Redirecting attention from the spiral inside your head to the immediate evidence of your senses. Simple, needs no equipment, and works when distress has already arrived.

A gentle, repeatable way to build a calm interior place you can return to when distress takes hold — used in therapy, and simple enough to practise on your own.

You are not one voice but many. A way of getting on better terms with the anxious, critical, frightened parts of yourself — and the calm centre beneath them.

A body-first way to settle — through sensation, posture and movement rather than thinking your way to calm. Built on the idea that the mind tends to follow the body.

A small, memorable tool for putting a gap between a trigger and your reaction — Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed — so a reflex becomes a choice.

Revisiting a distressing image or recurring nightmare and gently reshaping how it plays out. One of the better-evidenced therapy tools, best worked through with support.

Keeping a written record of the small daily moments that contradict a harsh belief about yourself, until they build into evidence the belief can no longer wave away.

Not all in your head – the placebo effect is one of medicine’s most measured findings. What does the work is the ritual of care around a treatment, not the pill itself.