Suzy Ismail – South Brunswick High School Mental Health Fair

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.