How would it feel to know that you just had all the tools to work through all those difficult
situations and emotions in your life?
Well, this week's podcast episode, we're going to talk about how you can create your own
toolkit or toolbox of self-care practices.
Let's get into it.
You're listening to the Soul Aligned Self-Care Podcast.
I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout
that shook my world.
Now I'm laying it all out, the deep-level self-care practices and mindset shifts that
I needed that kept me healthy, balanced, and thriving.
Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and a soul's journey to alignment.
This is where real conversations about deep-level self-care happen.
Let's get into it.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Soul Aligned Self-Care Podcast.
This week we are talking about how you can create a toolkit or toolbox for yourself,
self-care practices that are designed just for you to help you through all those difficult
moments in life.
Now, how cool would that be?
This is totally possible to have this for yourself.
I think we should have been taught this when we were kids, right?
How cool would it have been to have all these solutions for yourself just growing up?
I wish I did.
I'm going to go through this today with you, and if you're a parent, you could share this
with your children.
I wish I had this when I was raising my children so that I could have taught them this.
Anyway, before we get started, I just wanted to share with you my Soul Aligned Self-Care Insiders
group, which is on Patreon, and you could follow along for free.
There's lots of great free stuff that I offer on there, or you could jump into the group.
It's very inexpensive.
I will put the link in the show notes.
If you want to join me over there, I do meditations, affirmation recordings.
We do some moon journaling for the new moon and the full moon.
We do weekly card polls, weekly journaling prompts.
We do so much stuff over there.
If you want to join me and go a little bit deeper into this deep-level self-care practices
stuff, then definitely check that out.
Let's get into today's podcast episode.
The self-care toolbox, or toolkit, whatever you want to call it, is something that I started
doing with my clients.
I just find it very valuable because a lot of us were never taught to how to manage difficult
situations and emotions.
A lot of times what we do is we end up reacting continuously through life.
A metaphor that always reminds me of this is Katy Perry's song where she talks about being
tossed around in the wind like a plastic bag.
When you're not in charge of your emotions, and this is how I view feeling.
Isn't it how it feels when you're just don't feel like you're in control of any of the
situations or emotions in your life?
You're just being all over the place and you're just reacting.
What the toolbox really does is it helps you respond more than reacts.
That's what I like about it.
Once you learn how to do this in your life, and some of you might already have this mastered,
but once you learn how to do this in your life, you feel like you can conquer any situation.
Nothing is going to make you feel out of control or in that anxious feeling or that manic
feeling that you get when everything is happening to you.
To get started, I just want to go through some of the emotions that might pop up.
I'm obviously not going to go through a million different situations because that would take
a long time.
That would be like a whole series.
What we're going to do is we're going to talk about the different emotions.
Then I'll share with you some of the things I use.
Then I'll also share with you how you can connect even deeper with me and learn some of these
methods one-on-one or I also make some recordings for you that you can watch.
To start off, let's start naming some of these difficult emotions.
One of the emotions could be sadness.
It could be anxiety.
It could be stress.
It could be frustration.
It could be anger.
It could be sadness.
These are some of the main emotions.
If you can come up with more, just put that on your list.
Just anything I do on the Solar Line Self-Care Podcast, this is always going to be a journaling
exercise.
It's going to be over time.
It's not something you sit down and you do all at once.
If you don't have a journal, go out and just buy yourself a cheap notebook.
You don't need anything fancy or if you're the type of person that wants to have a fancy
journal, I get that way sometimes.
Go by yourself, the fancy journal.
If it's going to help you make this part of your self-care practice, then definitely do
that.
What you're going to do is you're going to look at these different emotions and then
you're going to figure out what helps you move through these emotions easier.
The way that you would do this is the next time you're feeling one of them, then you're
going to ask yourself the question, "What could I do right now to help me move through
this?"
As an example, I'm going to use myself as an example.
When I get really, really angry or maybe frustrated, one of the best things that I discovered helps
me move through that.
