What’s in your toolbox?
Most of us, regardless of diagnosis and health status, have days or periods when worry, stress, or troublesome thoughts hang like a dark cloud over our heads. This is part of life. But what if we could make those periods a little brighter? What if we can find ways to feel better, despite a temporary darkness?
Our last blog post was about new ways of thinking about self-care. This time we continue on the theme of taking care of ourselves by looking at preparing tools that can help us deal with heavier periods.
Mental Health America addresses the value of a "coping toolbox" (1), a toolbox containing skills, techniques, suggestions, and items to make use of when we feel anxious or discouraged. The toolbox can be viewed as a safety net that can catch us when our mood wavers, e.g. if a relapse is underway.
Prepare your toolbox
Since there is no list of things and skills that work for all of us, you need to think and feel for yourself what might best help you.
Think about what usually makes you calmer or in a better mood, what distracts you from negative and grinding thoughts. Part of the point is that we shouldn't have to think too much once we start to feel bad, but simply have prepared tools to choose from and which we can use without much effort.
If you haven't thought along these lines before, you may have to experiment to find out what works, and the content can of course be changed or supplemented as you go.
Examples of content
The tools can be of widely different types. It could be a physical object that makes you happy, a photo, a stress ball, or an old favorite item of clothing. It could be a mental strategy, perhaps in the form of links to a yoga session or a guided meditation, or a playlist of special music.
You can also make a list of things to do at these times that you know can distract your thoughts—perhaps journaling, going for a walk or run, doing a puzzle, baking something, or calling a friend.
Your toolbox is yours alone. What do you put in it?