Vulnerability Awareness and Tools to Address Them | Counselor Continuing Education

Hey there, everybody. Welcome to this video on vulnerabilities. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. In this video, we're going to define what vulnerabilities are and identify some of the most common vulnerabilities, their effects, and some ways to prevent them. Now, there's lots of ways to address these vulnerabilities, and I'm not possibly going to be able to address them all in this hour video. Likewise, I'm not going to do a deep dive on each of the interventions to teach you how to do it, because I have other videos on the YouTube channel that will do that. Today is more to get you thinking about what vulnerabilities are and what you can do to prevent or mitigate them. So vulnerabilities are situations or things that make it more difficult to deal with life on life's terms, which can lead to depression, anxiety, stress, stress, or distress. Vulnerabilities also make it easier for you to have a more extreme stress reaction. So I want you to think about vulnerabilities like being primed when you've already experienced some level of stress or distress. Some of your energy is gone. You're already feeling like you're playing catch up, for example. And so when anything comes at you, it's like, oh my gosh, one more thing. And you, you can wake up in the morning and feel vulnerable if you didn't sleep well or if you're in pain, for example. So the things that may normally not cause you a lot of distress may seem overwhelming. Depression is a feeling that occurs if you feel helpless or hopeless. And when people are vulnerable a lot, then, and they don't recognize that they were vulnerable, then it feels like when they're dealing with life, life itself is just completely overwhelming. They don't recognize that they were already starting from a place of being stressed out or drained. And anxiety occurs if you feel powerless or out of control. And when you are vulnerable, then you're in a position of feeling somewhat less powerful, maybe somewhat less able to deal with life on life's terms. And finally, addictive behaviors increase when you feel a need to escape because of this stress, anxiety, or depression. So vulnerabilities are something that we really need to talk about in terms of mental health prevention or mental illness prevention, as well as for treatment and recovery. Vulnerabilities are not just something that people with mental illnesses have, they're something that everybody has. And if we become aware of them, then we can reduce our stress and reduce the likelihood of developing some of those Mental illnesses. So the first vulnerability we're going to talk about is physical. And I'm going to go through them in order of the pacer, mnemonic, physical, affective, cognitive, environmental and relational. So let's start with physical pain is a vulnerability for a lot of people. When we are in pain, it can impair our sleep, it can make it difficult to concentrate, it can make us irritable. And medications for pain tend to be depressants and can worsen all of the above effects. Now, there's a lot of other effects of pain, but I'm just trying to highlight the fact that pain isn't just, you know, pain. It has systemic effects on your mind and body and it's important to be cognizant of that. You may not be able to make your pain go away completely if you've got chronic pain. I've got chronic pain in my elbow, for example, and I have good days and I have bad days. On my good days, you know, great, wonderful. On my bad days I recognize that as a vulnerability and I take steps to mitigate it to prevent it from causing me further distress. Interventions that you can use for pain? Well, of course, talk with your doctor, see what can be done. There's a lot of non pharmacological as well as drug based interventions for pain. And so it's important to talk with your doctor about what might be available to you that you can use to minimize your pain so you can live the best version of your rich and meaningful life. Explore those non pharmacological interventions and consider using radical acceptance or embracing the ant. And what that means is what? Recognizing I'm in pain today, it is what it is. Today's not a good pain day. Okay, I can have a rich and meaningful life and experience this pain. It's not what I ideal, but I can do that. If today is going to be a bad day and there's nothing I can do about that, I can use either use my energy to get all upset about it and really burn through some energy or I can accept that it is what it is and I'm not going to let it prevent me from living my rich and meaningful life. Poor nutrition is another vulnerability. We've, most of us have heard of the term hangry before. That's a combination of hungry and angry. When we are hungry, our body recognizes that as a threat. When our blood sugar gets really low, our body recognizes that as a threat and kicks off that stress response system, the HPA axis. Why does it do that? Well, because when that Stress response system is kicked off, your body releases glucose into the bloodstream, so your blood sugar goes back up, which in and of itself is a decent system. But if you are regularly having problems with hypoglycemia or poor nutrition, then that can contribute to your anxiety, to your distress. If you're somebody who knows that you tend to get hangry, then that's one of those things that's pretty easy to prevent or mitigate by keeping snacks with you, by making sure that you can access food or juice in order to get your blood sugar up. If you know that that's one of one of your things. Poor nutrition