Self-Care Resources
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Be Prepared:
Prepare for mental health challenges in advance by answering the questions in the graphic to the right.
Resources are available below for maintaining your mental well-being. Remember, you can always talk to a Wellness Center counselor for further advice.
Self-Care Apps:
- Insight Timer — "Guided meditations, sleep music tracks and talks led by the top meditation and mindfulness experts, neuroscientists, psychologists and teachers from Stanford, Harvard, the University of Oxford and more."
- Calm — "Manage stress, balance moods, sleep better and refocus your attention. Guided meditation, Sleep Stories, soundscapes, breathwork and stretching exercises fill our extensive library."
- I Am — "Empower yourself by verbally affirming your dreams and ambitions. Choose from many daily intentions and set reminders to be delivered throughout the day."
- Headspace — "Headspace offers guided meditations, courses, and mindfulness exercises on subjects like stress, general anxiety, worry, building resilience, and more topics for any moment."
- Daylio — Daily mood tracker and micro-journal
- Forest: Focus for Productivity — Stay focused by planting trees! The longer you stay off your phone, the more your trees grow.
- 5 Minute Journal — "The Five Minute Journal uses proven principles of positive psychology to make you happier in 5 minutes a day with the guided gratitude journaling format"
- Virtual Hope Box — "The Virtual Hope Box (VHB) is a smartphone application designed for use by patients and their behavioral health providers as an accessory to treatment. The VHB contains simple tools to help patients with coping, relaxation, distraction, and positive thinking."
- Sleep Cycle: Sleep Tracker — "Relax, sleep better and wake up feeling rested with Sleep Cycle, the smart alarm clock. Track sleep from bedtime to morning, and get detailed analysis with the app that makes waking up in the morning just that bit easier."
- Breathe2Relax — "Breathe2Relax is a portable stress management tool which provides detailed information on the effects of stress on the body and instructions and practice exercises to help users learn the stress management skill called diaphragmatic breathing."
Recommended Books and Information:
- Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown — "How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Cara Page, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs."
- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski PhD — "This groundbreaking book explains why women experience burnout differently than men—and provides a simple, science-based plan to help women minimize stress, manage emotions, and live a more joyful life."
- "The Compassion Guide: Exploring the Art and Science of Compassion" — "Dive into the modern teachings and scientific findings by Dr. Kristin Neff, Dr. Chris Peterson, and Dr. Heidi Wayment — just to name a few. Learn how to activate self-compassion, develop a “quiet ego,” and practice a loving-kindness meditation to lead a compassion-centered life."
- "A Plan for Using Positive Psychology to Build Resilience and Create Change" by Michael Steger, PhD. — "This plan is all about energizing your life, or more specifically, about practicing a set of positive psychology tools that you can adapt and apply over time to cultivate a life that is aligned with what is most important to you. It can’t replace therapy or intensive behavioral work, but it has a track record of being an effective playbook for the folks I’ve worked with, and it might have the same benefit for you."
Other Suggested Self-Care:
- Ambience Rooms on YouTube — Ambience rooms provide relaxing sounds and visuals while you do homework, relax, or sleep.
- ASMR — Short for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, ASMR is a powerful tingling, relaxing sensation typically brought about by pleasurable auditory stimulation. Many ASMR videos and content are available on YouTube and Spotify.
- Sound Bowls — Enhances meditation and promotes relaxation through spiritually resonant sounds. YouTube video for sound bowls.
- Turning the phone off! Turning your phone off can be an excellent way to reduce stress.
