Build Your Self-Care Kit

Episode four of Mood Ring is a collection of self-care tools explored by Anna Borges. Anna shares clips submitted by listeners describing how they deal with the onset of a negative mental health moment.

Full Transcript

Title: Build Your Self Care Kit

Description: Episode four of Mood Ring is a collection of self care tools explored by Anna Borges. The host shares clips submitted by listeners describing how they deal with the onset of a negative mental health moment.

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Anna Borges: I want you to picture something for me. Feel free to settle in and close your eyes.

Think about what it’s like to have a … common cold. Think about how your body aches. How heavy your limbs are. How runny or stuffed up your nose is. [Sound of sloshing water] Think of that underwater sensation in your head, how out of it you feel.

Now picture what you do to take care of yourself when you have a cold. What makes you feel better? What foods and drinks do you gravitate toward? Warm soup. Ginger Ale. Toast. A mug of tea. And, what do you do? Maybe you go straight back to bed. Maybe take a shower and change into clean pajamas. Maybe you drag the coziest blankets to the couch and burrito up. What shows do you watch? Who do you text? What supplies do you gather? The whole ritual.

Now I want you to think about a moment when you weren’t feeling so hot mentally. Choose a type of moment that comes up occasionally, like a cold does. Something that’s no fun, but something familiar. Maybe there are times when you’re so frustrated by work you could scream. Maybe there are weekends that you don’t have any plans and feel extra lonely. Maybe sometimes your to-do list reaches a certain point … that you can feel nothing but overwhelmed. Or maybe you don’t have a specific moment or reason—maybe sometimes your sadness or anxiety or hurt or pain just flares up, and you know you’re in for a rough day.

Whatever situation you choose, remember what it’s like, how you felt.

Did you know what to reach for? Did you know what would make you feel better? Did you know what you really needed in that moment?

For a long time, I didn’t. A lot of the time. We know what to do when we’re sick. Why do we know so much less about what to do when we’re angry? Or sad? Or lonely? Or overwhelmed? Or anything?

Why don’t we have a plan for that?

THEME MUSIC

Hey, I’m Anna Borges and this is Mood Ring, a practical guide to feelings...even when you’re not exactly sure what will make you feel better. Every episode, we’ll explore one new way to cope—with our feelings, with our baggage, with our brains, or with the world around us.

Anna Borges: This episode, we’re kind of cheating—we’re not exploring just one new way to cope. We’re exploring, like, a whole ass coping kit. Because it doesn’t matter how many self-care tips you know. Like, when you feel something strongly or you’re in that moment when you’re upset or pissed off or in your feelings, it can be hard to access the tools that exist in your head, and remember what makes you feel better.

That’s where this thing I like to call a coping kit comes in.

Sounds fancy maybe but, really building a coping kit just means making a plan, and having a set of go-to tools or activities at the ready so you don’t have to worry about it when you’re in a bad place. You just go, okay, that is what I do when I feel this way. A coping kit is about making it as easy as possible for Future You to take care of yourself in moments when it’s not easy to remember how the fuck to take care of yourself.

So, let’s talk about how to make one. For help on this, I put out a call on social media because no two coping kits are the same. And I don’t just mean what’s in it. I also mean how it comes to life.

Anonymous: “My coping mechanism, whi