It’s tempting to white-knuckle our way through stressful times ain survival mode - fight, flight, or freeze. The right tools and techniques can help us take better care of ourselves.

#1: The variety of tools featured in The Shine App makes a great tool to add self-care to your daily routine. The Shine app features daily coaching, guided meditation, and tips you can use before the lesson is over.

#2: Online Therapy doesn’t require you to be high-tech and gives you easy access to therapists, tools, and learning events. I wasn’t new to online platforms but was unfamiliar with Better Help. The ability to leave written (text) and audio messages 24/7 is helpful, and the self-assessment tools and the topical webinars are game-changers.

#3: If “Feelings Your Feelings” can be challenging, a Feeling Wheel can help you process your emotions. There are several versions of the Feeling Wheel tool developed by Gloria Wilcox to help people identify and talk about their feelings. Here’s a link to a pretty cool Feeling Wheel.

#4: Anger is a human emotion often confused with aggressive, harmful behavior toward ourselves or others, so we tend to ignore it instead of a plan for it. An anger control plan helps you identify your triggers and pick techniques to deescalate your anger and help stop it from turning into aggression.

#5: If you are putting off sending that text or making that call, stop and do it now. One way I processed that my cousin was gone way too soon was to ready our text thread covering four years. The last exchange was two weeks before she passed, and it was all love.