I'm Trying This New Strategy, Try It With Me!

Hello brains. If you are really overwhelmed or stressed by life right now, uh or you just have ADHD and deal with emotion dysregulation like I do, you are in the right place. Welcome. Let's talk about a calm box, which is interestingly not about being calm. I will explain.

First of all, quick check-in. How are you doing right now? I am personally feeling a little bit overwhelmed and a little bit rushed for time because my kid is down for a nap right now. And when she wakes up, I will not be able to keep uh doing this video. So, that's where I'm at. How are you doing? Okay. Could we be better? Probably. So, uh I'm going to start with this. This is a glitter bottle. This is something that I keep in my calm box. I'll show you the calm box in a minute, but for now, I just want to give us a second to kind of settle our emotional glitter. This works so well.

So this is one tool that I have in an easily accessible place in my house because emotions run hot in my house uh with two neurode divergent adult humans that are very busy and overwhelmed right now dealing with some difficult things in life and also we've got a toddler. So the concept of a calm box is something that I came across recently and I really loved using tools for emotion regulation is not anything that is new to us. But what was new to us is the idea of putting them in one place where you can easily go and use them when you are dregulated. Um because it turns out when you are disregulated you're not really thinking straight. It's really hard to remember what to do. So if all you have to remember is go to this spot, pick up this bin, it's going to be a lot easier to do it. It's not about getting rid of the emotion. It's about turning down the volume enough that our brains come back online because when emotions go up, cognition goes down. We might say things that we don't mean. We might um get really frustrated and throw things. That's my toddler. Usually, there's lots of like uh I don't know, things that can happen that we wouldn't do if we were thinking straight that we might do if we're emotionally dregulated. And so, the first thing that you want to do for a calm box is um make sure it's someplace that you can access easily

when you are emotionally dregulated because that's the whole purpose. Just like a first aid kit or a fire extinguisher, you'd want to be able to get to the fire extinguisher easily. If there's a fire, you want to be able to get to your regulation kit, your calbox, or whatever really easily in case there's an emotional fire. Um, so I'll show you uh where mine is and what it looks like.

Okay, so first of all, very easy to access. Um, I decided not to have a lid on my box because I wanted to be able to get to everything easily. So, full disclosure, I just made this today in like 5 minutes just from stuff that I had around the house. I understand the concept of the com box. I know what would need to be in mind probably. I haven't tested it out in terms of like what things am I going to naturally gravitate toward now that they're all in the same place. Um, but I can test that later and see if these things are actually working for me the way that I intend them to work for me. But there are a couple of principles that I know are really important. When you have ADHD, emotions hit hard. Emotions hit fast. They're very loud, and you're not thinking straight. So, the first thing that we need is something that's going to help us reeregulate really quickly. So, I've got a few things in here that in the past have worked for me in the heat of the moment that I wouldn't gravitate toward if I was just like mildly stressed or overwhelmed, but like when I'm really flooded, when I'm really overwhelmed. So, one is um fidgets. So, these fidgets are they're called Dark Side of the Moon. They're spiky fidgets. I don't like the feel of these, but in the moments where I've been super flooded, it's been very helpful for me to hold them because the spikes bring me instantly back into the present moment. This is something I really like regardless of how I'm doing, but it works really well in case of an emergency. Um, it's a plastic bag. I fill it with water. I could remember to go to the kitchen, grab the plastic bag, go fill it with water. I'm not going to do that, but if I have an empty plastic bag here, I will remember. This is one of my favorite tools is just to fill a Ziploc bag with cold water, stick it on my face, um stick it on the back of my neck. And the reason why I use cold water is that temperature is one of the tips tips. Cold can be really helpful in regulating even in the middle of like a panic attack or at the beginning of a panic attack. You can use like an ice pack. There are ice packs you could put in a cal box that you just like break them and they get really cold. I didn't do that because I find myself not wanting to use it. It works, but I don't want to use it. And I want tools that I'm actually going to use. Oh, headphones. So, headphones are great for throwing on. These are noise cancelling headphones. So, if I'm like over stimulated, if there's a lot of noise going on, the noise cancelling will help. But also, I can listen to music. something calming, something soothing, an audio book maybe. Or if you use an app for meditation or mindfulness, it can be really useful for that, too. So, what I'm using for that right now is Headspace, who is also sponsoring this video. I used to meditate regularly for like 25 minutes in the morning and then sometimes afternoon. It's just not possible right now. So, it's been really nice for me to have options that are shorter. 3 4 minutes that I can just set a timer and take that time to kind of like settle my glitter. This is neat. They've got stuff at work now. Coping with job anxiety, how to outsmart burnout. Um I know I hear from a lot of people in this community that burnout is a big issue right now. Overcoming stressful moments, feeling overwhelmed, SOS, a 3 to four minute meditation, burned out, three minutes, flustered, three minutes, losing your temper. The feeling overwhelmed one I found super helpful. Here, let me show you the feeling overwhelmed, though. — So, no matter what it is that's left you feeling overwhelmed right now, just take a moment to yourself to pause undisturbed. Just begin by taking a big deep breath. Breathing in through the nose, noticing how the body expands as it fills with air. And as you breathe out through the mouth, just gently closing the eyes, just allowing the breath to return to its own natural rhythm. — Headspace is evidence-based. Research has found that 5 minutes a day of headsp space can reduce stress, which I think a lot of us could use right now. I was able to earlier um use this with my daughter next to me and she was fascinated by the pretty colors. So, I was able to listen to it on my headphones while she watched. If you need a reset or you want to build more support into your year, you can use Headspace for free by clicking the link in my description or scanning the QR code on screen. This is two full months of free access compared to the standard 14-day trial available on their site. So, yeah, check it out. Check out my link. What else is in my box? You guys

