How to instantly relax yourself?

Hi guys,

Some of you might know this, others not... but I'm a tutor for kids with special needs... and I work often with kids with anger issues. In todays post, I'll share some easy DIY ways to calm yourself down that I do with my kids for work too. Some tips are tips that I use myself as well.

As you might know from previous posts, stress has always been something bad for me. I was never able to cope with stress well and I was literally making myself ill, from being so stressed out. More info about all of this in previous posts...

Now, let's focus a bit on why I'm writing this post. Getting angry really fast or getting stressed out fast is actually the same for your body. It affects your body in the same way. You focus a lot on the emotion/feeling itself and you lose control over what's going on in your body. Stress takes over and your body created a lot of adrenaline. When you get angry, this is waht happens in your body. When you get anxious or stressed out, this also happens to your body... so we might want to try out some things that can help you to deal with this. To me, mental health is super important and I want to help as much people with that as possible.

These tips are DIY's that you can try out for yourself. Some might work, while others might not help you. For calming yourself down with tools, I always have one rule: Do not hurt yourself, someone else or break things that have value. So if these tips don't work for yourself but you have other ways to calm yourself down, keep these rules in mind.

So straight onto the tips: I'll just sum them up for you in points:

- Paper: tear apart paper, draw on paper really fast and hard (it's the best way to do this with chalk or wasco's), fold paper, make paper balls, etc.

- Punch to something that you can use: a punching bag, a pillow, just punch around in the air.

If you can't punch to someting, you can always try to use someting to shake. This often helps too! Like a botte of water, a bottle of water filled with sand,...

- About fidgets then: play with a fidget spinner, a tangle, a small string or shoelace, a pop it etc. In 2021 there are so many tools that already exist for this.

- Throwing: you can throw a ball to the wall, you can throw a ball into a basket, you can throw with paper balls,... all things that are not hurting anyone else or someone elses stuff basically!

- Scream(!!) and if you're in a calm area where you can not scream, scream into a pillow or scream into your fist (maybe go to the restroom for this).

- Sing: What better way to distract yourself and focus on something fun, than to sing, right? Or: dance :D.

- Bite: There are many chewing toys currently on the market that you can buy, specifically designed for kids or adults to chew on. It helps with focusing and it helps with calming yourself down. You can also buy a tool to put onto your pen and to chew on that.

- Jump or stamp with your feet on the floor.

- Do a breathing excercise: meditation, mindfulness, stretch,... count to 10,...

-Sports: run, take a bikeride, take a walk,... whatever excercise might help for you.

- Journal: write down what's making you mad/anxious and what you'd like to change about it. It's also handy to keep your notes, so that you can learn from them and maybe read them again afterwards. You might see how much you've grown.

- Etc!

And always, after all of this: know that your body might be a little tired. Relax, take a breath and think about helpfull thoughts!

X Steph