impacts you systemically because your body needs food. It needs good building blocks, not just crap. It needs good building blocks in order to help you recover from injury, in order to keep you from getting sick, that keep that immune system going, in order to make those neurotransmitters that help you feel happy, that help you feel energized, that help you be focused, and even that help you get to sleep. So it's important that your body has good nutrition. Additionally, some of the foods that we eat, those processed foods particularly tend to be inflammatory in nature. Now, I'm not saying cut out all, you know, processed foods. In an ideal world you might do that. And I am not making a recommendation for what to do, but I am telling you to recognize that certain food, certain foods we eat can cause an inflammatory response in the body. As inflammation goes up, depression and anxiety tend to go up. We found that there's a pretty strong correlation between those. And we found that an anti inflammatory diet often helps people who have mood related issues. Now, not everybody responds the same to everything. Let's take gluten for example. And I know that's a huge buzzword for a lot of people, not everybody reacts to gluten in the same way. But for people who eat gluten and it causes a super inflammatory response, then obviously that's not a food they probably want to be eating. So it's important to recognize not only the fact that some foods can be inflammatory, they don't react well with your body chemistry, but also that not all foods impact people the same way. So it's important to know your body, it's important to work with your doctor, your nutritionist or whatever if you're going to change your diet. Water. Drink 60 ounces per day. And it's important to drink it now. You can drink it as lemon water, you can drink it as, you know, steep fruits in it. You can do whatever you need to do to ingest that fluid. Ideally non carbonated. But it's important to recognize that things that have caffeine in it are duretics. They tend to deplete your body's water. And water keeps the skin, gives you skin turgor, which means when you put tent your skin, it goes right back down. If you tent your skin and it just kind of goes, that probably means that you're dehydrated. We know that as little as 1% dehydration can impact cognitive processing. So it. Now on the other hand, you can drink too much water. So there's like everything else that I. Most everything else that I talk about, it's a Goldilocks principle. Too little, too bad, too much, too bad. You need to find that just right area. If you drink too much, you actually flush out some of the vitamins and minerals and stuff that you need. Therefore, you know, try to strike a balance. Try to figure out what works for you based on your body chemistry, your activity levels, your caffeine intake, etc. Have three colors on your plate at each meal. M M's, Skittles and Condiments don't count. What you're looking for is to increase the antioxidants that you're eating. You're looking to increase the flavonoids in the foods and those colors. The colorful foods, the richer the color, in theory, the more nutritious the food is, the more nutrients the food has in it. Now that's not a hundred percent true because you can have some food that's grown in really poor soil so it doesn't get the nutrients it needs. But we do know that, for example, raw food tends to have more nutrients than cooked food, especially overcooked food. The longer, for example, you cook green beans, the paler they get, the less nutritious they get. And try to eat smaller meals every few hours. Now, if you're intermittent fasting, that is, you know, something that works for a lot of people. But during your eating windows, if you tend to get hangry and you need to balance your blood sugar, this might be something that's helpful. On the other hand, it might not. Be. So again, know your body, know your responses, and consult with a nutritionist or a, or your physician. Lack of sufficient quality sleep. Y' all know I love my sleep and I love talking about this, but part of the reason I love talking about this is because people just don't realize how important good quality sleep is to prevent vulnerabilities when people are sleep deprived. Just like when you're hung, when you're hungry and your blood sugar's low, that stress response system kicks off. Same thing when you're sleep deprived. When you're sleep deprived, your HPA axis kicks off and tries to basically kind of give you its own natural caffeine jolt, if you will, by increasing cortisol levels. And that's often unpleasant and it may lead you to having anxiety and other symptoms. So it's important to recognize if you're not getting good quality sleep, whether you've got apnea or you've got insomnia, or you've got a new baby in the house, or you've got allergies or whatever it is, if you didn't get good quality sleep last night, how is that going to affect you today, the way you react today, your stress tolerance today, etc. Now it is important to note that drug or alcohol induced sleep is rarely good quality. You may get to sleep faster, but it's probably not going to be quality sleep. When you don't get enough quality sleep, you tend to have brain fog the next day, you may have difficulty concentrating, be ir, irritable and you may overeat. When you don't get good quality sleep, it can throw your circadian rhythms out of whack. And when that happens, your hunger and satiation hormones often also get imbalanced. So you may be kind of grazing. Eating to stay awake, eating to get sleepy, eating to self soothe. We eat for a lot of reasons