Suzy Ismail – South Brunswick High School Mental Health Fair
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A representative from a nonprofit organization called'd to extend their sympathies to parents, students, and administrators who are experiencing anxiety and uncertainty due to COVID-19. They explain their approach to mental health counseling, including using grounding techniques to connect with the
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AI: Summary ©
Hello, dear South Brunswick, parents, students, staff
administrators. My name is Susie Ismail, and I am with the
nonprofit organization cornerstone. For those of you who
are celebrating Ramadan, I want to wish you a very, very happy
Ramadan. For those of you who may be struggling with a great deal of
the stress and the anxiety and the fear, along with the illness and
the uncertainty that plagues our communities right now, due to
COVID 19. Due to this pandemic, I want to really extend my greatest
sympathies to all of us. And in terms of recognizing that we are
all in this together. And that it's It's difficult. It's not easy
on any of us. But I do want to thank Merle and Kara and so many
of the others who have been working behind the scenes on
putting together this South Brunswick High School virtual
mental health fair, since it's a topic that's incredibly important,
that needs to be addressed, especially during these times of
uncertainty. So just a little bit about what we do at Cornerstone.
We are a faith based communication Counseling Center, we have five
offices in New Jersey, We also offer virtual counseling through
Skype, Facetime, phone counseling, we have offices around the US and
several other states. And we have offices internationally as well.
We focus on on faith based relational communication
counseling, which is a little bit different than the traditional
mental health therapeutic paradigm. And we look at the
intrapersonal you know, how someone speaks to themselves, the
interpersonal how that self talk reflects in connections with
others and the way that we communicate with others, the
dyadic, the communication between two individuals, we look at the
family communication, we look at Youth Communication, in terms of
relationships, in terms of identity in terms of sexuality.
And so we try to work with families with youth with anyone
who is struggling through issues of identity of relationships of
difficulty in terms of spirituality or faith, to help
resolve those difficulties by understanding relationships,
better the relationship between self and spirituality, the
relationship between self and self image and self view the
relationship between self and family, between self and friends,
between self and society, between self and social media. And we we
address whatever difficulty someone's going through from those
angles. So the topic that I wanted to speak to you today about is a
strategy that we often use in our approach of integrating a faith
based perspective, along with working on whatever self talk or
self communication may be occurring, that's detrimental, and
getting individuals to get to a better place in dealing with that
self talk. I know again, for many of us, the anxiety at this point
in time is overwhelming for our children, you know, not being in
school not having access to the day to day life. For us as parents
struggling with finances, the uncertainty of it all, maybe
struggling within our home, in a marital situation, which is
tenacious at best and very volatile, you know, at worst, that
all these things can be very difficult and can add layer layers
of stress. And so one exercise that we recommend to our clients,
it's called a grounding exercise. And you may have heard from some
of the other mental health therapists, ideas of mindfulness
exercises and grounding techniques, as I mentioned, are
our therapeutic interventions are a little bit different. Since
we're not mental health providers. We are faith based communication
interventionist, we focus on using grounding techniques that we
connect us from a faith based and spiritual perspective as well. So
for example, a common technique that is used in mental therapy,
mental health therapy is the 54321 method. And essentially, all this
requires you to do is to engage all of your senses, to bring you
back to the moment to stop the runaway train of detrimental
thoughts, to reel that in, and to re establish your connection with
the present. So one way that we like to implement the 54321 method
is to utilize you know, first the senses of sight to look around and
identify what it is that you see around you. Then to utilize the
sense of touch, and again from a faith based perspective, if you
tend to pray and speak seek a spiritual connection through
prostration then in that moment
sense of touch by placing your hands on the ground by placing
your forehead to the ground. That in itself can be a grounding
technique, if you tend to pray by clasping your hands together, and
this is a way that you find peace, pressurizing those touch points,
and ensuring that you truly feel that spiritual connection, we
believe connects you with the socio emotional well being as
well. If you're praying with your hands open, again, using those
pressure points and really feeling that touch. Touching you know,
your clothing, feeling the softness of it, touching your
table, feeling what it feels like, but engaging with four elements of
touch points, then it's three deep inhalations three things you can
smell. So really taking a deep breath and thinking about what it
is that you can smell, you know, I smell something baking, I smell a
scent of perfume. And then after the three things of smelling at
that point, it's two things of hearing. So sitting in silence,
and really listening, maybe you're going to hear the hum of the
refrigerator, maybe you'll hear a car driving outside, but really
allowing that sense to settle in. And then finally, the last aspect
of the grounding technique is tasting. So a lot of our clients
and our younger clients and particularly like to use the Sour
Patch Kids or warheads or something that's very strong,
sometimes it's a chili pepper or an ice cube and place that on your
tongue and allow the sensation to move through you. So I hope this
you know small introduction to a grounding technique. The 54321
method is something that you can use that can help you through this
anxious time this difficult time. I do hope that if you're
interested in learning more about cornerstone, you'll visit our
website at WWW dot corner counseling.com. Again, my name is
Susie smell and I do hope that I can be of service to you sometime
down the road or anytime you might need to reach out. I hope you have
a wonderful rest of the day. And I truly thank again South Brunswick
High School for putting this program together.