PHP was on holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., but we still had a two-hour zoom session. On the docket today was making something tangible based on what we’re learning in regards to stress management and harm reduction. For example, the 5-4-3-2-1 thing, which I can’t stand because it’s so rudimentary simple and my brain goes so fast that I gloss over all of the things I think about as if it were a worn out speed bump. But I chose it, because I realized something.
What if I make a 5-4-3-2-1 bag, but with a GOOM-B (GOOYH) segue? You know: Get Out Of My (damned) Brain!
First, here’s what I used: One of my spare insulated grocery bags and a plethora of random things that I have around the house. I chose items with the intention that they could serve dual purpose. I also added more than the number of required items, because my brain when overloaded needs a matched overloading rebuttal system.
5 things to look at:
– A box of MTG cards
– A Skyrim-themed tarot deck
– An assortment of semiprecious gemstones
– A small collection of tiny toys
4 things to touch:
– two woven pouches
– again, the semiprecious gemstones (texture is everything)
– a cloth that once doubled as a bandana for a stuffed animal that I was given when I was born (and was bigger than I was at the time)
– (not pictured) that stuffed animal, which is on my bed somewhere
– Herbert the Cat, a Hobb’s Barrow special edition from Makeship
3 things to hear:
– all of it, really.
– the way the gemstones clank and click
– the sound of the TTRPG dice
– the way the tarot cards shuffle
(note – these require hand movement, which also help to focus energy on something aside from feeling like I’m being piled up on or regressing to the state of an injured five year old lost in a desert)
2 things to smell:
– incense
– (not pictured) melatonin-infused calming spray, which is on the book stand by my bed
– (not pictured) a vial of peppermint essential oil, also on the book stand by my bed
1 thing to taste:
– an assortment of candies: jolly ranchers, peppermints, and I added some mini candy bars and “scooby snacks” after I took the pic.
Not included in the list was the Age of Steam Trilogy from Devon Monk, which is an easy-read series, a collection of puzzle books, some pocket notebooks, and an assortment of colored ink pens. This is the GOOM-B gold mine.
I have this thing that I’ve started to try to incorporate when I can catch the piling/regression (I’m like 2 successes out of 5 at the moment, so I still need practice), and I call it “off-ramping.” Imagine a very large diesel truck flying downhill and unable to apply the brakes. That’s my brain when I start piling/regressing. If I can catch myself just enough to slide into an emergency off ramp, then I might have the ability to also stop, take the killswitch medication, and focus on something tangible (like the contents of the 5-4-3-2-1/GOOM-B bag). With the MTG cards, the tarot deck, the meanings/symbolism of the gemstones, and the ttrpg dice, I can mentally focus on four items and write a brief story about it instead of focusing on how helpless or hopeless I feel.
When I first tested this “emergency story creation,” I was able to off-ramp at the MTG cards alone. The way I use my cards is this: location, main character, situation, and result. The series has several cards specifically for locations and characters and sometimes situations depending on the card (like items can be significant cues for situations, as can other cards — i.e. what a character on that card is doing), and an outcome could be the situation on another card. In this case, I pulled a Fabled Passage, a Caravan Guard, a Shivan Dragon, and a Recruitment Drive.
I giggled to myself about the hilarity of a less-than-famous merchant’s personal escort, Barnabas Twiggletoe thee Loquacious Lawn Goblin, attempting to sweet talk Gufix Steelfin into joining their troupe, and trying to convince the magnificent beast that it would look good on his resume, when all the dragon wants to do is seek pride and glory through conquests worthy of telling his brood back home…if they even have one yet. Because why would a Shivan dragon be in the fabled passage at the same time as Barnabas Twiggletoe thee LLG if he wasn’t looking to do work with a caravan? Right???
Anyway, it worked for me. But by the time I wrote the micro-story, I was also near-fully sedated and needed to go to sleep.
Creating the 5-4-3-2-1 GOOM-B bag incorporates both the sensory recentering and the cognitive rerouting into one bag, which sits at the book stand by my bed for quick and easy access.
So instead of mentally naming off 5-4-3-2-1 things in the environment faster than I can roll my eyes, I now have to stop what I’m doing, physically remove the contents of this bag, and actually find and name and look at/feel/hear/touch/taste — using my hands at the same time. Adding the puzzles and notebooks give it that much more work to do before tossing it out the airlock and spiraling into a full blackout.
My hope for this is that it actually produces better results than trying to establish something like this when entering pile/regression mode so I don’t have to panic even more from not finding these things.
I enjoyed this activity. I really did. I think I’ve made something useful out of it.
(Side note — I added a zip lock bag full of an assortment of teabags to remind myself I can actually make tea for these moments, which for reasons unknown to me, sipping tea also help calm me down)