Before I even start this, I want to emphasize that it's really important for us to feel our
feelings and not stuff them down.
It's okay to be angry and it's okay to be frustrated.
It's about what you do with that.
That's a big energy in your body.
For me, I need to release that energy.
The best thing that helps me is going for a run.
Obviously, the point of this podcast and the point of making your own personalized tool
kit is to do it so it works for you.
Not everybody likes to run.
Some people hate running and that's not going to work for them.
That's what I mean by you have to figure out what it works for you.
When I'm frustrated and angry, the best thing for me is to go for a run.
I've been a runner for a long time and this has always helped me work through this type
of feeling.
I know that after a couple of miles, I'm just going to feel really good.
It takes me a couple of miles.
After that, I'm fine.
When I'm feeling very stressed or anxious, running doesn't really help me as much.
Sometimes when I'm distressed, but when I have a lot of anxiety, running actually amps
up my anxiety.
When you're running, you're putting your body into fight or flight because you're running,
obviously.
I want to come out of fight or flight when I'm feeling anxious.
I want to feel a little bit better.
I want to calm down a little bit.
Sometimes maybe just going for a walk might help me feel better.
But stressed, if I'm having some work stress, a lot of times that lines up with frustration.
So frustration is running for me.
You have to figure out what works for you.
Sadness, for me, I discovered that it's really good to just let myself feel that sadness,
no matter how long it takes.
So if I need like a 24 hour pity party, I'm going to give myself that.
What doesn't work for me is trying to not be sad, trying to be like, oh, I don't want to
be sad right now.
Let me just try to cheer myself up.
I need to feel through it or it doesn't go away.
And I believe that most people are like this.
We need to feel our feelings, right?
So the moment I discovered that if I just allowed myself to feel this way for a while, that
it was okay to spend time being sad, I moved through it so much quicker.
So the first time I did this, I was like, all right, I'm just going to allow myself to
be, I used to call it, have a pity party for for a whole day.
I'm going to give myself a day to just have a pity party.
And the first time I did it, I couldn't believe how fast I moved through it.
But I wanted to like stay there, but it didn't take 24 hours.
It only took a couple of hours that first time.
And now I moved through it so much quicker because I feel like, I don't need as much time.
If I allow myself to move into that feeling and just feel it completely without feeling
any shame, without feeling like I'm wasting time, without feeling like some kind of a victim
or I'm feeling sorry for myself, just allowing myself to feel it.
I moved through it so much quicker.
It actually saves times, whereas like, went before I used to do this for myself, I would just
stuff it down, right?
And then it would just keep coming up like every day for like a week or so, it would take
me so much longer to move through it.
But now that I allow myself the time, and sometimes that involves for me, I really want
to feel it.
So like, I'll even watch a sad movie that'll help make me cry, right?
Or I'll just maybe journal it out and feel it that way and have a good cry.
I just need to lay on the couch and kind of feel sorry for myself a little bit.
Not so much like victim me, but definitely be like, you know, oh, you know, well, I guess
it is a little victim me.
I don't know.
But just allowing myself to feel into that is just feels so good.
And as I said, I moved through it quicker.
So that's what I need when I'm sad.
Some people might need to talk to a friend.
They might need to talk it out.
I just want to be alone and I just want to cry, right?
So what else?
Let me think.
What else did I say?
Anxious.
I did anger.
I did frustration.
I did sad.
Okay.
Like, those are my go-to things, right?
So there's other things I use though too.
Like so with anxious anxiety and stress, yoga works for me really well, moving my body.
A lot of times when you're moving in energy through your body, movement really helps you
move through it.
And then, you know, you're moving in the body, you're moving in the body, you're moving in
the body, right?
When I'm angry, screaming into a pillow, just screaming really loud.
It's like such a good release.
Singing and dancing can really move you out of stress and anxiety, moving, shaking the
body, just like putting on a song and shaking out your body.
