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Key points
- The Community Resiliency Model's six wellness skills nurture individual and community resilience.
- Central to the model is the concept of Zones, providing a straightforward way to understand lived experiences.
- Creating a practice to reinforce your personal resources and strengths can lead to expanded well-being.
The Community Resiliency Model (CRM) comprises six wellness skills aimed at nurturing individual and community resilience. These skills highlight the innate human capacity to enhance well-being by cultivating body literacy and leveraging positive life experiences to foster inner balance. They serve as a framework for wellness practices, integrating seamlessly into daily activities to restore harmony between mind and body.
Body literacy involves attuning ourselves to internal bodily sensations and honing the ability to interpret how these sensations influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. By developing this skill, we can better understand and manage our "body sense," promoting a state of equilibrium.
The Zones
Central to CRM is the concept of the Zones, providing a straightforward way to understand lived experiences. The Resilient Zone (RZ) or Zone of Well-being (ZOW); the High Zone; and the Low Zone represent varying states of emotional and physiological arousal. In the RZ/ZOW, individuals experience optimal cognitive function, emotional regulation, and bodily awareness, navigating a range of emotions naturally. However, when faced with traumatic or stressful events, the nervous system's equilibrium may be disrupted, leading to being bumped out of the RZ/ZOW.
At times, anyone can be displaced from their RZ/ZOW, struggling to cope even with minor stressors. CRM aims to help children and adults learn to identify the sensations, feelings, and thoughts associated with each zone, facilitating the recognition of shifts between them. For some, prolonged exposure to stress or trauma may result in consistent displacement from the RZ/ZOW, leading to chronic feelings of agitation in the High Zone or numbness and fatigue in the Low Zone. This fluctuation between zones can manifest as a turbulent emotional journey, impacting daily functioning and relationships.
CRM refrains from judgment regarding these zones, acknowledging their existence as part of the human experience. By cultivating awareness of our current zone, we can adopt more adaptive coping strategies guided by compassion and self-understanding. Through the application of personal skills and strengths, individuals can strive towards reclaiming a greater sense of well-being.
The 6 Skills
- Tracking-Reading the Nervous System. This skill involves understanding one's own physical sensations and learning to distinguish between sensations of distress and well-being. Tracking is used with every skill. One of the best ways to learn to read the nervous system is by identifying something or someone that uplifts, brings peace, joy, or calm.
- Resourcing. Identifying personal resources—internal (such as strengths or characteristics), external (like faith, family, or friends), and imagined (such as superheroes)—that aid in restoring balance during or after stress to return to the RZ/ZOW.
- Grounding. Paying attention to bodily contact with a surface that provides support to the body, inducing a sense of calm and present-moment awareness.
- Gesturing. Using physical movements or gestures, whether spontaneous or intentional, to regain equilibrium and express emotions like joy or courage.
- Help Now! To Reset Now! Employing strategies to reset the nervous system when in a High or Low Zone state to help return to the RZ/ZOW.
- Shift and Stay. Integrating all skills to consciously shift focus from distressing to neutral or pleasant sensations, maintaining attention on the latter. This skill emphasizes tracking sensations and transitioning to resources, grounding, gestures, or Help Now! strategies to return to the RZ/ZOW.
The six skills can be learned conversationally by posing questions connected to each one. Using CRM skills in conversation can remind a person to ask, “What else is true?” in life.
Conversational Resourcing
- What or who uplifts you, gives you joy, happiness, calm, or peace?
- When you have been through difficult times, what or who has helped you?
Conversational Tracking
- When a person tracks sensations connected to a resource, the nervous system may return to a balanced state. Notice a deeper breath and muscle relaxation.
- Remembering the sensations connected to a comforting sound, image, or scent can help to return to the RZ/ZOW. Can you recall a comforting sound, visual image, or smell?
Conversational Grounding
When we ground, we can sense and think in the present moment, not the future or past.
- It can be helpful to notice how your body, or a part of your body, is making contact with the chair, floor, or table.
- Notice what happens when your hand touches the table or when your feet touch the floor. Notice if it is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
Conversational Gesturing
Most people have movements or gestures that help soothe them when distressed.
- Can you make a self-soothing gesture that comforts you and is not self-harming?
- Can you make a movement of joy or strength?
Conversational Help Now!
When a person is in the High or Low Zones, some of the strategies below may help move them to the RZ/ZOW.
- Would it be helpful to go for a walk?
- Sometimes, when anxious, it helps reduce the stress to push against the wall with our hands or back. Do you want to do it with me?
- Would you like a drink of water?
- Sometimes, it helps to look around the room and see what catches your attention. Is there a color you like, for example?
- When anxious, it can help to count down from 20. Would you like to try it with me?
Conversational Shift and Stay
If a person notices distress within the body and is in the High or Low Zones, shifting awareness to thoughts, feelings, and sensations of well-being can help return to the RZ/ZOW.
- It can help to notice someplace inside that is calmer or less distressed. Can you sense a place on the inside that is less distressing or calmer?
- You can remember a resource, grounding, a self-soothing gesture, or a Help Now Strategy.
- Stay with pleasant sensations.
Learning to cultivate your well-being takes time and practice. It is like cultivating a garden. You can decide to nourish your garden of well-being.
References
Miller-Karas, E. (2023). Building resilience to trauma: The trauma and community resiliency models. Second Edition Routledge.
Freeman, K., Baek, K., Ngo, M., Kelley, V., Karas, E., Citron, S., & Montgomery, S. (2022). Exploring the usability of a community resiliency model approach in a high need/low resourced traumatized community. Community Mental Health Journal, 58(4), 679-688.
Grabbe, L., Higgins, M. K., Baird, M., Craven, P. A., & San Fratello, S. (2020). The Community Resiliency Model® to promote nurse well-being. Nursing Outlook, 68(3), 324-336.
