I want to tell you something I do not say enough in professional settings.
I have had seasons of my life where I was not okay.
Not in a dramatic, everything-falling-apart way. More in the quiet, grinding way where you keep showing up, keep functioning, keep helping other people, but something underneath is off. You feel it but you cannot quite name it. A low-grade hum of anxiety that follows you from room to room. A tiredness that sleep does not fix. A version of yourself you recognize but do not feel fully at home in.
I am a mental health nurse, yoga practitioner and psychotherapist. I study these modalities and then some… I teach this. I support others through it.
And I still had to learn, slowly and sometimes painfully, how to support myself.
What helped me was not one thing. There was no single practice, no revelation, no morning routine that solved it. What helped was building, over time, through trial and real error, a small collection of tools that I could reach for. Things that actually worked for me. Not things that worked for someone else, or looked good on paper, or were trending in a wellness app. Things that were genuinely mine.
I call it a toolkit. Not because it sounds clinical, but because that is honestly what it is.
A toolkit is not glamorous. It is practical. It is the things you come back to when stress rises, when anxiety creeps in, when the pace of life gets heavier than your nervous system can quietly absorb.
This is what I want to help you build today.
Not a prescription. Not a ten-step program. Just an honest conversation about what psychological support can look like, personalized, imperfect, yours
First: Can We Let Go of the Idea That There Is One Right Way?
Before we talk about anything practical, I need to say this.
The wellness industry has a habit of presenting mental health tools as universal. As though meditation works for everyone, or journaling is the answer for everyone, or any single approach is something you simply need to commit to and then it works.
That is not how human beings work.
What settles one person’s nervous system activates another’s. What feels grounding to one person feels boring or pointless to another. Some people find structure calming. Others find it suffocating. Some connect to their emotions through writing. Others connect through movement, or music, or being in nature, or cooking, or nothing that has ever appeared on a wellness list.
None of that is wrong.
The goal of a personal mental health toolkit is not to replicate someone else’s practice. It is to discover what actually works for you, and then to make it accessible. To have it ready before you need it, rather than searching for tools when you are already in distress.
That is the whole idea.
What Goes in a Toolkit
Let me walk you through some of the most widely useful categories, and then I want you to ask yourself, honestly, which ones have ever actually helped you feel better. Not which ones you think should help. Which ones genuinely do.
Journaling – But Not the Kind You Think
I know. I know what comes up when I say the word journaling.
The beautiful notebook that sits on the shelf. The habit you started and abandoned seventeen times. The pressure to write something meaningful or insightful or, god forbid, consistent.
Let me offer a different version.
Journaling, at its most useful, is not about beautiful writing. It is about externalization. Moving what is inside your head onto paper so it stops living exclusively in your nervous system.
When anxiety rises, it tends to loop. The same thought circles, picks up momentum, magnifies. Writing interrupts that loop. Not because writing the thought down solves it, it usually does not, but because there is something about seeing a thought outside of yourself, in your own handwriting, that reduces its power just enough.
It becomes a thing you are observing, rather than a thing that is consuming you.
For caregivers and busy professionals especially, even three sentences can be enough. Three sentences at the end of a hard day, or in the middle of a hard moment.
What happened. What I felt. What I need.
That is it. That is enough.
If you want to go further, you can try what some therapists call a “worry dump”, a timed five minutes where you write everything that is circling in your mind, without editing, without structure, without judgment. Just get it out. Then close the notebook. What is on the paper no longer has to be carried inside you at the same intensity.
It sounds simple. I have sat with enough people to know it is not always, but it is accessible. And accessibility is what matters in a toolkit.
Meditation – Without the Pressure to Be Good at It
Here is what I wish someone had told me earlier about meditation:
You are not trying to empty your mind. You are not doing it wrong when thoughts come. The whole point is not the absence of thought, it is the practice of noticing you have drifted, and returning. That moment of return. That is the practice.
I say this because I have spoken to so many caregivers and professionals who tried meditation once or twice, found their minds extremely busy, decided they were bad at it, and gave up. And I want to gently challenge that story.
A busy mind during meditation is not a failed meditation. It is a human brain doing what human brains do. The person who notices their thoughts thirty times in a ten-minute session and returns to their breath thirty times has just practiced thirty moments of awareness. That is not failure. That is the work.