in this country. Interventions. Develop a sleep routine and along with that, cut back on caffeine and other stimulants. Six to 12 hours before bed, at least six hours. And I have a lot of videos on sleep hygiene that I encourage you to look at to improve your, your sleep quality and create the most effective sleep routine for you. If you've got sleep apnea or allergies or some other physical issue that is impacting your ability, get to get good quality sleep. See a doctor. It's that important. Illness. Well, when you're sick, it's hard to deal with life on life's terms. I don't know about you, but when I've got a runny nose and a stuffy head and a sore throat and I feel kind of like death warmed over, the last thing I want to do is deal with people and, but unfortunately that's part of what I've got to do sometimes. And recognizing that, recognizing that I'm vulnerable and when I'm interacting with people, if they are kind of getting on my very last Nerve I need to step back and remind myself, are they really doing anything or are you just being extra sensitive and cranky today? And 99 of the time, it's me. So the effects of illness include sleep disruption, exhaustion, feeling foggy headed, difficulty concentrating and irritability, among others. And when I talk about illness, what I'm talking about in general is your episodic illness like the flu or a cold or something. Chronic illness does also have these effects, but it has a myriad of other effects as well. When you're sick, it's important to exercise compassion, be kind to yourself. If you get angry or depressed about being sick or anxious. If you have a lot of health anxiety, that's just going to compound the illness. That's what we call dirty discomfort. It's going to compound your energy expenditure and it's going to make you even more irritable and primed and have more difficulty dealing with life on life's terms. So have compassion for yourself, look in the mirror and go, okay, today is not going to be an a day. I'm going to do the best I can, but I am not going to volunteer for extra projects. I am not going to volunteer to stay late. I'm going to do what I got to do and I'm going to get home and get my butt back in bed and use good nutrition. It can be tempting to not eat at all or to eat like crap when you're sick for comfort. But it's important to give your body those building blocks it needs to support your immune system. Maybe in addition to a little bit of pudding or jello. Another physical vulnerability is what I call neurological. And neurological causes of vulnerability can be due to heredity. If you are a person who has sensory gating issues, who is, who is our neuro atypical, then being in environments that are over stimulating or under stimulating can make you more vulnerable to distress. It can make you more vulnerable to getting overwhelmed, eat more easily. If you have a, an accident or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is the concussion syndrome that some people may develop after, you know, playing football, for example, it's important to recognize that that fundamentally impacted, no pun intended, the functioning of your brain and it can make it more difficult to be patient. Depending on what areas of the brain are impacted, it can make it more difficult to engage that prefrontal cortex. Because think about what happens when you, when you hit your head in the front, that brain bounces back and forth, back and forth, B back and forth. And what is it assaulting in part that prefrontal cortex, your brain, can change as a result of addictive behaviors. Unfortunately, addictions can kill brain cells, whether it's because it increases the stress hormones or because the substance itself, like people who huff paint, for example, actually inhales stuff that crosses the blood brain barrier and kills neurons. So there are a variety of different ways it happens. But addictive behaviors, chronic exposure to toxins can, can and often does cause changes in the brain. And finally, the topic I talk about a lot is the result of chronic stress or unresolved trauma. Now, I'm not going to do a deep dive into this right now, but suffice it to say that people who experience chronic, ongoing extreme stress, whether it's because of poverty or, or trauma or something else, often experience changes in their brain. Changes in the size of their amygdala, the fear processing area, changes in the size of and density of the hippocampus, the emotion processing area, and changes in the strength of the connection between the amygdala, which is the fear processing, and the, the prefrontal cortex, which is what helps you figure out what to do. So we, we do want to recognize that there are a lot of changes that are functional adaptations for a person who is chronically in danger. And, and while those changes can be undone, it's important to recognize that until the brain is healed, until that vagus nerve is healed, that they may be more prone, more vulnerable to dysregulation. Changes in the structure of the brain, regardless of the cause, have all kinds of effects on the memory, concentration and mood. So intervention, well, ideally protect your brain. But that aside, eat a good quality anti inflammatory diet. The more you keep your inflammation down, the more you reduce the HPA axis activation and the neurotoxic environment, the more you can promote calm and synergy in your body, the easier or the quicker the brain will recover to the extent that it can get adequate quality rest, take medication as necessary, create safety if you're feeling unsafe, if you're chronically hypervigilant, you're not going to be able