TCC Southeast Campus

Wellness Week with the 5 Senses:

- Monday, August 28 - TASTE - FREE SNACKS
- Metro Campus near the Campus Cafe - 11am-1pm

- Tuesday, August 29 - SMELL - FREE POPCORN
- Northeast Campus near Student Life - 11am-1pm

- Wednesday, August 30 - SOUND - FREE EARBUDS
- West Campus near Student Life - 11am-1pm

- Thursday, August 31 - TOUCH - THERAPY DOGS
- Southeast Campus in Building 7 - 2nd Floor - 11:30am-12:30pm

- Thursday, August 31 - SIGHT - PAINT NIGHT with FREE PIZZA
- FREE event at the Center for Creativity at Metro Campus - 6-7:30pm

All week - Students can participate in the "Please TOUCH the Art" Exhibit at the Center for Creativity at Metro Campus. For more information about this exhibit: https://www.tulsacc.edu/about-us/news-and-events/events/please-touch-art-exhibit

Video Transcript:
“Greetings everybody my name is Chad Mikell and I am TCC’s LPC, Licensed Professional Counselor. I'm with Wellness Services and today we're kicking off Wellness week in the five senses. I’m going to talk to you about Grounding Techniques and how to use your five senses to become more grounded in the present moment. So, why is this a benefit to you well a good percentage of the students that reach out to me reach out to me because they are experiencing anxiety in one way or another and, generally, speaking people perceive anxiety to be negative and, if at all possible, they would like to experience less of it. Let's jump into Grounding Techniques and see how they can help you better manage anxiety. All right, so, when we talk about Grounding Techniques, what exactly are we referring to? Here grounding techniques are a way to become more present. They're a way of getting you out of your head and more grounded in the external environment and otherwise in other words the present moment. And, if we think about it, when somebody is experiencing anxiety that is generally the result of them being lost in thought. In other words, the brain has sort of hijacked the moment and it has started to produce automatic thoughts, habitual thoughts, maybe fleeting thoughts, maybe very subtle thoughts, and those thoughts tend to skew negative and, if our brain is thinking negatively, that's always going to lead to some sort of a negative emotion. And when we start to feel a little overwhelmed, a little stressed, maybe we feel that queasiness in our stomach, that uneasiness, butterflies, all of those things, we would generally associate with anxiety and one of the tricks to diminishing anxiety is to get out of our head and into the present moment. And, if we can get into the present moment, we are out of our head. And, if we're out of our head and having less of those negative thoughts, then that would naturally follow that those symptoms of anxiety diminish as well. So let's use our five senses to become grounded. Let's say we're in a scenario where we feel that heart start to race, we feel the butterflies in the stomach. That's literally your body's way of sounding the alarm and letting you know that you are lost in thought. Grounding Techniques will help you get out and, the easiest way to do that is to use your senses. First and foremost, look around your environment and just observe everything that you can see. You're consciously focusing on the external environment rather than the thoughts in your head. You can also focus on the sense of sound. I'm sitting outside right now and the cicadas are going nuts. I keep thinking to myself that's too loud. I'm going to have to restart this video and do it over. That's my brain intervening and putting a negative spin on the sounds that are occurring in my environment. The idea is to focus on sense of sound and hear your environment exactly as it is intently without the brain sort of hijacking your reality and taking away your focus. You can also do this with your sense of feel. You can feel the things in your external environment. You can even intently focus on the feelings or the sensations that might be occurring inside of your body. Becoming more in tune with those sensations, you can practice this with the sense of smell, just sitting wherever you are and intently noticing any nuances you might be able to pick up through the gift of scent. And, then finally, taste. And taste is a big one because we tend to rush through our meals or maybe take them for granted or maybe to be occupied and thought or multitasking or driving or working. And, as a result, we don't fully give all of our focus towards the gift the sense of taste. A very popular mindfulness eating practice is to practice eating a Hershey Kiss and sort of observing the Hershey Kiss in your hand. The brightness of the wrapper. Really focusing on that gift of sight. Opening the wrapper and sort of listening to the sound those things, we might not necessarily pick up when we're doing it quickly just so we can consume it. Touching the Hershey Kiss, feeling the weight of it in your palm, smelling the chocolate when it's unwrapped and then just allowing ourselves to slowly eat that Hershey Kiss so that we're picking up on all of those nuances and doing something we typically take for granted which is eating is an example of mindfulness. Again, these Grounding Techniques, they're designed to get you out of your head in the present moment and, when you're more present, you're less lost in thought. And, when those thoughts tend to skew negative, it tends to create anxiety. So, when your body tells you you have anxiety, it's also telling you you have an opportunity to practice Grounding Techniques using your five senses. Becoming more present and, when you do so, those thoughts diminish and, therefore, so does the anxiety. Again my name is Chad Mikell. I'm TCC's LPC, so if anything I said today was remotely interesting to you, feel free to reach out to me via email or phone and I would be happy to go into a little bit more detail. I hope the semester started off well for everybody. Thanks for your attention. Reach out whenever you like. Take care.

Chad Mikell, MS, LPC
LPC for Wellness Services
918-595-7569
[email protected]
www.tulsacc.edu/LetsTalk

For participants requesting interpreters or other accommodations, please notify [email protected]. Advance notice is requested.