Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes walks through week 8 of a depression treatment framework that combines mindfulness, grief processing, and inner child work. This installment builds on the previous seven weeks of the series.
Welcome back to week eight of the Week by Week guide to depression Treatment. I AM your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. As always, in depth videos on each of the topics that we discuss and particularly grief and the inner child today can be found@docsnipes.com YouTube so don't feel like you are completely out of the loop with things if you don't understand 100% about what we're talking about. This series is designed to just provide a framework that gives you an example of what therapy might be like on a week by week basis. If you're processing depression for each person, it's going to be a little bit different, but this is sort of the format that I start out with and then I tailor for each individual. Week eight, as always, we're going to review your morning and evening mindfulness logs for your pacer themes, your physical, affective, cognitive, environmental and relationship themes, and sleep trends. If people are starting to show evidence of becoming physically run down, not sleeping well, pessimism, depression, you know, depending on the person, it may be important to take a hiatus or a break from processing some of the grief and losses for a week or two so they can get their energy back. It's important not to run yourself into the ground trying to get through this and process it all. There is no timetable and it's better, a lot more effective to do it mindfully, to do it smartly. And I know that's not a word, but I'm going to use it anyway than to continue to plug along because that's what's on the schedule. So it is important to look at the themes and if you're starting to feel run down or overwhelmed, there is nothing wrong. There is no shame in taking a rest, taking a break from doing this because it is hard work. We'll explore any meditation and distress tolerance skills that are working for you. Again, just to keep those in the forefront of your mind. So when you are experiencing distress, they're kind of on the tip of your tongue. We'll review the progress and trends in baseline data for your top three symptoms. This again is an indication about whether you're doing well and can continue progressing or whether you may need to take a break and regroup and allow your body and your brain to heal from the traumas that it's gone through. It's exhausting. We'll review your cognitive distortion worksheets and identify themes, discuss the loss that you began processing, exploring how that loss is currently impacting you in the present. We're going to Continue processing grief using the questions from week six from henceforth. For a lot of people this is an ongoing self directed process. That is we're going to move on to processing trauma and some other things in session and you're going to be empowered to continue processing your grief issues on your own. Now that doesn't mean we can't talk about them in session, it just means it won't be a focus of session. You're also going to learn about the wounded inner child by watching the video Healing the Wounded Inner child on the YouTube channel. So you can start understanding how things that happened when you were a child may still be kind of stored in your memory banks and continuing to impact you today. Because many times when we experience a trauma, when we experience a loss, especially as children who we don't know how to deal with it. And so that issue that trauma gets stored in the way that the child remembers it. So it's stored as an eight year old memory. For example, if it happened when you were eight years old, as it comes out, it's going to come out as an eight year old may express it. So it's important to understand that that inner child is, is representative of the memories that you stored when you were that age. We'll explore how your reactions to things that remind you of past traumas might be your inner child reemerging. So when things in the present remind you of past traumas and you throw a temper tantrum, for example, how might that be your inner child starting to re emerge? And what can you do to help that inner child feel protected? And a lot of people say I don't know. And my response is, if you had a child right now who was experiencing this trauma, what would you do to help that child feel safe? Ultimately, and this is a kind of esoteric concept, but ultimately the adult you is now responsible for protecting that inner child. So you're going to have to ultimately sort of reparent that inner child. And you'll understand a lot more once you read or watch the video Healing the Inner Child. But it's important to think, think to yourself when you start feeling vulnerable. For example, what would a parent do? What could a parent do to help a child who is feeling vulnerable feel safe and protected? How does that child know that their parent has their back? And you need to start doing that for yourself. You need to start being consistent, consistently empathetic and responsive to your own inner needs and recognizing that you're safe now in the present. Because as an adult you have skills, tools, and abilities that you may not have had, probably didn't have back then when you were a small child. As always, you're going to continue your mindfulness worksheets, your baseline data collection, your happiness breaks at lunch, monitoring your thoughts for cognitive distortions, and completing the cognitive distortions worksheet at least one a week. You're also going to continue processing at least one loss or group of losses. So you're going to continue to do that. Then you're going to watch that video on healing the inner child this week. So this week, you know, we're wrapping up that final in session, grief processing, and you're empowered to continue to do that on your own. But I'm not adding a lot of extra stuff because processing grief takes a lot of energy and takes a lot of time.