to relax, you're not going to be able to get good quality sleep, and you're going to have a lot of those other effects and trauma processing. Now, if you recognize that you are somebody, for example, who typically dysregulates, then it's important to be aware of your triggers for dysregulation and your vulnerabilities. Be aware when you're vulnerable that you are likely going to be more easily and more strongly triggered so you can Ask yourself, what do I have to do today that might be triggering? And what can I do to prevent getting triggered during those occurrences? Which takes us to emotional or affective vulnerabilities, your distressful emotions. And I don't say negative because they are there for a reason. They help keep us safe. So they're not negative. We don't like them, they're distressful. But they also help us, in theory, survive. So anger, anxiety, depression, grief, guilt, jealousy, resentment, all of those fight or flight or forget about it feelings that we may have when we're exposed to a threat, when we're exposed to stress, obviously they're unpleasant. And when we've got them going on, when you're already angry, when you're already anxious, then a lot of times you're, you're more primed and it doesn't take nearly as much to send you into disregulation. I make the analogy of a pressure cooker. I think a lot of people have pressure cookers again, so it's easier to understand. And when you have the pressure cooker on, if you have it on a low setting already, and then you crank it all the way up, you're going to intensify it. It doesn't take as much heat in order to get it to max heat. It doesn't take as much turning of that knob to get it to max heat than it does if you're starting from, you know, nothing. Trauma history is another individual emotional vulnerability. And you can put this under physical, cognitive. You can put trauma history in a lot of different categories, but I stuck it here. When people have experienced trauma that is unresolved, they often feel unsafe and disempowered, which increases anxiety, increases a sense of hopelessness, and helplessness, increases a sense of depression, which makes them more vulnerable. It makes them stressed out. And when they are chronically stressed out, that HPA axis gets dysregulated and they get into a place where they just, they don't feel much of anything most of the time. But when they do get triggered, oh boy, it's, you know, zero to 250. It goes from calm seas to a tsunami. There's nothing in between. And it's important to recognize that a lot of people who dysregulate also have an inability to self soothe. And when you are dealing with a tsunami that's trying, like, like trying to tread water in a tsunami, you know, can be really hard, if not impossible to do sometimes. So we don't want to criticize people for having difficulty regulating their Emotions. We need to recognize the physiological concepts behind it as well as the cognitive concepts that whatever happened triggered an intense sense of unsafeness, if you will. But when people feel unsafe, they're going to be more likely to be triggered. They're going to be more likely to be on edge, angry, irritable. The effects of distress, it causes that brain to keep the fight orf flight reaction going, which takes energy and is exhausting. It lacks or prevents the happy chemical calming neurotransmitters from being excreted. So you're not going to have endorphins and stuff being excreted and activating the same receptors that it does when you're happy. When you are constantly stressed, it's hard to feel angry and happy at exactly the same time. Now, you can be angry about something and feel happy about something else, but generally you're alternating those things. I can be angry about something that happened at work, and I can get a phone call from my daughter and be really happy to talk to her, but I'm not thinking about work at that point in time. Distress impairs sleep. It alters the gut microbiome. We know when we're stressed. Our gut microbiome changes to support that stress response. It increases inflammation throughout the body, which increases the likelihood of anxiety and depression. And as I said, ongoing distress leads to HPA axis dysregulation. So the entire system gets out of whack. General interventions for distress Develop distress tolerance skills. Figure out what you can do when you start feeling vulnerable. You don't even have to wait until you're triggered, until you're experiencing distress. If you're feeling, if you're feeling depressed, if you're feeling unmotivated, okay, what are your distress tolerance skills? Identify mitigation strategies if you know that when you are anxious, if you're anxious about something in your life, if you know that that makes you more likely to be irritable or have difficulty dealing with life on life's terms. Okay, so when you're anxious, what can you do to make sure that that anxiety doesn't prompt a excessive reaction, in your opinion, to something that occurs that day? For example, if you're stressed about test results that you're waiting to get back and you go to work and your office mate does something that irritates you? You know, what can you do to avoid, you know, biting that person's head off when you normally you would just say, you know what? I'd really prefer if you didn't do that. What can you do? To mitigate that reaction. If you know you're already distressed, you may be able to just get up and walk out and take a walk around the building for a second to get into your wise mind and go, is this really worth a level 5 reaction or is it really a level 2 worth a level 2 reaction? Identify