Mental Health Resource Library
The Prep For Prosperity Garden
Tools to support you between our sessions.
Here is a carefully curated collection of resources to support the work that we do together and to provide you with tools that extend beyond our sessions.
Explore the Garden
Something for the moment you are in.
Start with the breathing and grounding practices, which are open to everyone. The other sections are being planted now and will fill in as they are ready.
- Listen
Guided meditations
Short recorded meditations to settle your body and give your mind somewhere quieter to rest.Coming soon - Listen
Bilateral music
Music that moves gently between your left and right ear — the same principle used in EMDR.Coming soon - Listen
Calming music
Slow, steady music chosen to help your nervous system shift down a gear.Coming soon - Practice
Breathing exercises
Simple patterns that slow your breath, and with it your body.Try a free practice - Practice
Grounding & emotional regulation
Ways to come back to the present when you have drifted, and worksheets for noticing what helps.Try a free practice - Practice
Journaling prompts
Prompts to help you put words to what is going on, between one session and the next.Coming soon - Learn
Recommended books
Books I recommend to clients, each with a line on why it is worth your time.Coming soon - Learn
Educational videos
Short videos that explain what is happening in your brain and body, in plain language.Coming soon - Support
Grief resources
Reading, support groups and practical help for the months after a loss.Coming soon - Support
Caregiver resources
Support for people caring for someone else, so you can keep going without running yourself down.Coming soon Coming soon · for clients Welcome to the Full Garden
A part of the Garden only my clients can open: recordings, worksheets, reading lists and videos made for the work we do together. It is being planted now.
You are signed in, so every section is open to you. Anything marked for clients now plays, opens or downloads.
Free to everyone
Four ways to steady yourself, right now.
Small, unglamorous practices that work mostly because they are repeatable. Use them any time during the week.
These are regulation and steadying tools, not trauma processing. Working through a traumatic memory alone can leave you activated with no way to close it down — that work belongs in session, with someone tracking you. If a practice makes things worse rather than steadier, stop and let me know.
5–4–3–2–1 grounding
When you have gone somewhere else and need to come back
- Name five things you can see, out loud if you can.
- Four things you can physically feel — chair, floor, fabric, air.
- Three things you can hear.
- Two things you can smell.
- One thing you can taste.
It works because it makes your senses do the talking. The point is not to feel calm; it is to be here.
Longer exhale
When your body is running faster than the situation warrants
- Breathe in through your nose for a count of four.
- Let the breath out slowly, for a count of six or more.
- Keep the exhale longer than the inhale. That ratio is the active ingredient.
- Six to ten rounds is usually enough to feel the shift.
The exhale is the part that recruits the parasympathetic system. Nothing about it needs to look impressive.
The butterfly hug
When you need bilateral steadying and you are on your own
- Cross your arms over your chest, hands resting near your collarbones.
- Tap slowly and alternately — left, right, left, right.
- Keep the pace slow, roughly one tap per second.
- Let your attention rest on something neutral rather than on the distress.
A self-administered version of the bilateral stimulation used in EMDR. Use it for soothing, not for processing a memory on your own.
Containment
When something has surfaced and this is not the moment for it
- Picture a container — a box, a vault, anything sealable. Yours, and sturdy.
- Put the material inside it. Not to get rid of it: to hold it until session.
- Close it deliberately. Notice that you are the one closing it.
- Bring your attention back to the room: feet, seat, sound, light.
Containment is a setting-aside, not a suppression. It works because you know when you are coming back for it.
Beyond this practice
Support that is available to anyone, right now.
Free, and not dependent on being my client — or anyone's.
- 988 Suicide & Crisis LifelineFree, confidential, 24/7 support anywhere in the United States. Call or text 988.
- Crisis Text LineText HOME to 741741 to reach a trained crisis counselor by text message.
- NYC 988New York City's free, confidential crisis line for mental health and substance use — talk, text or chat, 24/7.
- NAMI New York CityPeer support groups, family programs and free education for people affected by mental illness.
Tools help. They are not the same as being accompanied.
If you have been managing on your own for a while and it is not shifting, that is information rather than failure. One free phone call is a reasonable next step.