Calm Atlas
Anxiety Toolkit

Category · Daily Regulation

Six daily-regulation instruments.

Anxiety scales with the day's accumulated load — decisions, social contact, sensory input, time pressure. These six tools don't change your life; they change the shape of a day. Worry time moves worry out of the day. Energy budgets reveal what to drop. Micro-recovery is the smallest unit of regulation that works.

On this page
  1. Worry Time Scheduler
  2. Energy Budget Tracker
  3. Social Battery Estimator
  4. Micro-Recovery Builder
  5. Distress Tolerance Picker (DBT)
  6. Coping Skills Inventory
Tool 01 · Borkovec worry postponement

Worry Time Scheduler

Borkovec's protocol in two parts. First, a 20-minute daily "worry window" — worries outside it get parked (written down + delayed) until the window. Second, an accountability widget that tracks how many times you successfully postponed. The data is the intervention.

Park a worry (any time)
Parking lot
    Your week
    Worries parked
    0
    Resolved in window
    0
    Avg per day
    0
    Tool 02 · For decision fatigue

    Energy Budget Tracker

    A daily ledger where you allocate your "spoons". The tool prompts you to budget before spending, scores the day for deficit, and flags the categories you consistently overspend on. Most energy-budget advice focuses on recovery; this focuses on allocation, which is where the anxiety-reducing decisions live.

    Allocate categories (sum ≤ starting energy)
    Tool 03 · For introverts & sensory-sensitive people

    Social Battery Estimator

    Enter your planned social contact for the next 48 hours, with each event tagged by intensity. The tool calculates expected drain against your self-reported baseline and shows projected battery levels by hour. When the projection drops below 20%, it suggests a recovery buffer.

    Plan your day
    Tool 04 · Between tasks

    Micro-Recovery Builder

    Build a personalised rotation of 1-minute recovery moves from a 24-action library. Filter by setting (alone / public), need (calm / focus / energy), and props (none / chair / wall). The output is a small rotation you can cycle through the day — micro-doses of regulation, not hour-long sessions.

    Tool 05 · DBT · for acute crisis

    Distress Tolerance Picker

    Marsha Linehan's DBT skills: TIPP (temperature, intense exercise, paced breath, progressive relax), IMPROVE (imagery, meaning, prayer, relaxation, one thing at a time, vacation, encouragement), and ACCEPTS (activities, contributing, comparisons, emotions, pushing away, thoughts, sensations). Tell the tool your state and time window; it picks the right skill.

    Tool 06 · Personal card

    Coping Skills Inventory

    A take-home worksheet: rate each of 30 strategies by how easy it is for you and how helpful it has been. The tool assembles your top 5–7 strategies into a printable "personal coping card" sorted by context (alone, public, acute). Print it, photograph it, stick it on the fridge.

    Where to go next: if the daily tools help but you want longer-term patterns, the Thought Record Builder is a great weekly companion. For somatic regulation between tasks, the Physiological Sigh is the smallest dose.

    Daily-tool questions

    Will these change my personality? +

    No — they're meant to give the personality you have more room. A reactive nervous system narrows your choices; regulation widens them. The "you" doing the choosing doesn't change.

    How long until I see change? +

    Worry time and micro-recovery are noticeable within 1–2 weeks. Energy budgets and social-battery planning take 4–6 weeks to feel automatic. Coping cards are useful from day one if you actually print them.

    My anxiety is bigger than these tools. +

    Then these tools are not the right level of care. Please consider therapy. Calm Atlas is a self-help layer, not a clinical service. If you're not sure where to start, see your GP or a community mental-health team.