and process your triggers. Now, why do I have an asterisk beside process in the moment is probably not the time to process those triggers, but being aware of what triggered you, recognizing, okay, that triggered me and all right is helpful and you can use those distress tolerance skills and then later figure out why was that so triggering today? Explore threats. Once you identify the trigger, you can look at that trigger and say, okay, in the current context, the facts in the current context, is there a threat to me at this time? And if the answer is no, well, you got your answer. If the answer is yes, then you can take appropriate action. Create safety for yourself. Recognize the times that you're vulnerable and you need a buffer zone. Sometimes that may be telling your office mate, you know what, I am in a God awful mood today, so please just give me a little space. Or telling your your family that it's appropriate to tell your family, you know, I'm feeling, you know, owning your feelings and letting people know, you know, it's not about you. However, I'm in a bad place today. I'm, you know, feeling depressed or anxious, so if you would give me a little space that lets people know what to expect from you so they're less likely to accidentally trigger you. Have compassion for yourself. Everybody has crappy days. Everybody occasionally has anxiety or depression or grief bursts or whatever and it's unfortunate, you know, we don't like feeling that way. But have compassion for yourself and recognize, you know what, you're doing the best you can with the tools you have right now and that's all anybody can ask of you. Practice that radical acceptance. Living in the and again, radically accept. If you wake up one morning and you're angry or you're anxious or whatever you're feeling, okay, it is what it is. I'm anxious. I'm not looking forward to going to work today. Whatever it is, okay? And I can do this and it won't and live my rich and meaningful life. This won't prevent me from living my rich and meaningful life. I the two can co occur. I can be in a bad mood and go in and give my very best, maybe even have a good day. But right now I'm acknowledging I'm in a bad mood. It is what it is. You can also look at, what can I do to improve the next moment? Why am I angry today? What was my trigger? How can I mitigate that anger? Is there anything I can do to address that anger or again, prevent other things that I encounter today from making me angrier? Engage in positive and rewarding experiences. Sometimes they won't feel all that great if you're in a really, you know, distressful state. But laughter actually releases endorphins and sometimes oxytocin. So engage in things that make you laugh, engage in things that bring you peace. And. And while it won't solve the problem, it can help give you a little infusion of those happy chemicals. And then, of course, get adequate rest, eat a good diet, and ideally move. You don't have to lift weights or something, but move your body, get some oxygen going, get that blood flowing. Mental or cognitive vulnerabilities include a global, internal, stable attributional style. That means it's always this way. It's all about me, and there's nothing I can do to change it. All right? When everything is always, it adds extra stress. It's important to really look at that. Cognitive distortion rarely is. Does something always occur when anything that happens reflects on you as a person? It also may add extra stress or distress. So you really want to consider your attributional style. Focus on things and events that are specific and alterable. What parts of this are changeable and what can I do to change them? And instead of saying, you know, I'm stupid, saying I'm not good at math, I'm not good at electrical wiring, whatever it is, but focusing on things that are specific, not. Not global, you know, not saying you're. You're not. You're not smart. Well, everybody's smart about something. I believe that. But what they're smart about may be different. And differentiate your goodness as a person from your skills and mistakes. You're a good person who may make bad choices or who may have made a mistake. An extremely internal or external locus of control. Both add stress. The external locus of control means that you feel you've got no control over anything. It's fate, it's destiny, whatever. You're just along for the ride. There's nothing you can do. An extremely internal locus of control means you think you should be able to. There's that should word. You should be able to control everything. And that's not true either. One leaves you feeling completely powerless and helpless, and the other one leaves you feeling frustrated because you try to change everything and you fail probably a lot. So then you again start feeling hopeless and helpless. How do you address it? Well, define your rich and meaningful life, what's important in your life, because this will guide how you use your energy. And then when you encounter things, identify what things you can control in situations and use your energy for those. Don't focus on trying to change things that you cannot change and figure out how you're going to cope with the things you can't control. And that is exasperating to some of us who really like to control stuff, to not be able to control everything. And a lot of times people with an extremely external or internal locus of control that's also a symptom of trauma. And it's important to examine how do you feel when you don't have control? How do you feel and, and what triggers that and process those things. But again, recognizing that if you tend to be somebody