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Calm your nervous system and help others experiencing stress and trauma.
Use in your home, your peer circles, your profession and with entire communities.
Evidenced based Emotional First Aid is a wonderful training for first responders, educators, parents, those in skilled helping, and truly for everyone. Voluntary trauma as well as involuntary trauma happens. Our body's cells and nervous system remember this stress and trauma and stimulate reactive patterns. We experience a reminder of the trauma through our sight, hearing, smell, touch and other senses. Sometimes we are not even consciously aware of the stimulant, as it can be remembered in the subconscious and unconscious. This remembering triggers our trauma response of fight, flight, freeze or flop that drastically affects our quality of living. With Emotional First Aid, we can release the stress from the cells in the body and train our nervous system to respond calmly to triggers of stress and trauma. We can use the exercises of Emotional First Aid on ourselves, and it's most effective for using on others when we recognize they are in a post traumatic stress reaction.
Emotional First Aid trains us to know the signs of stress and PTSD, how stress and trauma work in the mind and body. We also train on the three steps to addressing a stressful or traumatic trigger and skill sets for creating calm in the emotional and physical states of being. Here's a brief overview of our interactive training program Emotional First Aid.
Step #1 - Safety
Find a space away from the trigger. Address the person with a smile and kind heart, be present and offer connection. You can ask, "How may I help you?" The person may not know how you can help but show signs of stress and panic.
We learn exercises that combine hand and feet placements with breathing exercises to help take the intensity down and stay connected to the present moment. Using the Butterfly Hug, we cross our hands over our chest, and flap our hands like the wings of a butterfly. Taking slow breaths, we notice any changes.
Step #2 - Stabilization
In this step we work to get our nervous system out of a survival mode, a sympathetic state. Our goal is to reach a parasympathetic state in our nervous system, where quiet, calm, rest and digest predominate our state of being.
We learn exercises focusing on the here and now, such as grounding, specific breathing techniques, and movements to discharge excessive energy.
"At first I got sleepy, and then I got hungry! It really worked!" – Rooster McConaughey, Board Member of Even One Less
Step #3 - Self Regulation
In this step we go though techniques to release shock and mobilize the system. We incorporate different skills, including the Trauma Tapping Technique and Thymus Thumps to release the memory of stress and trauma from our cells and in the nervous system.
You can download the Trauma Tapping Technique instructions in English and Spanish from Resources for Resilience below!
What we get from Emotional First Aid
We expand our support systems within organizations and communities, and even within our owns homes for those who suffer with post traumatic stressors. We equip our community at large for disaster and crisis responses and to help individuals within our communities thrive.
Our Mission with Emotional First Aid
Our mission is to equip communities to effectively respond to individuals experiencing post traumatic stress. Our training is free to communities and organizations because of volunteers who are passionate about sharing helping skills. If you would like to donate to help reimburse travel expenses to our volunteer facilitators or to help with expenses to spread awareness through public outreach events, you may do so through PayPal on our donation page.
Schedule A Community Training Or Train to Facilitate.
Our Community Manager, Emily Tuck offers trainings in person for organizations and communities. She also offers trainings online for those wishing to help our movement of growing Emotional First Aid in the states of Oklahoma, Texas and beyond. Anyone can help teach Emotional First Aid. In just a one to two hour training we can be better equipped as skilled helpers in our communities.
Reach out to Emily at evenoneless@gmail.com for more information!
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