Now, do you need a specific app for this? Not necessarily. But if having a guide makes it more likely you will actually do it, then yes, use the app. I am not precious about tools. If it helps, it belongs in your toolkit.
Insight Timer is free and has thousands of guided meditations, many of them short. Calm has sleep-specific meditations that some people find genuinely helpful. Headspace is structured in a way that suits people who like a sense of progression.
But also, sometimes the simplest version is this: sit somewhere quiet for five minutes. Close your eyes or soften your gaze downward. Notice your breath. When you drift, come back.
No app required. No expertise required. Just a few minutes of choosing to arrive in yourself rather than carry yourself somewhere else.
Affirmations – Done Honestly
I want to talk about affirmations, but I want to do it carefully.
Because there is a version of affirmations that does not work, and might actually make things worse.
If you are in real distress and you repeat “I am calm and at peace” to yourself, your brain will reject it immediately. It knows the truth. And that gap between what you are saying and what you are actually experiencing creates dissonance, not comfort.
What works better, what is actually supported by research in cognitive psychology, is something called a bridging affirmation. A statement that is true, or at least reachable, from where you actually are.
Not: I am not anxious. But: I have felt anxious before and I have gotten through it.
Not: Everything is fine. But: This is hard, and I have handled hard things.
Not: I am strong. But: I am doing my best with what I have right now. That counts.
Do you feel the difference? One meets you where you are. The other asks you to pretend to be somewhere you are not.
A genuinely useful affirmation is a small anchor to something true, something that reminds you, when anxiety is loud and distorting, that you have agency, history, and capacity. Even if you cannot fully feel it at that moment.
The Things That Are Yours
I also want to make space in this toolkit for the things that are not in any wellness list.
The playlist that shifts your state in a way nothing else quite does. The walk you take in a specific direction at a specific time of day that somehow always helps, made even more grounding when you slow your breath to match your steps. The phone call with a specific person who makes you feel like yourself. The meal you cook slowly, with music on, giving you something quiet and ordinary to do with your hands, try a few slow breaths while you wait for something to simmer. The book you return to when you need to be reminded that other people have navigated hard things and written about them honestly, perhaps with one deep breath before you open to your favourite page.
These are tools. Maybe the most personal and most powerful ones.
They are worth writing down. Not because you will forget them, exactly, but because in the middle of distress, the mind narrows. Options that are obvious when you are well become inaccessible when you are struggling. Having a list, even a messy one, on your phone or a scrap of paper, means you are making a decision about your care before you need it, rather than searching for options when you are already depleted.
That is what I mean by a toolkit being accessible. It is there, ready, before the hard moment arrives.
You can pair mindful breathing with any of these, it does not need to be its own separate practice. A few slow breaths woven into what you are already doing can deepen the mind-body connection and help the moment land more fully in your body, not just your mind.
Building It: A Few Honest Notes
Start with one thing. Not a whole system. Not a complete practice. One thing that has helped you in the past, or one thing you are genuinely curious about trying.
Experiment without judgment. Some things will not work for you. That is information, not failure. Move on.
Notice what your nervous system responds to, not just what your mind thinks you should be doing. Your body often knows before your thinking does.
Return to the things that work. This sounds obvious, but it is easy to abandon what works when life gets busy, and then wonder why you feel worse. Consistency matters more than perfection.
And please, give yourself permission to need support that goes beyond a toolkit. Journaling and meditation and affirmations are genuinely useful tools. They are not replacements for therapy, or medication when medication is needed, or the kind of support that comes from being truly witnessed by a professional who knows their work.
A toolkit is not a substitute for care. It is a companion to it.
One Last Thing
I started this by telling you about a season of my own life when I was not okay.
What got me through it was not having the right tools, exactly. It was learning, slowly, that I was allowed to need them.
That is often the harder part. Not the practice. The permission.
You are allowed to have hard days. You are allowed to need support. You are allowed to build something for yourself, a small, imperfect, genuinely personal collection of things that help and to reach for it without shame.
That is not a weakness. That is how people who care a great deal for others learn to care for themselves too.
Start small. Start honest. Start N.O.W.
