Grounding the heart, mind, and body: Helping dysregulated clients ground themselves and regain a sense of self-control and self-efficacy

Clients often enter our offices unable to relieve unbearable tension and stress of a specific situation or of their daily lives. Despite our best efforts, some clients do not respond to our attempts to help them calm. Sometimes grounding tools that have worked in the past do not seem to make any difference. We must look behind the tools to understand which approaches would best help. Understanding the different defense mechanisms in the conscious, emotional, and physical parts of the brain and body can make the difference.

Using recent neurological research and proven stress reduction methods, this workshop will provide practical tools that front-line workers can use to help dysregulated clients ground themselves and regain a sense of self-control and self-efficacy.

Whether the client is a first-time user of a service (drop-in centre, shelter) or a frequent consumer (severe and persistent mental health, residential program), this workshop will offer clear, straightforward strategies to help clients feel physically, emotionally, and mentally stable.

Learning objectives:

• Learn how the brainstem, the limbic system and the pre-frontal cortex system work together and impact each other.
• Understand how these three systems differentially affect “fight or flight,” emotional response and cognitive distortions
• Gain different grounding techniques that work with each of the three systems
• Learn how to bring a client back into their “window of tolerance”
• Help traumatized clients out of the “there and then” and bringing them back to the “here and now”