with an extreme locus of control, you may be more vulnerable to distress if it doesn't congeal. Low self esteem is a. Self esteem is how you feel about who you are with who you think you hate. The word should be low self esteem can cause people to feel helpless or not deserving of love or success. And there's a lot of things you can do to improve self esteem. One of my favorite activities is to have people make a list of the things that they love, like admire about other people in their life. And then when they've done that, I ask them to go back over that list and identify which characteristics they have themselves. It's really hard sometimes to say, let me tell you all the things that are good about me. We've been taught in our culture not to do that, so it can be easier to do it sort of back door by identifying the good qualities in others and then going, yeah, I've got that one, I've got that one, I've got that one. Explore what characteristics you think you should have or you would like to have, but you do not decide if they're important. Is this something that's really important or is this something that society or somebody else told you is important? What do you think? And then decide what to do about it. If, if you think it's important, then how can you try to attain that quality? People who have a negative or pessimistic perception or cognitive style, they're negative nellies. They tend to see the world as negative, depressing, out of control, or just terrifying, which makes life more stressful. They're seeing it through this lens of trauma and drama, and it contributes to distressful interpretations, and it increases your distress triggers. Because then you start seeing things that are benign as threatening. It's like, okay, that's here now. Nothing is without a downside. So what's the downside? And you start looking for the threats. You actually start trying to poke. Poke around and try to find threats sometimes where none exist. If you see everything or most things as negative or not rewarding, it really sucks. Your motivation. It's just you don't want to do anything because it's exhausting and you don't see the point. So interventions can include using tragic optimism, that is acknowledging what's crappy in the present and acknowledging what's good in the present, looking at the whole pie and saying, okay, this piece over here needs some work, but this seven, eight of the pie, I'll be optimistic today. It's actually going pretty well. Tragic optimism helps you see the big picture, and it also helps you have hope. And. And sometimes you look at that sliver of the pie that's not doing so well, and you say, all right, there is hope that that can improve. And other times you look at that sliver and say, all right, well, that is not changeable. Not fixable is what it is. And I can still have a rich and meaningful life, even though that's not going the way I want it to. You can use dialectics or restructuring that. It means embracing the good with the bad. So something bad happens and you look at and you're like, oh, my gosh, this is awful. But you can also look at the good part. And for example, you break up from a relationship and it feels awful. It feels like part of your hurt's being ripped out. That's awful. And, you know, later you can embrace those dialectics and go, okay, what was the what. What are the benefits to not being in that relationship anymore? Acknowledge and process the drawbacks. I'm not saying ignore those. I'm not saying minimize those. But dialectics means, now that this is not in my life anymore, what does it mean to my rich and meaningful life? And look for exceptions. Most things don't happen all the time. So when you're using those extreme words, try to change those. And instead of saying every time this happens, or all people, say a lot of people, or it seems like the majority of people, but then look for exceptions and go, okay, I'm seeing all of these examples of how it's bad. Let me see if I can think of any examples where it's good. Like all people get divorced. Well, that's not true. A lot of people get divorced. So you can look at the people that get divorced and we see a lot about the drama on, on the Internet. You know, this celebrity got divorced, that celebrity got divorced, whatever. You can see that a lot. So it's right in your face. People don't usually talk about the people that have been married for 20, 30 years. So you want to look for exceptions to balance it out and say, is there anybody? Is, are there examples of people who haven't gotten divorced? And that can help you get balance. It may still lean towards the divorce section and towards the negativity, I don't know. But it's important to get the facts so you can have a more balanced perspective. Poor organization or time management can lead to being over committed, which increases stress, irritability and guilt when you're harried, when you're over, you know, over stressed, over overwhelmed, it can be really easy to get snippy, to be more vulnerable to being irritable, and have more difficulty dealing with life on life's terms. It can also cause you to forget to do things, which leads to conflict. And then you start feeling guilty and you may project that, that distress onto other people and try to blame them and it just gets into this whole mess. So it's important to recognize that time management is a vulnerability. If you know you've got 17 things to do in and only six hours to do it, how do you minimize your vulnerabilities? For me, close my door. I tell people I need to get this stuff done. I'm not answering email, I'm turning off my phone and I'm closing my door