Coping Skill | How To | Benefits | YouTube Links |
Deep Breathing | Take a deep breath in through your nose, and then slowly release it out your mouth. Make sure you are breathing out for longer than you breathed in. Try and breath in through your belly and not your chest. You can focus on this by imagining a balloon in your tummy filling with air, or, placing your hand on your belly and feeling it rise and fall with your breath. | This can help regulate your heartrate, regulate your breathing, bring you back into your body | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ep5mKuRmAA |
5-4-3-2-1 (Grounding) | Name 5 things you can see, feel 4 things, notice 3 things you can hear, 2 that you can smell, and 1 that you can taste. With each of these, take your time to focus on the sensation of each sense, and try to really go into detail about each thing. You may need to find something to smell, or something to eat. If you cannot find something to eat, try and recall the last thing you ate. | This can help bring you back into your body, distract you, tell your body you are safe (you are assessing the area you are in by engaging these 5 senses) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30VMIEmA114 |
Mindfulness | Pick an object in the room you are in and describe it in minute detail. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Does it have a taste? Does it have a smell? Does it make sound? Describe the object in great detail. | This can focus your attention on a single item, allowing you to engage fully with that item and bring you back to your body. It can regulate your heartrate and breathing as well. | |
Butterfly Hug / Hands | Interlock your hands at your thumbs so it looks like a butterfly or bird with your palms facing toward you. Place your hands onto the center of your chest. Now, you are going to alternate tapping your hands on your chest, slowly and rhythmically (left, right, left, right, etc.) for at least 8 rounds. Don't forget your deep breathing while you're fluttering your butterfly wings | This can help bring you back into your body, engage in binaural patterning, can feel like a hug, regulate heart rate, and regulate breathing | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUufXf_cTec |
| Vagus Nerve Stimulation (1) | There are multiple ways to do a vagus nerve stimulation. One such way is to sit comfortably and square, or lay on the ground on your back. Then, turn your head to the right as far as you are able to, without causing strain or pain, and hold for about 20 seconds. Then do the same on the left side. After, center your head forward. Link your fingers together and then place your cupped hands behind your head. From here, you will move your eyes to the right as far as possible, not to the point of strain or pain. Make sure you are not moving your body. Hold your eyes in this position until you notice one of four response : yawning, swallowing, one big sigh, or a series of small sighs. Then, move your eyes to the left and repeat process. After, you can let your arms relax, and do the beginning step again, turning your head to one side and holding for 20 seconds, then repeating on the other. You should be able to turn your head further without pain or strain. | Stimulates the Vagus Nerve which plays a part in the parasympathetic part of the nervous system. As a result, it can help regulate emotions, regulate breathing and heartrate, and bring you back into your body. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFV0FfMc_uo ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TONw4nCjb84 (from minute 5-7:50) Also intro has information |
Vagus Nerve Stimulation (2) Ear Massage | Massage your ear gently, moving it around. Next, find a canal in your ear right above the ear hole, and massage that area with little circles slowly. | ^^^ | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TONw4nCjb84 (First 5 minutes is the ear massage) |
Vagus Nerve Stimulation (3) | |||
Square Breathing | Breath in slowly through your nose for 4~5 seconds, hold your breath for 4~5 seconds, breath slowly our through your mouth for 4~5 seconds, then hold your breath for 4~5 seconds. Repeat this process while focusing on your breath. You can also place your hand on your belly to help bring you into your body, or visualize a balloon being filled up and released. | This can help regulate breathing and heart rate, bring you back into your body, and distract your thoughts. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEmt1Znux58 |
Self Holds | This coping strategy is best taught with the help of the infograph. To do this coping strategy, you will be holding different parts of your body with both hands, such as your head, stomach, solar plexus, and more, in different configurations. | This can help bring you back into your body, this can also help tell your body that you are safe. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V7MhmJykGM |
Music | Identify songs, artists, or albums that help you with specific emotions. This can be either helping you feel siad emotion (angry adn want to sit and process the anger), or to help change the emotion (anger and want to calm down). Then, create a playlist or note somewhere the specific song, album, or artist. | This can help with processing or regulating emotions. This can also help you keep track of things that may help you instead of trying to rely on recall which people can struggle with at times. | |
Water on face or neck (diving response) | Spalsh water or use a wet paper towel or cloth to put cold water on your face, particularly your forehead or back of neck. | This triggers the vagus nerve response which helps reduce heart rate and increase oxygen flow to the body. This also triggers the mamalian diving response, which can be seen in the infograph provided. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjgFHHeV3so |
Distraction | For distraction, it can be many thing. It can be watching your favorite show, reading a book, going outside, hanging with friends, etc. The important part of distraction is to remember that it is NOT ignoring. Distracting is meant to be a means of temporary relief from an emotion that is causing disregulation, to allow us the space to regulate, then return at a later time to process the emotion. | ||
Opposite Action | This strategy is what it sounds like, you want to do the opposite action from what you usually do. When we get into patterns of behaviors, it can be hard to break. For example, if I am depressed and know that when the depression hits hard that I want to go lay in bed and doomscroll on my phone for an hour, and that this typically doesn't help as much, I want to try and do the opposite of that with this coping strategy. So, I would go outside and go for a walk. Or, if that is too much, go outside and doomscroll there for an hour. The point is to try and break the patterns we have for coping now that do not help us in ways we need, and to try and train our brain to create new patterns of behaviors and ways of coping. | ||
Journaling | Take time to record your experiences and the emotional components of your experiences. With this, keep in mind journaling can be what you want it to look like! That means it can be traditional writing in a notebook, but it can also be doing voice memos on your phone, typing on your computer, or anything your mind can think of. And within these, it does not have to be any specific way, you can do bullet points, decorate the journal, etc. Do what works for you, but try and create space to process your thoughts and feelings on whatever you are journaling about. | ||
Going for a walk/run | |||
Progressive Muscle Relaxation | Get in a comfortable position. Your therapist (or a youtube video) will guide you through the progressive muscle relaxation. For progressive muscle relaxation, you will be tensing different parts of your body for a handful of seconds, then relaxing that area, mainting controlled breathing as you do so. As you are tensing and releasing, you want to focus on the sensation of what tense feels like and what release feels like to you. Really focus on the transition of tensed to released. You will move through different parts of your body repeating this process and then end with tensing your whole body. Once you know how to do this, you can do it on your own without the aid of a therapist or youtube guide. | ||
Affect Identification | Take a moment and try and draw your attention inwards, and reflect on what emotion you may be feeling. Try to think about how the feeling exists in your body, and what that might tell you about what specific emotion you may be experiencing. This can help us differentiate between simply being "angry" and being "outraged" or "appalled". | This can help us understand our emotions better and increase our awareness. | |
Simple Body Movements | Move your body. This can include doing simple exercises like jumping jacks, running in place, etc, or simply stretching, moving your body side to side, or anything of the sort. Make sure to try and draw your focus on the sensation of moving, how movement feels in your body. Do what feels good and natural to you. | ||
Anger Thermometer | Create a "thermometer" to help understand how you experience your anger. At each "level" of anger on the thermometer, you can track triggers, somatic responses, behavioral responses, and thoughts. Then, you can identify interventions or other coping skills that help regulate you at each level. | Increases awareness of experience of anger, connects mind and body experiences | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odgz9gCqsOY |
Sour Candy | Eat sour candy. Helps pull your body out of anxiety. Go for something strong like Warheads | ||