The Idea of the Week
Grounding is a self-soothing skill used to bring your awareness to the present moment and current experiences. One powerful grounding skill is engaging with your senses. This 21-minute video shares a variety of often subtle ways to use your senses to ground yourself. Some techniques use external items or the presence of a friend or a pet, and other techniques don’t use any items.
A sensory kit is a grounding toolkit filled with items that help you engage with your senses. This could also have a number of names—anxiety survival kit, grounding kit, stress relief kit, etc.—but the idea is similar: a repertoire of items to engage with your senses and help calm, destress, and ground you.
Practice of the Week
Let’s build our sensory self-soothing kits!
First, let’s consider the purpose of our sensory self-soothing kit.
Reflect on why you want to create a kit.
- What are your needs?
- How will the sensory self-soothing kit meet your needs?
- When and where will you need this kit?
Now, we’ll need a container to hold our items.
When considering a container, think about where you’ll likely need it. Are you traveling? You may want something small and portable. Will you need it at your work desk? You may want a small container that can fit on your desk but not crowd your space. Here are some ideas for what you can use for your container:
- a cookie tin
- a shoe box
- a crafts box from the dollar store
- a sachet
- a small bag
- a basket
Then, let’s find items that help us engage in our senses and put them in our kit. Here are a few ideas and tips to keep in mind as you search for your items:
- In this 10-minute video, Sophie Young shares what they put in their anxiety survival kit for whenever they feel stressed or have an oncoming panic attack.
- In this 13-minute video, Jess from Multiplicity and Me shares what she has in her safety/grounding box that helps stimulate her senses and stay grounded.
- What soothing items will help you engage with your senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste?
- Think beyond your 5 senses. What soothing items can help you engage with your other senses? For example, a cooling pack for your sense of temperature, and a weighted blanket, a scarf to wrap around your head, or a crystal roller for proprioception (the sense of self-movement and being aware of the body’s position and actions).
- What soothing items can bring you out of your thoughts and worries? For example, maybe your friend won you a stuffed toy duck, so every time you see the stuffed toy duck you’re reminded of the fun day and laughter you shared with your friend.
Finally, we’ll place our sensory kit in an optimal place for when we’ll most need it.
If you travel or walk around, you may want to put it in your purse or backpack. If you work at a desk or a designated area a lot, then maybe you’ll want to place it somewhere on or in the vicinity of your desk. Or, maybe you can designate a place in your living room or bedroom to keep your sensory toolkit.
Remember that this is a process. There is no right or wrong way to make a kit and what you have in your kit is entirely up to you and what you think will help you with your needs. You may add items to your kit that help you or even remove things from your kit that no longer help. No two kits will look the same and you don’t have to add anything to your kit that you don’t want to.
What’s in your sensory kit? Share with us on our Instagram or Facebook page!
The Thought of the Week
Wishing you a peaceful week!
