A hope box is a personal collection of physical items that bring comfort, inspiration, and hope. Discover what a hope box is and how it can benefit your mental health and well-being.
What is a Hope Box?
A hope box, also called a coping box or an anxiety kit, is a physical box that contains elements that can bring you comfort. You can also have items to keep you distracted, or items to ground you.
Creating your anxiety kit is not only helpful to help you cope in a future occasion. Designing your anxiety kit is also a practical exercise: you will be promoting self-care, and it will force you to think of healthy coping skills you can implement in the future.
It is also important to note that creating an anxiety kit is not a replacement for a therapist or treatment.
Create Your Hope Box
Find a box to put your things in, or a container. Note that it doesn’t necessarily need to be a box, and it can instead be a bag, or a folder, whatever works for you.
If you want, you can also decorate or personalize the box or the container, but it is not a mandatory step.
Later, think about what you want to put in your box.
- A bottle of water, to stay hydrated. Sometimes when drinking water becomes hard having a mineral water bottle can motivate you to drink more water.
- A bar of high quality chocolate, snack bars
- Some lavender, or some essential oils
- An incredible soft blanket
- Coloring books and pens, a mandala coloring book
- Letters of encouragement
- Some cute animal pictures
- A comfortable book
- Noise cancelling headphones
- A clean fluffy sweater
- Some fun skin care, such as facemasks, special lotion
- A stress ball
- A bathrobe
- A scalp massager
- Positive reminders
- A book of jokes
- A weighted blanket
- Stuffed animal
- Tea bags (good quality)
- A gift card (to treat yourself for something later on)
- Chewing gum
- Sudokus or crosswords to distract you
- Gatorade, crackers for when you are feeling nauseous
The most important thing about your hope box is that it contains elements that resonate with you. A hope box will vary enormously from person to person.
Keep it someone accessible at home. For example, you can keep it near your bedside table. You can also create a small portable version that you can bring with you on a bag or a pouch.
If you have snacks and water, make sure to replace them.
Your hope box doesn’t have to be static. Update it with new items when you feel like it is necessary. Your coping tools will be changing with time, it is normal and healthy.
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