for the next four hours. So, you know, unless it's an emergency, I need to have that time. And the people around me know that when I get to that point, it is, you know, I'm not joking. And you know, they're, they're respectful of those boundaries and that prevents me from being flippant or sarcastic or irritable or I can be kind of cranky when I start to feel really stressed, which is why I pay attention to my vulnerabilities and I try to take steps to prevent or mitigate those so they don't negatively impact others. Make a list of your must dos at the beginning of every week. That way you know how much of your time and energy is already committed and then figure out how you're going to get it done. Stop saying yes to anything right away. If somebody asks you to do something, say Let me think about it and get back to you, or let me look at my calendar and get back to you. Even if you don't keep a calendar, it's a whole lot easier to make a mindful decision if you step back from it and actually think for a second. You take a, take a second and, or take a beat, as some people would say, and think about it and then identify and address. Your time sucks, and I think all of us have them, whether it is the Internet or going to the gym or whatever it is that you, you start doing and the next thing you know, four hours have passed. Identify those and address them so they don't negatively impact your time management. Poor communication skills is yet another example of a vulnerability. When people have poor communication skills, they can feel like other people don't hear or understand them, which makes them, which is threatening. When you feel like people don't understand you and aren't willing to, or unable to meet your needs, it can make you feel very anxious. Poor communication skills impede you from stating your needs, may cause misunderstandings, and just in general can hurt your relationships. If you communicate aggressively, you're invading somebody else's boundaries. If you are passive, then other people may inadvertently invade your boundaries and you may feel like your needs aren't getting met. Well, people can't meet your needs if you don't know what they are or if they don't know what they are. So you've got to assert those needs so people can have an option of trying to meet them. So learn about assertive verbal and non verbal communication. Aggressive means my opinion matters, yours doesn't. Passive means yours. Your opinion matters, mine doesn't. And assertive means my opinion matters just as much as yours does. Whether you're talking about where to go for dinner or a policy change at work, explore what triggers your defensiveness. When you communicate with somebody and you start feeling defensive, that is an anger reaction. That's a reaction to a perceived threat. So it's important to examine that defensiveness and go, okay, is this my stuff? Is this triggering something from the past that I'm projecting onto this event right now? And if so, okay, I can deal with it later. But recognize at this con, at this time, in this context, not a threat, or am I personalizing stuff that doesn't need to be personalized? I'm getting constructive feedback. Maybe not as, you know, compassionately as it could be, but I'm getting constructive feedback from somebody and it's, they're not saying I'm a bad person. They're saying, I could do this particular task in a better way. So personalization is when you take something personally and you think somebody is saying that you are a bad person, it's your fault. Fault. And it's important to step back and separate behaviors from you as a person and explore whether you're actually being threatened. Do you feel threatened right now? If somebody is presenting something in an aggressive way and you're getting defensive, well, that's a pretty natural reaction. So if you're actually feeling threatened, if there is a threat in this context, what steps can you take? How can you de escalate that situation and don't engage in mind reading? And that kind of goes back to the passive communication. If people don't know your thoughts, wants and needs, they can't possibly meet them. Likewise, you cannot possibly know people's thoughts, wants and needs unless they tell you. Don't assume that since you've been best friends since grade school, you know everything your best friend is thinking. You don't. You may have a pretty good idea, but it's important to check it out and not assume you know what they were going to say or what they want or need. And weak emotional boundaries are another vulnerability. People who have weak emotional boundaries will walk into a situation and it's like the tone of the room, they take it on. They can't keep that boundary up to say, okay, I feel this way. Y' all may be in a really bad mood, but hey, I'm having a good day. They walk into a room and if people are upset, they become upset. If people are happy, usually they become happy. They've learned to be chameleons for some reason, generally because that was the only safe way to be when they were growing up. So when you have weak emotional boundaries, you may have difficulty feeling happy unless those around you are happy. And you may take everyone else's bad mood personally. Now, I'll tell you, my kids just recently moved out of the house, but I have raised children through teenagers and those teenage years. There are a lot of days where there's some bad moods and it can be really stressful and it can be really exhausting if you don't maintain your emotional boundaries and recognize that you know what, they may be upset about something. But if I'm assuming it's all about