You can get rid of a lot of anxiety.
And then it's going to stop and it's going to just, its body will just tremble.
It's releasing all of that energy.
It just, I don't think they do it intentionally.
I think it just happens.
It's just, that's what happens with them.
But humans don't allow themselves that.
We need to allow ourselves to release all the energy from the emotions that we feel.
So doing like a little shake out, like you could just get up and do that every morning
and it would be life changing for you.
Just putting on your favorite song.
Look at that.
Tina forgot to turn her phone off during her podcast.
Sorry about that.
I'll try to edit it out, but I'm not sure if it'll work.
Anyway, lost my train of thought.
Where was I was talking about the deer shaking?
But you could, you could do that every morning.
You don't have to be stressed out to do it.
You could just get up every morning and do a quick shake out dance.
And it's a really great way to start your day.
Death work works magnificently for me to work through stress and anxiety, right?
Magnificently.
It's something that works so well, just doing a little bit of breath work when I was going
through a lot of stress.
It was that not the beginning of this year, the beginning of last year, like heavy, duty,
stress, my blood pressure went up really high, like really, really high.
It wasn't going down and I went to the doctor and I had every test known to mankind done
on my heart and everything.
And I was so healthy.
I was glad that I had all these tests done.
I was just very healthy though.
There was nothing wrong, no blockages, nothing wrong with my heart, pure stress and anxiety.
And I remember the cardiologist.
He was like, he was really, he was a really cool cardiologist.
He was basically like, you should go to a retreat for a week.
And I was like, yeah, I wish I could do that, but I don't know what I would do with my dogs.
But I mean, I just stepped into all of my self-care practices.
I have the tendency to get very stressed out and very anxious.
And so I have to stay on top of this stuff and continuously practice this proactively
on a daily basis, doing breath work, doing yoga, doing meditation.
And meditation is harder for me to do when I have like a very anxious energy, if that makes
sense, really hard for me to do, but I could do a little bit of breath work and then I can
go into meditation.
So today I shared, so if you're listening to this in real time, today I shared a practice
that I use I call it take five and it's a very quick take five, five minutes meditation
breath work practice that I share with my clients and I use for myself.
And I've only been using this for about a year, but it's so quick and easy and it's just,
it's been life changing for me.
So I will put a link in the show notes for that so you can watch that.
It's an, I made a recording so you could learn how to do it.
And I shared that this week for this week's self-care practice on the Insiders group that
I was talking about at the beginning.
So it's, it's things like this that can be so life changing for you and for me because
doing like the take five practice, which I recommend people do three times a day, it's
for five minutes, can really stop the stress and anxiety loop that you might be experiencing
throughout your day.
It kind of breaks it up and stops that.
I call it a loop, right?
So it's that continuation of that stress anxiety feeling in your body, okay?
And so creating your own personalized self-care toolbox or toolkit takes a little bit of
work on your part because it has to be personalized, right?
Now this is something that you could do with me on a one-on-one basis.
I'll also put a link if you're interested in working with me that way.
I could help you create your own toolbox, but you can do this on your own too.
I will put a link in the bio if you're interested in that, but you can do this on your own just
by the next time you feel any type of a difficult emotion or situation.
Now if it's a situation that pops up, then you're going to just ask yourself, what's the
emotion I'm feeling?
You're going to write down the emotion.
You're going to go in your work, your journal, whatever it is, notebook journal, and you're
going to write down the emotion.
And you're going to write, when I feel, say, sadness, when I feel sadness, this is what
helps for me.
And if you don't know what helps, then I want you to start trying new things, okay?
And this is something I'm kind of moving into this month of February, 2024, where I'm going
to be sharing some of the different self-care practices that I use from my toolbox, okay,
that you could use in your life too.
I have so many different things.
It probably would take me a really long time to share all of them, but I just decided I'm
just going to share them weekly with you guys so you could try them.
