Each of these tools takes an intervention from a larger body of work on human psychology, sets out how it actually works, and puts it into a form you can use on your own. They are free to download and yours to keep.
How the Tools Work
Every tool comes in three forms, and each does a different job.
Practice Guide
The method in full, with the reasoning behind it and how to rehearse it. Start here.
Card
A single page for printing. For a desk, a wall, or the back of a notebook.
Screen Card
The same summary sized for a phone. Save it to your photos so it is there without a signal.
Learn Them Before You Need Them
This is the instruction most easily skipped, and it matters more than any other. A method you meet for the first time in the middle of a difficult moment is a method that will not work. Distress sharply reduces your capacity to take in anything new, which is exactly why the practice happens beforehand, while you are calm, until the sequence runs without your having to think about it.
What a Tool Can and Cannot Do
A tool is something to work with yourself, and it works best where you have enough room to think. Where things have gone past the point where you can work with them alone, that is not a failure of the tool or of you. It is a signal that what is needed is greater support rather than a document.
The Tools
Practice Guide
The Anxiety Gates
Five questions, asked in a fixed order, that show you what your anxiety is pointing at and what to do about it.
Anxiety is not a fault in the system. It is an alert, and it is only useful if you can read it. The gates work through the alert methodically, testing one possibility at a time, until either the anxiety settles or it becomes clear what has to change. The guide also covers how to rehearse the sequence while you are calm, and the point at which the questions stop being usable.
Use it when something matters and you are not sure you are ready for it.
Practice Guide
A Personal Anxiety and Panic Strategy
Deliberate physical tension and structured breathing, used together in a short repeating cycle.
Anxiety floods your body with energy meant for fighting or fleeing, and when you do neither, that energy has nowhere to go. This strategy gives it somewhere. The guide covers both components, how to build toward the full breathing pattern from whatever you can currently manage, and how to use the technique without anyone around you noticing.
Use it when anxiety is already physical and you need it to come back down.
New tools are added as the underlying work develops. If you would like to discuss working together, you can make contact here.