me, that's pretty self centered. I mean, yeah, I'm mom, so I tend to trigger some irritation in them. But it was important for me to recognize that it was perfectly okay for them to have bad moods. And there could be a lot of things that caused it besides me. And it didn't need to. I didn't need to let it bring me down. I could choose how to respond to that. I could be obviously be empathetic, but I didn't need. If they're in a bad mood, I didn't need to let it rub off on me. If you have weak emotional boundaries, examine why it's not safe to feel how you feel. Why do you feel like you need to morph to fit the room? Start being mindful of your wants, needs and feelings so you can know what you are feeling and you know where, where you end and where somebody else begins and evaluate. When you start taking things personally, it's important to step back and evaluate and basically say, is this really all about me or are there options? Are there other explanations? And I usually encourage people to identify three other reasons that this may be happening. Three other reasons your teenager may be in a bad mood besides you in and and there's generally a litany of them. So this can help address some of these vulnerabilities. But if you know you've got those weak emotional boundaries, then before you go into a situation where you may be bombarded with, especially with distress and toxicity, thinking to yourself, how can I keep myself from taking this all on? How can I keep myself from taking the energy of that room on board? If you're going into a particularly adversarial staff meeting, all right, you know it's going to be ugly in there. How can you keep from taking that on board? When you walk out of that room, how can you, you know, maintain your emotional status and fear of abandonment or a need for external validation, they kind of go hand in hand. This is when somebody doesn't feel okay unless they're constantly surrounded by people who tell them they are okay. They fear being authentic for fear of being rejected. They may stay in dysfunctional relationships just to have someone and they tend to be hyper vigilant. So all of these things are very stressful. And when you're in, when you're living inauthentically, that creates that low level of stress that may make you more vulnerable to irritability and make it harder to deal with life. And when you're in dysfunctional relationships, that almost always makes it more difficult to deal with life because you've got so much energy that you're using to try to deal with the dysfunctional relationship. Some interventions explore your relationships identify and a process abandonment and rejection traumas so look at these relationships, the ones that are currently going on, as well as past relationships. And examine experiences that you've had that have made you feel, have prompted that feeling of abandonment or rejection. And then process those, ideally with a therapist, to examine, you know, what caused that situation and how you can be safer in the future. Develop a secure attachment with yourself. That's the first place to start in a lot of situations. To learn how to be consistent, responsive, validating, empathetic, and safe in your own skin, to your own self, to your inner child. Can help you feel stronger, can help you feel more empowered. When you face the world, you don't need to have three other people holding you up, you know, you and your inner child. Me, myself and I can be a pretty powerful force as ourselves and explore and address insecure attachment causes and behaviors. Looking at your behaviors and exploring which behaviors developed as a result of insecure attachment. When we don't have secure attachments, it's hard to feel safe. It's hard to feel loved and empowered. So developing those secure attachments and takes away a lot of the relationship anxiety, if you will, which frees up a lot of energy to deal with life as it happens. So in conclusion, make a list of your top 10 vulnerabilities and ways that you can prevent or mitigate them. You may not be able to prevent them. Like, sometimes you're not going to sleep well, but when you don't sleep well, you get up the next morning, you're like, oh, it's going to be a rough day today. How can you prevent that vulnerability from causing additional chaos in your life? How can you prevent it from impairing your ability to effectively deal with life on life's terms? And sometimes that means carrying an umbrella with you. So when life showers lemons on you, they don't all hit address vulnerabilities. Addressing vulnerabilities frees up energy so you can deal with other stuff that comes your way. Eliminating vulnerabilities can help you feel less stressed, exhausted and overwhelmed all the time. Now, like I said, not all vulnerabilities can be eliminated or prevented, but the ones that can, why are you not doing that? You know, it's like if you can prevent yourself from getting sick by washing your hands, then why the heck wouldn't you wash your hands? That's pretty simple. Non invasive, not a big deal. Persistent vulnerabilities are often the first relapse warning sign. And in addictions counseling, we use the acronym halt, hungry, angry, lonely and tired. And those are obviously not the only vulnerabilities. But recognizing your vulnerabilities, recognizing things that may make you more likely to trigger an anxiety, depression, depressive addictive episode is really helpful because then you can intervene before it actually does trigger that, and being mindful of when you're vulnerable and taking positive steps to address it are crucial to mental health as well as recovery success.