Build a kit for when things get loud
Find your direction, name things you already own, and get back a contents list for the lid.
The short version
- A kit is a fixed set of physical objects, picked while you are calm, kept somewhere you can reach without looking for it. The point is removing the need to choose anything at a moment when choosing is expensive.
- What belongs in it varies enormously between people, and in opposite directions. This tool asks two questions to find whether your kit should turn input down or turn it up, then builds the list around that.
- It saves nothing and returns nothing about you. You name things you already own; it hands them back as a labelled contents list to write on the lid.
Most advice about hard moments assumes you will remember it during one. The hour when you most need a plan is the hour when reading, deciding and searching all cost more than usual. A kit moves the work earlier: you decide once, on an ordinary Tuesday, and then the decision is already made. This tool does the deciding with you and hands back a list you can tape to the lid.
Before you begin
Do this while you are calm, not during a loud moment. Use things you already own, do not buy anything yet. Nothing you type is saved.
Questions
Step 1 of 8
Contents for the lid
Write this on the lid
On a bad day, opening a box and finding an unlabelled jumble is one more decision. Copy the list below and put it where the kit lives. This page keeps nothing.
Two things to do this week
Use two items from this list on an ordinary evening, to find out whether they are actually pleasant. An untested kit is a guess, and one rule holds for all of it: nothing in a kit should hurt. Everything in it should be something you could use for an hour and be fine.
Then make a second, smaller copy, a couple of items in a bag you carry. Two copies beats one good one: a full kit at home and a minimal one in your bag covers far more of the week than a perfect box you are never near.
Worth knowing. Dunn's model of sensory processing quadrants describes people differing both in threshold (how much input registers) and in whether they seek input out or move away from it. That is the basis for the two directions this tool asks about, and it is why one list cannot serve everyone. The evidence for the model is mixed: the pattern is widely observed and the measures are debated. The rest of this tool (what to put in a box, where to keep it) is practical craft rather than a research finding, and is offered as something many people find useful.
Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere. What you type exists only while this page is open.
Written for Thought Club as general guidance, not medical advice. Free to read, print, and share.