Free, evidence-based tools for women who carry a lot.
The Identity & Life Redesign Toolbox is designed to help you reconnect with yourself while continuing to hold the life you have built.
This is where the work begins.
Not the work of doing more. The work of understanding what is already happening — in your body, in your life, in the structure of how you carry responsibility.
Each tool in this toolbox is free, grounded in peer-reviewed research, and designed for women who are highly capable and quietly overwhelmed. Women who function well from the outside and question everything from the inside.
They are not quick fixes. They are starting points — tools that help you see your situation more clearly, so that change becomes possible from a place of understanding rather than exhaustion.
Use them in any order. Or follow the sequence below, which is designed to build on itself.
The Identity and Life Redesign Toolbox
TOOL 2 Map your invisible load Invisible Load Audit — 5 minutes
The invisible load is the cognitive and emotional labour that runs in the background of your life — the planning, anticipating, tracking, and managing that no one sees and no one counts. This audit maps where your mental labour is actually going, across nine domains, and shows you where you are carrying more than your share.
TOOL 3 Regulate your nervous system Regulation Techniques Guide
Evidence-informed techniques for shifting your nervous system state — drawn from Polyvagal Theory and somatic research. Organised by how you feel right now, with step-by-step instructions and the science behind each technique. Use them as daily anchors, or in moments when you need to shift.
TOOL 1 Understand your nervous system state Nervous System Self-Assessment — 5 minutes
When you have been carrying a lot for a long time, it shows up in your body before it shows up anywhere else. This assessment identifies your current autonomic state — whether you are running in activation, shutdown, or somewhere in between — and shows you which regulation tools are most effective for where you are right now.
TOOL 4 Who are you beyond the roles you carry? The Identity Compass — 8-12 minutes
A structured reflection across five dimensions of identity — Origin, Values, Vitality, What Has Gone Quiet, and Direction. Grounded in identity theory and designed for women who have spent years being essential to everyone around them. Your answers generate a personalised visual compass and a downloadable report with evidence-informed reflection on each dimension.
TOOL 5 Where have your boundaries gone? The Boundary Audit — 8-10 minutes
Boundaries don't disappear all at once — they erode slowly, across years of being needed. This audit maps where yours stand right now across five domains: Time, Energy, Emotional Availability, Voice, and Body & Rest. Each domain includes a research-informed reflection on what the pattern suggests — and what it makes possible to address. Includes a downloadable personalised report.
These tools are a beginning, not an endpoint.
If what you find here resonates — if you recognise yourself in the invisible load, in the nervous system that never fully settles, in the life that works but does not feel like yours — there is more available. I creates a series of self-coaching workbooks for women.
Join the newsletter for weekly insights on nervous system regulation, identity, and the structural redesign of a life that is carrying too much.
SCIENCE NOTE All tools in this toolbox are grounded in peer-reviewed research, including Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 1995, 2018), research on cognitive and emotional labour (Daminger, 2019; Dean et al., 2022), and studies on allostatic load and chronic stress in high-responsibility women. They are educational tools, not clinical assessments or medical treatment.
Kaat Helsloot
Coach & Educator
Contact
contact@kaathelsloot.com
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