Now, not everything that works for me is going to work for you in every situation, right?
So like, well, I said, running works for me great when I'm feeling angry or frustrated.
Running might work really well for you or walking when you're feeling sad, right?
So everybody is different.
So when you're sad, try a few things that you think might work for you.
Like if you just need to feel into it and have a good cry like me, watch a sad movie,
whatever, try that.
Try talking to a friend.
See if that helps.
Maybe try meditation or some breath work.
Maybe try reading a book, having a cup of tea.
Maybe try taking your dog for a walk.
Pets can be super healing.
So dogs, cats, spend some time with your pets.
Try everything out and see what works best.
And then you put that underneath your sadness column in your notebook, right?
And that's why I said just do it over time, right?
Because you're not really going to know what works for you unless you're really in that
emotion at the time.
So if you're in that emotion, I want you to automatically think about it and be like, oh,
this is, I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to create my toolbox right now.
Let me see what I can use to move through this emotion.
Now remember, we're not stuffing the emotion down and trying to get rid of it.
We're trying to feel it and move through it.
How can I move this energy through my body?
After it, like as almost this like wave of energy going through your body, it comes in.
So say it's like anger and frustration.
You can feel yourself getting angry and frustrated.
How does it feel?
Like maybe your shoulders and your neck get tight.
Maybe your heart starts to beat heavy and maybe your breath is shallow and your breathing
really fast, right?
Maybe you get a headache.
What are the things you feel?
It's an energy that comes into your body, right?
So how can I release that's a very powerful energy, right?
Do I need to scream into a pillow?
Do I need to go for a walk?
Do I need to sing my favorite song and do a dance in my living room?
What do I need to do?
Just do it, right?
So I watched, I think it was, it was probably a TikTok because I spent way too much time
on TikTok.
But it was a CEO of a company, a woman, right?
And she had multiple businesses, different companies and she spent a lot of her time during
the day working in meetings.
So she had continuous zoom meetings and she had all of these things around her desk to
help her move through her feelings that she was feeling during the meeting and kind of
like clean the slate for the next meeting because sometimes she wasn't just going into
a new meeting.
She was dealing with a different business because she had multiple businesses, right?
So it was almost like the same thing as eating lemon sorbet in between meals to clear the
palate.
That's kind of like what she was doing and it was so interesting.
She had a pillow next to her desk and she would just scream into the pillow and she's like,
it's not that I'm mad or angry or frustrated.
It just helps clear my energy and then I move on to the next thing.
That could be so many different things.
She also had tactile things like she had a foot pad that she could put her feet on that
was like warm and soft so it made her more comfortable.
She had cushions all around her chair.
She had so many different things.
It was so interesting but this is what I'm talking about.
Like I'm talking about figuring out what works for you and giving it to yourself.
That's what self cares all about.
How can I reduce the friction and make myself more comfortable?
I don't have to be perfect all the time but how can I help myself work towards being more
comfortable in my life, in my body, in the feelings I'm having.
Now go back to what I said at the beginning.
Once you learn how to manage your emotions you can kind of work through the experiences
that you have in life and the relationships you have in your life.
So you can you see how valuable this can be if you're in an argument with somebody in
your experience in anger and you know you have this high energy.
I feel like anger and frustration are a very powerful high energy in my body.
That's what it feels like to me.
Very strong energy that I don't like.
And so if you're moving into that in a relationship you could take a step back.
You could just say to the other person, "Listen, I'm not feeling really good right now.
Can I just take a few moments?"
And we can come back to this conversation at a different time.
It looks like you know what's coming in so you're not reacting, right?
You're not going into the argument and start yelling and screaming and reacting.
You're taking a step back because you know how it makes you feel and then you're going
to learn how to release that on your own and not release it onto somebody else, right?
And so take a step back, go for a walk, go for a run, go into the other room, scream into
a pillow, right?
Give yourself some time to release that energy and then go back to the conversation with
a clear or head, you know?