ever used these? This is like really good at getting me back into the present moment. It's good sensory good experience. So, while we're on the topic of sensory stuff, you can also put like an like I what is this? An eye mask. What do you call these things? Feel [snorts] like I should know that. Um, oh yeah, that's really calming. I don't feel like I could use this with my toddler around. That would make me more anxious because then I wouldn't know what she was doing. Um, but I put it in my kit because a she won't always be around, but b just the feel of it is very soothing to me. That's very relaxing. So, we'll see. Um, some of this is really an experiment. Is this going to be useful for me? Am I going to reach for it when I'm in this like kind of emotional overload state? Massage is one of the things that works for me pretty regularly. So, I've got like my little massage balls. My daughter is getting to the point where she's not even 2 years old yet, but she can start to understand like I need a mama minute. I am overloaded. I need a minute. Um, and it helps to have a visual timer so that she knows how long mama's gonna not be available. So, some of the things in this are things that I can pick up and use without having to like step away, but I might need to step away um for a little bit. And so, this gives me the ability to do that and be like, "Okay, you can play. Here's like here's Oh, you know what I should put in here? I should put something that is like a cool toy that she only gets to play with when I need to regulate. " That would be smart. I can give her toys to play with and then set a timer for like five minutes or whatever and she can watch the time go down and I can guilt-free like engage in what I need to do to settle my emotional glitter, whether that's an actual glitter bottle or something else. I find that it makes me more anxious if I feel like I'm taking time to myself if I shouldn't be. So, setting the expectation that is what I'm doing, I feel it can be really helpful. This is one of the cooler things that I saw when I was looking up more information about com boxes online is this idea of an envelope and then inside the envelope you have cards that tell you what to do because we might not remember our strategies, breathing exercises that you like or um I don't know do 15 push-ups or things that you know help you when you're emotionally disregulated. So having them written in Sharpie big letters on index cards and then you just stick those cards in the envelope. So that's like your strategies, right? This is super cool. I feel myself slowing down already.

I actually put some stuff in mind that I know would work for other members of my household as well because sometimes I can regulate better if they are more regulated. So I can be like here. But I think it is a good idea if you can to have everybody who might need a a calm box in your house to have one that's personalized to them. It only works if you use it and what's going to work for one person and help them regulate might be very different from what would help somebody else. And so you want it to be something that they would use that they enjoy using and that works for them. An adult coloring book. This is not something that I would go to when I'm actively about to have a panic attack, but it can be really good to have things in your calm box that are for that like really heightened intense emotion where you're just super overloaded, not thinking straight. And then also some things that are going to help your body calm down after that. Okay, I want to pause this to say don't

weaponize this. Like this is not a way to be like, "Ah, you're emotional. You should calm down. Like here's your calm down box. " Don't do that. Don't do that to other people. Don't do it to yourself. It is okay to have feelings. big feelings. What we are aiming for is not to be calm because emotions are important. It's good to feel emotions. That's a good thing. It's to be able to get our brains back online, get our nervous system uh reset so that we can make choices that are in line with our values. You know what? While we've got this timer going, why don't we just take a minute? Let's take a minute. Let's do the glitter bottle thing again and then we'll do one more check-in. — You might notice I'm still not exactly

calm, but again, not the point. The point is I averted a crisis. I did not have a panic attack. I am in a better emotional space than I would have been otherwise. And I have my little comp box to thank. Before you go off and make one, I just want to do one last check-in. How you doing? Let me know. Let me know in the comments below. Check in with yourself. Thank you to my brain advocates and all my Patreon brains for supporting the work that we do here at How to ADHD. If you'd like to learn more about Patreon, you can check it out at patreon. com/howto ADHD. We have a really great community over there. We also just changed up our tiers, so there are some really cool new perks. We'd love to have you join the most knowledgeable ADHD community on the internet. And thank you to Headspace for sponsoring this video. You can actually for a limited period of time try it for free for 60 days. Let us know in the comments below if you have tried to make a com box. What have you put in your com box? What would Should we call it something that isn't com box? Like, subscribe, click all the things, and I'll see you next video. Bye, brains.