How to Use the Toolkit

When things become difficult, thoughts can speed up or become confused, while tension keeps building.

You may feel anxious, restless or overwhelmed.

Everyone experiences this differently.

For some people, it feels like constant noise in the mind.

For others, it feels like tension in the body.

Sometimes everything starts to feel too complicated, and it becomes hard to focus on anything.

It can show up as:

At times like these, it is easy to feel lost and not know where to start.

Explanations often do not help much.

Action usually helps more.

As distress builds, what helps you regain stability may need to change.

Your attention narrows and becomes harder to shift.

Thoughts speed up, repeat themselves or become confused.

The body stays tense even when you try to pull yourself together.

This does not happen because you are weak or not trying hard enough.

During a stress response, the body, attention, thoughts and emotions work as one system.

That is why you can continue to feel this way even when the situation itself is no longer changing.

When the reaction is strong, it is often difficult to calm yourself through thinking alone.

At times like these, it is better to start with simpler actions:

breathing,
attention,
movement,
physical sensations,
or noticing what is around you.

These actions can gradually reduce the intensity of what you are feeling, even before you feel calm.

The exercises in this toolkit do not solve the situation directly.

They do something else:

they help change how you feel while you are dealing with the situation.

As things begin to settle,

Only then does it usually become easier to look at what is happening and make decisions.

That is why some of these exercises may seem very simple.

Their purpose is not to explain everything at once.

They work with the processes that are keeping the reaction going.

When distress is high, body-based approaches can work better than analysis.

As you become more settled, there is more room to understand the situation.

This toolkit brings together exercises you can use at moments like these.

Some help reduce the intensity of what you are feeling and restore a sense of stability.

Others help you work with your thoughts and make sense of what is happening.

This toolkit is not designed to be read from beginning to end.

Open it when things become difficult and choose one exercise.

You do not need to read everything.

You do not need to choose the perfect exercise.

Sometimes one exercise is enough.

Sometimes you may need several.

You can return to some of them later.

You do not need to know in advance whether an exercise will help.

Try it and see what changes.