When emotions run high, it becomes genuinely hard to think clearly, the part of the brain that plans and reasons goes quiet, and the part that reacts takes over.1 In those moments, the most useful skills are simple, physical, and practised in advance, so that you can reach for them when you most need them and least feel like it. Below are five I teach often. None of them require talent or willpower; they work with your nervous system rather than against it. The best time to learn them is when you are calm, so the path is well-worn by the time you are not.
1 · The Self-Soothing Care Box
A Self-Soothing Care Box is a personalised collection of items that help you calm down, ground yourself, and ride out big emotions, a first-aid kit for your feelings. When you are dysregulated it is hard to remember what helps, so the box does the remembering for you. The principle is simple: gather things that gently engage each of your five senses.2
It also helps to tuck in a few coping reminders: a card with the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise or the DBT skills below, a breathing-exercise card, an affirmation or two ("This will pass"), and perhaps a short letter from your calmer, wiser self reminding you of what helps. Keep the box somewhere easy to reach, practise opening it when you are only mildly stressed so it becomes familiar, and refresh the items as scents fade or things lose their effect.
Download the full guide
A printable step-by-step guide to building your own Self-Soothing Care Box, with ideas for each sense and the coping reminders to include.
Self-Soothing Care Box: PDF guide
2 · The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise
When distress pulls you out of the present and into worry or memory, this exercise walks you gently back into your body and the room around you, using your senses as anchors.3 Slowly, and without rushing, name to yourself:
The point is not to finish quickly but to notice each thing properly, the colour, the texture, the temperature. By the end, most people find the intensity has eased a little, simply because attention has shifted from the inside of a spiralling thought to the steadiness of the present moment.
3 · The STOP skill
STOP is a skill from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)2,7 for the moments when a strong emotion is about to drive an action you might regret. It buys you the small, crucial gap between feeling and doing. The letters stand for:
4 · The TIP skill
When emotion is so intense that thinking is not yet possible, the fastest route to relief is through the body, by changing its chemistry directly. The DBT TIP skill (sometimes written TIPP) does exactly that:2
A gentle caution: the cold-water and intense-exercise techniques affect your heart rate, so go easy if you have a heart condition or any other relevant health concern, and check with your GP if you are unsure.
5 · Wise Mind
Wise Mind is the idea at the centre of DBT,2 and a good place to land once the intensity has eased. We can think of the mind as having two modes. Emotion mind is led by feeling, passionate and immediate, but not always wise. Reasonable mind is led by logic and facts, useful, but cool, and sometimes blind to what matters to us. Wise mind is the overlap of the two: a calm, settled place where you honour what you feel and take account of the facts, and where a decision simply feels right and true.
You reach it not by arguing yourself into it but by pausing, breathing, and asking quietly: what does my wise mind know about this? The answer is often quieter than the emotion and steadier than the logic, a sense of what genuinely fits. With practice, you learn to recognise its voice.
Using these together
These skills work best as a small repertoire rather than a single fix. In a difficult moment you might use TIP to bring the intensity down, then 5-4-3-2-1 to land back in the present, then STOP before responding, and finally Wise Mind to decide what to do. The Self-Soothing Care Box can hold reminders of all of them in one place. Practise them when you are calm, keep the ones that help, and let go of the ones that do not: what matters is that the path is familiar by the time you need it.
These tools are a resource, not a substitute for therapy, and they cannot replace a careful clinical assessment. If you are in acute distress, please contact your GP, NHS 111, or, if you or someone else is in danger, 999. You can also call the
Samaritans
on 116 123, free, any time. If you would like to learn to use skills like these with support, the
free 10-minute consultation
is a good place to start.
References and further reading
doi:10.1038/nrn2648. On why clear thinking becomes harder under acute stress.
doi:10.1111/j.1600-0838.2005.00440.x. The cold-on-the-face reflex used in TIP (Temperature) that slows the heart.
doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00027. On the anxiolytic effects of physical activity (TIP, Intense exercise).
doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353. The autonomic basis of paced breathing (TIP, Paced breathing).
doi:10.1016/j.brat.2014.05.005. A randomised trial finding DBT skills training reduced emotion dysregulation and anxiety in adults without borderline personality disorder.