Coping Skills and Self Care

Coping skills are ways to manage anxiety, depression, stress, and unhelpful thoughts. Here are a few things you can try! Remember, if we can't control what goes on around us we can control how we respond.

Coping Skills Apps

Virtual Hope Box- This app contains simple tools to help people with coping, relaxation, distraction, and positive thinking. PIN protected.
White Flag App- https://www.whiteflagapp.com/ The first mental health app with 24/7, FREE, ANONYMOUS, CUSTOMIZED, PEER SUPPORT. Connect with someone who understands. Now.
Intellicare: A group of apps that can help you learn practical, proven skills for managing depression and anxiety. As part of the suite of IntelliCare Apps, Each app focuses on a different skill and can teach you how to anticipate and cope with stress, increase gratitude, challenge harmful thinking, engage in more activities, and much more! All the apps provide interactive tools you can use daily to practice the skills and are there to help whenever you need immediate, in-the-moment support. The separate apps included are Thought Challenger, Worry Knot, Daily Feats, Day to Day, and My Mantra. These apps can be downloaded separately if preferred. ANDROID ONLY
CBT-I Coach: For people who are engaged in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia with a health provider, or who have experienced symptoms of insomnia and would like to improve their sleep habits. The app will guide users through the process of learning about sleep, developing positive sleep routines, and improving their sleep environments. It provides a structured program that teaches strategies proven to improve sleep and help alleviate symptoms of insomnia.
Stop, Breathe & Think: Check-in with your emotions to receive daily meditation and mindfulness recommendations tuned to how you feel. This calming meditation app experience is uniquely designed to help you stay mindful, de-stress, sleep better, and build the emotional strength and confidence to handle life’s ups and downs. Mindfulness & meditation is the practice, Stop, Breathe & Think is the process.
Breathe2Relax: A portable stress management tool which provides detailed information on the effects of stress on the body and instructions and practice exercises to help users learn the stress management skill called diaphragmatic breathing. Breathing exercises have been documented to decrease the body’s ‘fight-or-flight’ (stress) response, and help with mood stabilization, anger control, and anxiety management. Breathe2Relax can be used as a stand-alone stress reduction tool, or can be used in tandem with clinical care directed by a healthcare worker.
T2 Mood Tracker: Designed to help you track your emotional experience over time and to provide you with a tool to share this information with your health care provider. This app comes with six pre-loaded issues: anxiety, depression, general well-being, head injury, post-traumatic stress, and stress. You can also add customized scales on any topic (e.g., a pain scale). You use simple sliders to rate yourself on these behavioral categories and the app automatically graphs your inputs. You can also make notes describing things that happened during the day that may have affected your moods. This provides you and your health care provider with a complete tool to help you uncover patterns in how you are feeling. It may also help you to evaluate the impact of daily events or the effects of treatment on your mood.
Daylio- Allows you to journal without typing! But you can if you want. Uses emojis and can track your activities for the day. This information is also graphed to track your mood and activities over time. PIN protected and can link to Google drive. FREE with some premium content if the user chooses.
FEND- A drug and mental health education and prevention campaign. FREE
Headspace- Meditation and mindfulness. FREE but subscription required for full access.
Calm- Meditation and sleep. FREE but subscription is required for full access.

Guided Meditations - Mindfulness for Teens You can practice with these guided meditation recordings from this website, or download them onto your portable device. It’s OK if it seems a little weird at first. To get the hang of it, you may wish to try practicing with a particular recording at the same time, every day, for a week. Once you’ve …

Self-care refers to activities and practices we can do regularly to improve our mood, reduce stress, and increase our capacity to complete daily tasks. Self-care works best when it is a part of your daily/weekly routine.

Self-Care Tips

Self-care means taking time to do things you enjoy. Usually, self-care involves everyday activities that you find relaxing, fun, or energizing. These activities could be as simple as reading a book, or as big as taking a vacation.

Self-care also means taking care of yourself. This means eating regular meals, getting enough sleep, caring for personal hygiene, and anything else that maintains good health.

Make self-care a priority. There will always be other things to do, but don’t let these interrupt the time you set aside for self-care. Self-care should be given the same importance as other responsibilities.

Set specific self-care goals. It’s difficult to follow through with vague goals, such as “I will take more time for self-care”. Instead, try something specific, such as “I will walk for 30 minutes every evening after dinner”.

Make self-care a habit. Just like eating one apple doesn’t eliminate health problems, using self-care just once won’t have much effect on reducing stress. Choose activities that you can do often, and that you will stick with.

Set boundaries to protect your self-care. You don’t need a major obligation to say “no” to others—your self-care is reason enough. Remind yourself that your needs are as important as anyone else’s.

A few minutes of self-care is better than no self-care. Set an alarm reminding you to take regular breaks, even if it’s just a walk around the block, or an uninterrupted snack. Oftentimes, stepping away will energize you to work more efficiently when you return.

Unhealthy activities don’t count as self-care. Substance use, over-eating, and other unhealthy behaviors might hide uncomfortable emotions temporarily, but they cause more problems in the long run.

Keep up with self-care, even when you’re feeling good. Doing so will keep you in a healthy routine. Plus, self-care might be part of the reason why you’re feeling good!

Positive Steps to Well-being

Be Kind to Yourself

Our culture, genes, religion, upbringing, education, gender, sexuality, beliefs, and life experiences make us who we are. We all have bad days.

Encourage rather than criticize yourself. Treat yourself the way you would treat a friend in the same situation.

Exercise Regularly

Being active helps lift our mood, reduces stress and anxiety, improves physical health, and gives us more energy.

Get outside, preferably in a green space or near water.

Find an activity you enjoy doing, and just do it.

Take Up a Hobby and/or Learn a New Skill

Increase your confidence and interest, meet others, or prepare for finding work.

Have Some Fun and/or Be Creative

Having fun or being creative helps us feel better and increases our confidence.

Enjoy yourself!

Help Others

Get involved with a community project, charity work, or simply help out someone you know.

As well as benefiting others, you’ll be doing something worthwhile which will help you feel better about yourself.

Relax

Make time for yourself. Allow yourself to chill out and relax. Find something that suits you – different things work for different people.

Breathe… (imagine a balloon in your belly, inflating and deflating as you breathe in and out)

Eat Healthily

Eat regularly, eat breakfast, eat healthily, eat fruit and vegetables, drink water.

Balance sleep

Get into a healthy sleep routine – including going to bed and getting up at the same time each day.

Connect With Others

Stay in touch with family and friends - make regular and frequent contact with them.

Beware Drink and Drugs

Avoid using alcohol (or non-prescribed drugs) to help you cope – it will only add to your problems.

See the Bigger Picture

We all give different meanings to situations and see things from our point of view. Broaden out your perspective and consider the bigger picture (‘the helicopter view’)

What meaning am I giving this? Is this fact or opinion? How would others see it?

Is there another way of looking at this?

How important is it, or will it be in a year’s time? What can I do right now that will help most?

Accepting: ‘It is as it is’

We tend to fight against distressing thoughts and feelings, but we can learn to just notice them and give up that struggle.

Some situations we just can’t change. We can surf those waves rather than try to stop them.

Allow those thoughts and sensations just to be – they will pass.