Guide

44 psychology tools: How to help yourself with anger, fear and sadness

22.10.2025

Translation: machine translated

Nobody wants them, everyone has them: negative emotions. This guide provides you with 44 exercises to help you overcome anger, fear and sadness and transform them into positive energy.

Want a little break? Then why not try tool #9 «Alternate breathing». Alternate between holding one nostril closed with a finger of your dominant hand and breathing in and out through the other nostril.

1. place your index finger and middle finger between your eyebrows and use your thumb and ring finger to alternately hold your nostrils closed. 2. exhale completely and close your right nostril with your thumb. Breathe through your left nostril. 3. now close your left nostril with your ring finger. Breathe out through your right nostril. 4. breathe in through your right nostril, then close your right nostril with your thumb and breathe out through your left nostril. 5 Repeat the alternate breathing until you feel calm. 6. end the exercise with an exhalation.

Have you tried it? And are you already feeling better? Then the «44 psychology tools for all emotional states» may well have even more helpful tools for you.

Guidebooks

44 Psychologie-Tools für alle Gefühlslagen

German, Vanessa Graf, 2023

Bern psychologist and emotion expert Vanessa Graf has collected 44 such exercises from therapeutic practice in her book. From short, one- to two-minute focus exercises to half-hour «tools» for relaxation, you will find a whole range of ways to channel your emotional world into more pleasant channels.

Each tool is explained in detail and you can also find out which feelings the exercises are best suited to.
Source: Anna Sandner

The book is clearly organised, the exercises are numbered and always structured according to the same pattern: You will find out in which emotional state the respective tools are best suited, how much time you should plan for them, which type of strategy is used (such as reaction control through breathing or cognitive reassessment through reflection), whether the tasks have a short or long-term effect and which body level you use for them. The guide is divided into five sections dedicated to the three big feelings that we all prefer to avoid: Anger, Fear and Grief.

Don't suppress unpleasant feelings, but learn to deal with them appropriately.

Vanessa Graf

Graf opens up ways of admitting these «negative» feelings and growing from them at the same time. She explains the background and allows her readers to immerse themselves in the world of emotions in an easily understandable and technically sound way. She clarifies questions such as «Why do we have (negative) feelings at all?», «What is the difference between feelings, emotions and mood?» and «What happens in the brain during anxiety?». Much of it is not new and yet she manages to gently guide her readers through the world of emotions and at the same time shed light on the confusing world of emotions with understandable explanations of the psychological background.

Header image: Ketut Subiyanto

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Anna Sandner

Senior Editor

Anna.Sandner@galaxus.de

Science editor and biologist. I love animals and am fascinated by plants, their abilities and everything you can do with them. That's why my favourite place is always the outdoors - somewhere in nature, preferably in my wild garden.

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