What is a Resilience Bag

A resilience bag is a grounding, redirection, and overall “spot stress relief” tool that you can use anywhere, anytime, for any amount of time. The resilience bag is sensory-focused. This means it uses senses to engage the Amygdala to focus on people, places, things, and experiences that have a positive meaning for you personally. This approach offers the fastest means of grounding and soothing possible when life is full of stress and challenge.

Start Here:

1. Pick one of your senses to engage: sight, sound, touch, smell,
2. Collect a number of items that stimulate that sense: For example: Focus on touch and select a rabbit’s foot keychain, a bumpy/fuzzy blanket, a rough piece of paper, etc.
3. As you explore each item, take note of any positive sensations or memories come to mind; write your notes down like so:
   1. Keychain – youth, running in a field with friends, relaxing in my room listening to pop songs
   2. Bumpy/fuzzy blanket – safety, security, comfort, I’m ok
   3. Rough piece of paper – painting, creativity, strength, resilience
   4. Lemon rind – no positive memories
4. Next, write the most positive descriptive emotion in capital letters next to each item that had a positive association (leave out those that have a neutral or negative association):
   1. HAPPINESS: keychain – youth, running in a field, relaxing in my room
   2. COMFORT: Bumpy/fuzzy blanket – safety, security, comfort, I’m ok
   3. STRENGTH: Rough piece of paper – painting, creativity, strength, resilience
5. Put your notes AND a representative of all positively associated items in a small bag or purse you can keep with you throughout the
6. Repeat for each Organize your notes on a single page for ease of use when/if you are in a full panic.