I've been feeling a lot of stress and anxiety lately (some of which I mentioned in a previous post entitled "Worried"). My T and I talked about how I needed to take care of myself when I feel anxious and, I'll admit, I'm bad at it. I tend to shut down when I'm anxious. I know that I need to run errands, clean, pay bills, and do things but instead of maybe breaking things down into doable bits I shut down and don't do anything, thus making anxiety and stress worse. And I don't self-soothe effectively. I sometimes make myself some tea which helps but a lot of the time I will just sit and watch TV for distraction, or take a nap because I'm bored and stressed. But a "nap" should only be a half hour to 45 minutes but for me tends to be a few hours long which my T explained isn't good for my overall sleep patterns, contributing to stress even more.

Self-soothing is an important skill for us to have, so I'm wondering what you guys do to self-soothe and how effective it is for you?