In the Thick of It: Small Steps for Quick Wins Part 1

Behind The Line

Show Notes:

During the month of March, we are going to be launching our latest series called “In the Thick of It: Small Steps for Quick Wins”. During this series I will be bringing you some of my favourite tools – things that are not rocket science, are totally able to be integrated into your life, no matter how crazy and chaotic it is, and that are guaranteed to make a difference if you apply them consistently.

Today I want to tell you about one of my all time favourite tools – called Opposite Action. Before I tell you about the tool, let’s talk about when you are going to use it.

The most substantial way we can use this tool is when we are in trauma reactivity. When you experienced something traumatic, you had a response in the moment. It might have been to fight back, to run away, to hold still and wait it out, or to placate the situation to get through it by the skin of your teeth. More commonly we know these responses as fight, flight, freeze and fawn. I’m going to add a response type that many of you in First Response and Front Line Work might actually feel is more appropriate to when you are in work-related crisis situations, and I call it “Hold”. Hold is a weird mix of all of the trauma responses. It’s a little like freeze, because you are staying in the situation. It’s a little like fawn, because you might have to talk someone down or come across like an ally to try to deescalate. It's a little like fight because you may have to take action and engage. And it’s a little like flight because you are on edge and ready to move. When you are the responder in a crisis, your job is to stay. The role is to hold. To run into the fire when everyone else is running away. While this is the job, you are still human within your work and your brain is still firing off all of the natural stress responses, it’s just been trained to background those responses and hold in the moment.

Whatever our response to a trauma-related event might have been, and regardless of whether the trauma is work related or something else, that response becomes imprinted on us and embedded in the wiring around the memory of that experience.

Commonly, the response we had in a moment, is not the response we wish we could have had when we look at it in hindsight. And when it becomes embedded into our systems, it can become the triggered response over and over and over and over again. And that my friends, is crappy. Because each time we repeat this, it becomes further embedded into the wiring AND it starts to generalize not only to that one specific experience, but to others that your brain perceives as sufficiently similar.

Think about it like taking a pen and scraping a line into a wood surface. One time wouldn’t be particularly deep, but if you kept doing it over and over, that divot would get deeper and deeper and become harder to repair. That’s what it’s like when you repeat trauma reactions over time – the neurological connections around it become more and more deeply entrenched.

Now here is where opposite action come in to play – opposite action is like sandpaper. Every time you engage this tool, rather than further entrenching the trauma response you are creating a new neurological pathway, and every time you repeat this you are undermining the trauma reaction pathway. It like taking a piece of sandpaper and running it over that gouge. Slowly but surely, the trench we wore will smooth out and look brand new.

Ok, so how do we use opposite action? Start with these 3 questions:

1. When you think back on the traumatic experience what do you wish you could have done or said in that situation?

2. When the traumatic situation happened, what was your need?

3. When you reflect on your body’s response to the traumatic experience, what would be the opposite of however it was made to feel and respond?

In focusing on these questions and the responses that naturally come in answering them, you will get a sense of what would be a corrective emotional experience. In the moment of a traumatic experience, we lack choice and the freedom to make decisions – something hard is thrust on us without our vote and we are just left to figure it out. But as we continue to live with the impact of that experience, we have choice in how we allow it to continue living within us – in our bodies and in our responses.

Opposite action can show up in specific moments of being triggered, but also in general decisions you make to support yourself being aligned to the kind of person you choose to be. …This will connect a bit to where we’re headed in next weeks’ episode around the story we tell ourselves. If you are a member of the Beating the Breaking Point support experience, my enhanced resilience training program, you will find a worksheet in the training vault that includes and extensive list of examples of opposite actions. If you’re not yet a member – I really encourage you to go check it out – the program includes my signature self-paced online training along with access to a private support community where you can connect with me for support in applying your learning, and our growing training vault with bonus materials to help you continue to grow in your resilience.

Episode Challenge:

· Register for Beating the Breaking Point (choose the enhanced support experience – it’s worth it!), my online resilience training program.

Additional Resources:

Register for Beating the Breaking Point, our top-rated self-paced resilience training program tailor made for First Responders and Front Line Workers to protect against (and recover from) Burnout and related concerns (eg. Organizational Stress, Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma).

Check out some of our related episodes…
- Impacts of Trauma Series (S3E9-13)
- May Mini’s (Quick Tips for Regulation) (S2E35-39)

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