K – Knowing Your New Environment
Why consider knowing your new environment?
In so many areas, life before grief and trauma looks very different than life after grief and trauma. Not all the same relationships work. For a life that has been altered, an ecomap can help provide clarity about your new environment. An ecomap is a written diagram (“map”) of an individual’s environment (“eco”) that provides a visual picture of clarity. Social workers have used ecomaps for decades as simple tools to chart and assess both positive and negative relationships within social environments, families, and groups. But everyone can ecomap their lives—no need to be a social worker! Through an ecomap, plans can be made to change, modify, or strengthen relationships in a “new life” environment.
How does knowing your new environment promote healing?
• By determining positive social supports and assisting in strengthening those relationships
• By determining negative social supports and assisting in modifying those relationships
• By providing clarity and focus about social, emotional, and behavioral relationships
• By decreasing anxiety, stress, and pressure in relation to social situations
Try this A2Z Activity:
Resources
Books
- It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn’t Understand by Megan Devine
- On Grief and Grieving by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
- Permission to Mourn: A New Way to Do Grief by Tom Zuba
- The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart by Daphne Rose Kingma
Websites
- Smart Draw – Explanation of Ecomaps and sample Ecomaps.
- A Simple Guide to Ecomaps from StrongBonds.com