So can you see how valuable that can be in your relationships, in whatever career you have?
Being able to manage these different emotions in these different situations.
You know, and sometimes you might say to me, "Well, you don't always have the opportunity
to step away from something like if you're at work, right?
That's true."
So what kind of techniques can I do in the moment to calm myself down?
Maybe that would be EFT tapping, right?
So if you don't know what EFT tapping is, I'm going to get into that at some point when
I do that as a self-care practice of the week.
I'll get, I'll make a video on that.
But I would Google it.
If you're not familiar with EFT tapping, I would Google it, right?
And on this week's podcast episode, so it would be Friday trying to think of the date.
What's the date for Friday?
Hold on, I'm going to check.
I don't know what Friday's date is because if you're listening to this at another time, it
might be hard for you to find it.
But this Friday is going to be February 16th, 2024.
I'm releasing a podcast episode with Melanie Moore.
She teaches EFT tapping.
So whatever you want to call it, whatever you're listening to, it, me on whether it's Spotify,
Apple, or whether you're on my website, just definitely follow me so that you can listen to Friday's
episode because she's just like a wonderful, beautiful person.
And I love her tapping videos.
Her forms on stage who might have stage fright can use tapping because you could just tap
on some of your energy meridians of your body.
So as I said, if you're not familiar with it, just do a quick Google search and it'll show
you.
I'm not on video right now, so otherwise I would show you.
But so you could use tapping, you could tap on your hand under the table.
I tap my fingers together sometimes.
This helps me.
I use that in the take five method that I shared with you earlier.
There's so many different things you could do to like to calm yourself in certain situations
that wouldn't be noticeable to other people.
Sometimes just crossing your hands over your chest and maybe crossing your arms in front
of you is a way to kind of like protect you and like repel any bad energy.
So that's something that you could do to kind of protect your energy when you're in a kind
of a yucky conversation.
You could stand sideways so you're facing.
You could be looking at them but you can be facing your shoulder to them instead of having
the front of your body facing to them.
So like you're just kind of protecting your energy a little bit.
So these are just small tiny little things that you can do that aren't noticeable to other
people usually where you could help you move through.
Now if you're feeling really sad in a moment and it's something that oh I know a good one
I know a really good one and I don't want to talk about this like emotions are bad but
I've heard this from so many women.
So like sometimes when we're in like a heated situation and we're very very angry we
cry.
How many of you do that?
Like raise your hand because I'm raising my hand right now and I know so many people
who do this and they're like they think that whoever they're in this situation with is going
to realize that maybe they're weak or something like that.
Like it makes them look weak or like too vulnerable whatever.
But meanwhile it's just the way that anger is moving through their body and a lot of women
ask me how can I be in that state of anger in a situation with a conversation with another
person and not cry.
How can I control that?
Now that's I think it's very hard to do because I'm always like an advocate for feeling your
feelings and when you're in that real state of frustration you might it might be really
hard for you not to go get into that emotional state.
I recently was watching oh my goodness another TikTok video but maybe a lot of people have
seen this because it was everywhere on social media where this girl got laid off from her
job and they were being very disrespectful, very cold and she was she moved through it like
an ace and she was just this young woman but you could see her like fighting back the
tears but she managed to stay calm.
So how can you try to calm yourself calm your nervous system a little bit to help you
get through the situation and not moving to like crying or really releasing it that way.
And I would go back to some breath work you could definitely do some deep breathing while
you're face to face with someone and not make it super normal.
You could use tapping EFT tapping like I talked about earlier where you could you know tap
some of the points on your hands where they can't see you you could use anchors.
So like anchoring yourself to a certain thing to bring up a certain feeling in yourself
is something that I highly suggest and I have in my skin care company I sell these vibrolers
they're essential oil rollers and it's supposed to help you evoke a certain vibration.
