F R N D

A n x i e t y F i r s t A i d K i t

W H A T I S F r n d

This project presents a set of products designed to assist individuals in moments of crisis, offering a tangible way to shift focus from their minds to their bodies. Serving as a temporary solution for those seeking professional help, these tools provide quick interventions.

M y s t o r y

For most of my life, I’ve lived with chronic anxiety, a struggle shared by many in my family. This pervasive fear started innocently but grew into an unmanageable force that interfered with my social relationships, physical health, and skewed my perception of the world. Isolation and loneliness became my constant companions, as I feared burdening those who cared about me. My lack of community reinforced the negative voices of my inner critic, making it easier to give up.

I am forever grateful for my partner who encouraged me to contact a helpline. After a year and a half of therapy and medication, I understand the value of community now more than ever.

My experiences with anxiety and my journey to recovery have inspired me to create an Anxiety First Aid Kit. This project is dedicated to everyone suffering from anxiety in silence, with the hope that it will not only help manage anxiety but also build a community of interdependence and support.

-Meghana

s i d e e f f e c t s o f A n x i e t y

B O D Y

  • Irregular heartbeat

  • Sweating or hot flushes

  • Sleep problems

  • Grinding your teeth

  • Nausea (feeling sick)

  • Changes in your sex drive

  • Caving panic attacks

  • Headaches, backache or other aches and pains

  • A churning feeling in your stomach

  • Feeling light-headed or dizzy

  • Pins and needles

  • Feeling restless or unable to sit still

  • Faster breathing

I n t e r v i e w s

P r o j e c t s t a t e m e n t

In today's fast-paced and unforgiving world, success and money often overshadow moments of joy and self-care, which are mistakenly viewed as indulgences. This neglect, especially harmful to those with mental health issues, leads to isolation and physical side effects like IBS, eating disorders, and heart palpitations. Therapy and medication offer relief, but the journey to finding appropriate help can be long and demotivating. The gap between seeking help and receiving it is particularly challenging, as individuals must summon the courage to share their suppressed emotions and find the right therapist.

This project addresses this gap by providing temporary relief through tools that support community building and grounding exercises. These tools encourage individuals to prioritize self-care and reflection, offering essential support during the interim period before professional help is accessible.

E a r l y i t e r a t i o n s

  • Feelings wheel : When users are feeling uneasy, using the feelings wheel to place the emotion and word dump

  • thought in their head.

  • Letter of Gratitude : Things that theyre looking forward to and are currently greatful for, as well as things that make them happy.

  • Theory a vs Theory B : Rephrasing a nervous situation in a way that could be positive.

  • Self preservation vs Self indulgence : A pass to “indulge” in self care. Do one thing for themselves. Describe how the activity made them feel

After developing a comprehensive design brief, the next step involved conducting quantitative research through interviews. The main goals of this survey were to understand people's current anxiety relief routines, explore their coping mechanisms, identify factors that alleviate or exacerbate anxiety, and determine which activities are most beneficial.

s p e c i a l i s t

C o - r e g u l a t i o n

Emotion regulation, which plays a major role in anxiety, is understood as the processes or activities by which individuals can track, evaluate, and influence the nature, course, and expression of emotions Most individuals try to self regulate in these moments of crisis and don’t realize that we can levarage other forms of regulation, Like other- regulation and co-regulation

T a k e a w a y s

  • Self-regulation is the ability to monitor and manage your “arousal state” or energy level. More specifically, it means being aware of your energy level (and basic emotions) that result from either external experiences and/or your internal thoughts. The next step is choosing strategies to adjust your energy level for the most effective response.

  • Other-regulation is similar to the relationship a child and mother may have, where they are completely dpendent on the other individual to regulate

  • Co-regulation is where we use a third person as a source of energy for regulating, and feed off of their body language and responses to manage and tune our own. 

Most people feel the greatest comfort and safety in the presence of others, whether on the phone or sitting nearby. Distraction, such as watching TV or cleaning, is a common way to manage anxiety. Additionally, grounding oneself through physical sensations—like exercise, or consuming something cold or spicy—proved to be effective. These experiences foster connection, provide distraction, and encourage grounding.

Through extensive research, I discovered that a significant step toward alleviating anxiety involves halting the act of "time traveling" and focusing on the present moment. By reconnecting to our breath and sensory experiences, we can calm ourselves and consider appropriate actions. However, individuals experiencing panic attacks or anxiety often find themselves in a state of hyperarousal, making self-regulation challenging.

In an interview with Rachel Seigfried, a general psychologist, she provided an insightful quote that guided the later stages of this project: “When you’re late and frantically looking for your keys, it’s almost always the person standing next to you who’ll spot it for you.” This analogy highlights the difficulty of self-regulation during heightened stress.

Intrigued by the concept of co-regulation, I explored how it can aid emotional regulation when self-regulation is overwhelming. Are there a set of products, used in conjunction with those around us, that can help regulate and ground the body, facilitating a transition into mindfulness?

  • Filtering

  • Polarized thinking 

  • Overgeneralization

  • Jumping to conclusions

  • Personalization

  • Catastrophizing

  • Control fallacies

  • Fallacy of fairness

  • Blaming

  • “Shoulds”

  • Emotional reasoning

  • Fallacy of change

  • Global labeling 

  • Always being right

M I N D

I d e a t i o n

First explored a wide variety of fidget toys, before honing in on a more concrete design direction. Fidget toys give these movements an out- let, which can help calm a person’s nerves, relieve stress and serve as a distraction in an overstimulating environment. The toy pulls the user away from any particular stressful thought or situation and provides a temporary form of relief and area of focus.

U S E R T E S T I N G

I n C o n t e x t P r o d u c t s h o t s

  • The wand is a breathing tool that focuses on co-regulation. ​It creates a way to feel supported and connected, as your partner syncs their body movement and breathing to your​s. Engages both participants in a shared dependent physical activity where they become atuned to respond to each others movements

O n b o a r d i n g e x p e r i e n c e

The results of the session we’re overwhelmingly positive. It confirmed most of my hypothesis around the needs of anxious individuals, as well as confirming the findings around emotional regulation and community building. Recieved a lot of helpful feedback around design and material requirements.

  • The pod is a self regulation tool that focuses on grounding exercises. ​The form of the object creates pressure on your palm, in a similar way that holding someones hand would ​. In the same way that we create emotional attachments to a security blanket, creating one with a grounding tool, trains our mind to feel calm when interacting with it . The pod creates an explicit safe space for self soothing and reflection.

With the first Aid Kit, it became clear very fast that there needed to be an onboarding experience to familiarize users to the tools, so that in periods of crisis, they are quick to reach objects.

This meant finding a way to explain and illustrate their versitality as well as their ability for customization. All while keeping mind that it can’t be too long or confusing.

  • The Ring is an other-regulation visualization tool that focuses on connecting through sharing ​There is a common feeling that if we share our problems we become a burden on the people around us ​and so This tool is a way to visually engage with each other making talking an option and not a requirement to connect and ​share physical space, allowing the action and reaction of the other, cooperative rhythmic motion to communicate empathy .