My Mental Health Toolkit

If you know me IRL, you know that I have struggled with anxiety for pretty much my entire life. The earliest instances of anxiety that I remember are from when I was in elementary school — ranging from being unable to eat breakfast before going to school, having to call my mom to come pick me up at so many sleepovers, or feeling like I was going to be sick while eating breakfast at a hotel during a family trip to D.C.

My true anxiety attacks didn’t develop until I was in middle school, though.

My family had moved to South Dakota and my brother and I would regularly fly back to Virginia to spend time with our dad. I started getting extremely nauseous and antsy every time we went to the airport. This wouldn’t go away until we were in the air on our first plane.

Sometimes before boarding I was running to the bathroom because I was gagging and dry heaving. I was doing my best to discreetly cover my mouth and nose while walking through the airport because the smell of food and coffee was nauseating (Cinnabon was my mortal enemy in the airport). At this time in my life I had no idea what anxiety or anxiety attacks were. All I knew was that this thing kept happening.

I believe my freshman year of high school was when I was finally diagnosed. I was at my dad’s and I was going to be flying home to South Dakota later in the day when it started happening again. I either called or texted my mom, who then called my dad.

He came upstairs to get me and took me to an Urgent Care, where the very kind doctor explained that what I was experiencing was an anxiety attack. They prescribed me a medication to help and it was life changing.

Unfortunately, at this time in life, anxiety and mental health were still very much a taboo subject.

I don’t hold any resentment and I don’t blame them for their way of dealing with it, but my family was not the greatest when it came to supporting me. They had no idea what I was experiencing or how to handle it. Hell, I barely knew how to handle it.

Because of this, it took me a long time to start working on my mental health and things I could do to minimize my anxiety and provide relief besides taking the medicine I was given.

I won’t go into detail because some things don’t need to be immortalized on the internet, but my lack of trying to understand what was going on and how I could manage it led to some extremely toxic behavior from me in my early twenties. I am genuinely overwhelmed with embarrassment when I think back on my behavior between the ages of 19 and 24.

Then some things happened (again, not immortalizing it on the internet) that led me to finally start therapy. My first therapist was…well…she was something. A terrible therapist, really. I hope she’s retired by now. But my second therapist, who I’m still seeing to this day, has been incredible. They are so cool and they’ve taught me a lot of great coping mechanisms over the past 5-6 years.

Here are some of my favorite tools in my mental health toolkit.

1. Grounding Exercises

There are a couple of different grounding exercises that I like to do.

The first one is laying down with my eyes closed and my legs bent so my feet are flat on the bed, floor, or wherever I’m laying. Then, I place my hand over my heart so I can feel it beating.

Once I’m all situated and comfortable, I’ll begin doing some deep breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. While I’m doing that, I repeat to myself over and over the following phrase:

“My heart is still beating. My lungs are still breathing. My feet are flat on the floor. I am safe.”

This exercise has been extremely helpful when my anxiety attacks have me convinced I am dying.

The second one is one of my personal favorites these days. I’ll leave most of the lights off in the bathroom and hop into a hot and cozy shower. I sit on the floor and get comfy, then close my eyes and begin my usual breathing exercises to start. Once I feel ready, starting at my toes I identify everything I can feel my toes touching. I do this for every inch of my body, starting at the bottom and working my way up.

Once I’ve finished that, I start again at my toes, but this time I identify everywhere I can feel the water hitting. Finally I’ll identify everywhere I can hear the water hitting.

Then I just repeat each step over and over until I’ve calmed down or the water gets cold.

2. Sitting Outside

Okay, I know this one seems REALLY basic, but it’s soooooo good when I actually remember to do it. If the weather’s nice enough, I will grab a towel and go sit in the sun in my backyard and just breathe in the fresh air.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling a little adventurous, I’ll pick a spot near some clovers that grow in the yard and look for four leaf clovers.

If the weather’s not the best, but the temps are good, I’ll open as many windows in the house as possible and let all the fresh air in. Fresh air is the best air.

3. Challenging Anxious Thoughts

This is something that I’m fairly new to, but it has been effective!

I don’t know if I can explain it perfectly, but the basic premise of this one is that I’ll take whatever anxious thought or idea is running through my mind and do some digging to figure out the lie my mind has come up with. Then, I challenge that lie by doing a little if this, then what? scenario. Here’s an example my therapist and I worked through a few years ago:

Me: I am anxious about this important event my partner wants me to attend

Therapist: Why am I anxious?

Me: I’m anxious because what if I have an anxiety attack and end up throwing up?

T: Then what?

Me: Then, if I throw up, I’ll embarrass myself, I’ll ruin my partner’s event, and he’ll be mad at me.

T: If the roles were reversed, would you be mad at him if he had to step out of an important event for you because he was having anxiety and could potentially get sick?

Me: No, I’d be concerned and would want to make sure he was okay and felt supported and I’d offer to help him however I could. But I wouldn’t be mad at him and he wouldn’t be ruining anything.

T: tada

Me: whoa.

Of course, it takes time to get good at this and I’m nowhere near perfect at it. But I have started to get better at zeroing in on the lie my anxiety is telling me and challenging it.

4. Utilizing Creative Outlets

Setting aside time to be creative has been a new addition to my toolkit and I’m really excited about it. Over the weekend before MLK Day, I realized that social media and the internet in general was triggering my anxiety, something that hadn’t really happened since 2020. My free time was spent scrolling Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (the amount of hours I’ve wasted on that app…).

While I’m not fully ready to permanently delete my accounts, I have removed most social media apps from my phone. (I did keep a couple so I can keep tabs on if/when reputation TV is announced. I have priorities…)

So with all of that explanation, here’s how utilizing creative outlets helps my anxiety.

I can get lost in a world that isn’t the one we live in right now by reading a book and forgetting about everything going on for a while. I can create the world I want to live in by writing stories, keeping my hope for a better world alive — even if it’s just on paper. I can zone in on a creative project and just forget about things.

It reminds me of something a professor in college said during my first year in the Theatre Department at USD. When we stepped into a class for 50-90 minutes, nothing outside of those four walls mattered while we were in there. We could let go of any stressors, worries, anything and everything, and just be present in the moment with the work we had ahead of us that day.

While I don’t have a classroom or stage to step into or a professor to guide me along, I can still do that by turning on DND on my phone and giving all of my attention to the creativity at hand.

5. Deleting Social Media Apps

The internet is LOUD. It’s overstimulating. It’s chaotic. And sometimes…it’s too much. The second I catch myself doom scrolling or getting more and more anxious with every post I scroll past, I immediately remove all apps from my phone and give myself a break from the noise.

I actually did this on January 20th. Sometimes I’m off socials for a day or a week. This time, I want to see just how long I can go without them because the more I think about it, the less I like what social media has become these days.

I guarantee there are other things I use to help manage my anxiety that I’ve forgotten about. If I remember more, there will definitely be a part 2 posted!

Until then, let me know what some of your tools are that you have in your mental health toolkit or if any of these tools help you.

The road ahead of us seems dark and twisty and scary, but we’ll get through it. Even if that means taking each day one minute at a time. I believe in us.

Talk soon,

AVK