So like whether you feel like you need love or happiness or focus or whatever the vibration
that you're looking to achieve I use these essential oil oil rollers as anchors but another
way that you could set an anchor so say you're in an argument and you feel like you're
going to cry you're so angry you're so frustrated and you feel the tears coming how can you
anchor yourself to something that makes you feel safe and protected.
So the way that you would do that is you know some people use rubber bands some you could
use an essential oil roller that's probably hard to break out in the middle of an argument
though so having like a bracelet or a rubber band or tapping on a certain part of your
body so the way you would do that is you would like think of a time when you felt totally
safe totally strong totally powerful totally like just strong strength right think of that
time bring it up in your head I want you to do it like right now like think of a time
when you felt so strong so powerful like nothing nothing could take you down right and then
as you're thinking of that maybe just tap lightly on your your shoulder or your chest or maybe
on like a point on your hand maybe tap your two fingers together or maybe just hold your
thumb and your forefinger together and I want you to think of this and you're anchoring
it with that body movement right think of that time and now now open your eyes and say
you're in that heated argument again or I'm sorry hopefully you don't have the same heated
argument again say you're in another heated argument or situation like that and you need
to feel strength well you're going to just take those fingers that you held together
and you're going to hold them together and you're going to quickly go back you're going
to anchor yourself back into that emotion that you felt what you felt strong and destructible
nothing could take you down right and just tap those fingers together I'll hold them together
that's how you anchor an emotion so these are different ways that you can stay calm in
a situation now I'm not going to lie this take takes work it's like to anchor that feeling
you might have to do that visualization that I just kind of walked you through a few times
to get back into that feeling you know but you can just label it this is how I feel strong
this is what helps me feel strong right that's I think that's one of the best ways to handle
that type of situation where you're in a pinch and you can't it's hard to do breath work it's
hard to do any type of you can't close your eyes and meditate you can't put that essential
roller on your wrist you this but you can you can put those fingers together and remember
that that's it's like your superpower so I'm going to age myself right now like how
many people remember the wonder twins it was like a superhero cartoon so this was a superhero
cartoon when I was little and they were like these twin kids I guess I don't know I can't
remember if they were kids or adults and it's a very vague memory but I just remember they
used to put their hands together and they would say wonder twins powers activate right and
then their superpowers would be activated and so this is this is just like setting that anchor
so that's your superpower anchor right this is when I'm powerful I'm strong and then like
after after you're done with that really frustrate conversation then that's when you're going to move
through the emotion that's when you're going to really feel it you're going to scream into the pillow
you're going to go for a run you're going to cry then whatever you need to do or you're going to
celebrate what a badass you were the way you handled that situation like the girl I saw on TikTok
handling those for lack of better words assholes at the company she worked for
trying to remember what the company was I can't remember what it was but I'm sure it was very viral
so I'm sure you probably heard of it a lot anyway so this is how you create your toolbox
and so you can create a page for every emotion and just add keep adding stuff through it and then when
you're in a state when you can't think straight like say you're just so sad and you're you're in
the sadness and you can't move through it then you're going to go to two box and you're going to say
these are all the things that always help me I'm just going to keep throwing these things at
myself and seeing how I can move through this how can I move through this it's a it's a it's a way
of identifying and taking note of all the things that are going to help you manage your emotions
and move through life by responding to things and not reacting so how good would that feel to
be able to do that how good would it feel to be able to master that I know that doing these practices I'm
not perfect I still react to things sometimes and I don't know if anybody ever 100% masters that
but these things help me move through it so much better so I hope that was helpful to you as I said
the links in the show know it's also the insiders group the take five method which was just a quick
free video that you can access you could follow the insiders group on patreon for free or you can
join us on the inside and then also if you need extra help creating this toolbox for yourself and
working through stress and anxiety and overwhelm and avoiding burnout right then I'll put a link
there on and you could talk to me about how you could work privately with me okay guys I
will see you next week don't forget to check out Friday's episode with Melanie Moore and learn more
about EFT tapping love you bye
