When you’re navigating trauma recovery or working toward general wellness, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. With so many techniques, practices, and self-help strategies, how do you know what to focus on?
I want to help you simplify and organize your efforts by breaking them into four key pathways or "buckets." Each serves a unique purpose in your journey toward living more calmly, confidently, and connected.
Let’s dive into these four mental wellness buckets and explore how they can guide your efforts.
Bucket 1: Foundational Health Basics
Before anything else, we need to address the essentials—your baseline. Without these foundational practices, other efforts can (and probably will) fall short of their potential.
Sleep: Are you getting enough rest? Sleep is critical for both physical and emotional resilience.
Nutrition: The goal is “Good enough”—balanced meals with enough nutrients to sustain you. Avoid living off junk food or soda, but don’t aim for perfection.
Hydration: Drink water.
Movement: You don’t need an intense fitness regimen, but regular movement—walking, stretching, or light exercise—can do wonders.
These basics aren’t glamorous, but they are non-negotiable. If your foundation is shaky, other recovery efforts won’t be as effective.
Pathway 2: Coping Mechanisms
Coping is where many people begin their journey, often when life feels unbearable. Coping tools are strategies to reduce immediate distress, such as anxiety, depression, or anger.
Coping examples:
Counting backward when anxious.
Fidget tools for grounding.
"Hacks" like cold showers or deep breathing exercises.
While coping has value, it’s important to recognize its limitations. While these techniques can temporarily reduce distress, they don’t address the root cause of emotions or build long-term healing. Coping is a stepping stone, not the destination.
Bucket 3: Practicing Safety
Safety is the cornerstone of genuine healing. It’s about creating and strengthening a sense of calm, connection, and presence in your daily life.
Ask yourself:
What makes me feel safe? Is it a warm cup of tea, the sound of rain, or the feel of your pet’s fur?
How do I connect with myself? Practice self-compassion and embrace your experiences, even uncomfortable ones.
How do I connect with others and my environment? Savor small moments, like hugging a loved one or noticing the smell of fresh coffee.
Practicing safety builds up your ventral vagal pathways for calm and connection. Over time, this reduces the need for constant coping and makes life more manageable.
Bucket 4: Feeling and Resolving Stuck Defensive States
The final mental wellness bucket involves addressing the root causes of your stuck defensive state—flight, fight, shutdown, or freeze. This requires deep inner work and builds on the stability created by Buckets 1 and 3.
Here’s how it works:
Allow yourself to feel emotions like fear, anger, or numbness without judgment.
Practice “pendulation”—touching on difficult feelings briefly, then returning to a sense of safety (Bucket 3).
Gradually increase your capacity to face challenging emotions while staying grounded.
This Bucket is the most transformative. It helps you release stuck emotional states, deepen your connections with yourself and others, and move closer to emotional freedom.
Putting Together the Mental Wellness Buckets
Each Bucket serves a distinct purpose, but they work together in a cycle of healing and growth:
Start with the basics: Build your foundation with sleep, food, water, and movement.
Use coping tools when needed: They help you manage overwhelming moments.
Practice safety daily: Build a sense of calm and connection in micro-moments.
Engage with stuck emotions: When ready, explore your deeper feelings.
Your homework: Take stock of your current efforts. Which pathway do they fall into? What could you add or strengthen? For example:
Drinking water → Pathway 1.
Using a fidget toy → Pathway 2.
Hugging a loved one → Pathway 3.
Journaling about a difficult memory → Pathway 4.
Free Resource: the Four Wellness Buckets
To help you on this journey, I’ve created a one-page guide summarizing these pathways.
There are many more resources and a free course in the members center.
Remember, recovery is a process. Small, consistent efforts can create meaningful change.
Recommended blogs:
Recommended courses:
Building Safety Anchors: Learn to identify, practice, and strengthen your safety state. BSA focuses entirely on Bucket 2 and prepares you for Bucket 3.
Unstucking Defensive States: Balance safety and defense to relieve your stuck defensive state. You will learn and practice essential skills like pendulation, titration, and Justin's A->W->E Method.
Author Bio:
Justin Sunseri is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Coach who specializes in trauma relief. He hosts the Stuck Not Broken podcast, is the author of Stuck Not Broken: Book 1, and is a Polyvagal Institute's Editorial Board member. He specializes in treating trauma and helping individuals get "unstuck" from their defensive states.