don’t need to immediately react.
Resourcing can be Fostering Deeper Relationships
When we learn that our resources are there solely to help us, especially in difficult times, we can build a relationship with them that centers on our own needs and our own urgency. This is a one way relationship and yes, when we are in a crisis or difficult moment, it may be the only kind of relationship we can have in order to survive something. The key piece here is that resources are not things we use but rather activities, beings, or places we get to build a relationship with. Movement or exercise can become a way to build relationship with your body and your sense of strength and capability. Going outdoors can become a way to connect with other natural beings and to notice the world around you. Traveling to a place you enjoy can become a way to build a relationship with the culture of the people there, the land, the other natural beings who live there. Writing, singing, reading, painting, creating can become ways to build relationship with your own expression in the world and to connect with the lived experiences of others. The list could go on and on. As relationships are built, these resources no longer become a way for you to “be okay” but instead become ways of deeper connection with yourself, others, and the world around you and ways to foster greater well-being for all.
Coping Skills can be Remembering Your Instincts
Due to many of the comforts of our modern lives, we may not have had as many opportunities to readily rely on our instincts. Instincts are our innate, unlearned behaviors that are crucial for our survival. Many of us have been taught not to trust our instincts, especially if they do not meet certain social standards. For example, we may be feeling a need to sleep, eat, drink water, move our bodies, go outside, or connect with someone but we have a work meeting or a series of pre-scheduled events and so we do not listen to ourselves. Sometimes yes, to live in our modern society we cannot act on every instinct at every moment AND, many of us have learned to tune out our instincts almost entirely to force ourselves to fit into a social standard or an idea of success. There are many layers to this and I recognize that there is different access to being able to attend to our instincts based on social location. There is also something available to each of us if we can begin to turn towards ourselves and our instincts with curiosity instead of being upset with ourselves if we need something that doesn’t fit our schedule.
Resourcing as Reconnection
We are wired for connection, with ourselves, with other beings, and with the land. Connection does not always mean scheduling another social event or activity into your week. Connection runs much deeper than a calendar of events. Connection is a rich resource that our bodies and minds yearn for to feel alive, to feel healthy, to feel present. Resourcing can be reconnecting with yourself and the world around you and noticing what is possible when you do so. Even if it may not always seem like it, there are so many opportunities for connection happening around us every day, between plants and animals and micro-organisms and our own bodies and minds and one another. Resourcing may be an access point for reconnection and can begin by spending a few minutes each day noticing a sensation or emotion you have in your body or spending a few moments being curious about the other beings near you (human and more than human). What may begin as resourcing for yourself can turn into reconnection to yourself, to others, to the land and to the greater web of life.
If you are curious to learn more about Eco-therapy and/or are interested in working with me or consulting with me, please reach out! I would love to be connected!