Sara Vavra Holistic Mental Health Counseling

Sara Vavra Holistic Mental Health Counseling Helping others reconnect with their whole selves to live with more balance, strength, and joy.

I NEED A HUGEverybody recovers from traumatic experiences differently and each recovery is as unique as each person. Man...
09/15/2023

I NEED A HUG

Everybody recovers from traumatic experiences differently and each recovery is as unique as each person. Many of us come from cultures that emphasize “getting over it” as quickly as possible, but this stoic approach rarely works well. We know intellectually that the threat has cleared, that we are not in danger, and yet wonder why we feel unsettled. We may even feel irritable, anxious, jittery, and hypervigilant. We are unable to believe that these feelings are connected to our trauma, blaming them instead on external forces, like other drivers on the road, unreasonable deadlines, and annoying neighbors.

Global anxiety, hypervigilance, sleeplessness, and other symptoms can be signs that we are still carrying the trauma in our bodies. Talking to others can help us reframe our experiences and see them in more adaptive ways. Getting professional trauma-informed mental health care can help too. But for trauma embedded in emotional memory, we need to explore body-based healing modalities. This might mean moving your body by dancing or exercising, or simply by experiencing nurturing touch. As Bessel van der Kolk writes in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, “The most natural way that we humans calm down our distress is by being touched, hugged, and rocked.“

Recently, my friend reminded me of this basic truth as we were sharing how our children were coping in the aftermath of a lockdown and school shooting. Her daughter Lucy is doing well. She lives in a house with several other women, and they have been supportive of each other as they process this tragedy. One day, as my friend was video chatting with her daughter, she heard one of the roommates knock on Lucy's door and say, “I need a hug. I was wondering if you could use a hug too.” She witnessed the two young women wrap their arms around each other, and in that embrace, help each other feel grounded and embodied.

This says so much about these young women. They have courage to be vulnerable. They know what they need and how to ask for it. And they possess the kindness to grant it to one another. As van der Kolk reminds us, “You can’t fully recover if you don’t feel safe in your skin.”

Keeping Kids Calm In A Crisis-Even If They’re Far From HomeAt 1:22pm on a Monday, our oldest son texted me from college....
09/05/2023

Keeping Kids Calm In A Crisis-Even If They’re Far From Home

At 1:22pm on a Monday, our oldest son texted me from college. “I’m ok”, he said, “but I want you to know that the campus is on lockdown. Apparently, there is an armed man on campus.”
He was at home, “sheltering in place” with his roommates, so we were able to talk.

Other parents were not so lucky. They were getting texts from terrified children who were in “lockdown” in academic buildings, bathrooms, cafeterias, gyms, and dorms. They were trying to cry as silently as they could, huddled against inner walls, in darkened and barricaded rooms, unsure of the level of threat, of their vulnerability. Parents were posting on social media what scant information they had, some of it rumor, and searching for ways to comfort their distressed children.

After all, how do you comfort your child in lockdown from an armed man terrorizing one of the finest schools in the country?

While we can do many things to make the world safer, the sad truth is that we will never be able to protect our children from all possible terrors. However, we are not helpless. We can help our children cope in high anxiety situations by doing what we have been doing since they were born. We can help them manage their nervous systems by staying calm and reassuring, even if it takes all our energy to do so.

Our goal is to help our children get through the crisis and not add to their fears by communicating our own to them. This isn’t about being inauthentic. This is about helping them lower their level of distress to a manageable place where they can breathe and think more clearly. Until the crisis has passed, they need to be both alert and responsive to their environment.

We know that when stress becomes too intense for our nervous system, we tend to narrow our focus. We forget our wellness routines, the breath work we learned in yoga class, or that there are many more options than the ones we are imagining. In our panic, we tend to imagine one scenario and exclude all others. Even if all we can do is text with our kids, we can help them reduce their level of anxiety by helping them broaden their focus and breathe. Remember, the goal in these situations is to help our children get through the crisis, especially when they are unable to speak or think clearly.

One of the exercises we practice in EMDR (a psychotherapy modality that addresses trauma), consists of asking 5 questions that can help bring us back into our “window of tolerance”.
You do this by asking or texting your child to:

1. Scan the room, looking left to right and name 5 things you see. Good. Breathe in, breathe out.

2. Name 4 things that you feel. Good. Breathe in, breathe out.

3. Name 3 things that you hear. Good. Breathe in, breathe out. T

4. Name 2 things that you smell. Good. Breathe in, breathe out.

5. Name 1 thing that you taste. Good. Breathe in, breathe out.

Repeat again and again until you, or the person you are talking to, feels their anxiety diminish. If your child has difficulty with one or more of their senses, repeat the ones that are the strongest instead.

Remember, when someone is panicking in a crisis, the goal is to help keep them safe in themselves. Staying calm and breathing through the storm helps. Afterwards, there will be time for hugs, vacations, and maybe some therapy. Even though our kids are technically adults, they still need us. Learning how to manage strong emotions is one of many skills that we can teach and model as they move towards independence.

Welcome to the office space. A friendly and accepting therapist, pillows, blankets, and the softest stuffed animals in N...
09/04/2023

Welcome to the office space. A friendly and accepting therapist, pillows, blankets, and the softest stuffed animals in North Carolina!

Mother nature has a way of making things better
09/04/2023

Mother nature has a way of making things better

Grounding myself by using breath to connect to my heart center.
09/04/2023

Grounding myself by using breath to connect to my heart center.

Address

7301 Carmel Executive Park Drive, Suite 330
Charlotte, NC
28226

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 7pm
Tuesday 8am - 7pm
Friday 10am - 7pm

Telephone

+17047805293

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