Tool 12 · Grounding & In-the-moment
Calm-Down Randomiser
"I can't decide what to do." Tap once. Get 3–5 small actions, ordered from the quickest to the longest. Star the ones that work.
Browse all 60 actions ▾
What this actually does
Most anxiety tools assume you already know what to do — breathe, ground, write, distract. The hard moment is often earlier: you know you should do something, but the choice itself feels paralysing. A randomiser removes the choice. That sounds trivial; it isn't. A surprisingly large amount of anxious inertia is decision friction, not action friction.
The ordering — quickest first, longest last — is the bit that matters. The first pick is the one you can do in 10 seconds (drink water, look out a window). The last pick is the one that takes 10 minutes (a walk, a shower, a call). Most of the time, doing the first one is enough. Sometimes you keep going down the list. Either way, you've started.
Who it's for
For people whose freeze shows up before the action. For people who are tired of "you should try breathing" advice. For people who want something they can hand to a panicking friend or child — they don't have to think, just press the button. For people whose "toolkit" feels too big and they want something that picks for them.
It's less useful if you know exactly what you need. If you already know "I need to breathe right now", go to the breathing tool directly. The randomiser is for the in-between moments.
Limitations
Sixty actions is a finite list. Some of them won't be available to you (you can't go for a walk in a meeting). The "Hide tried" filter helps, but if you roll and don't like any of the picks, roll again — that's a feature, not a failure. This tool also doesn't address the underlying cause of the freeze; if "I can't decide" is happening every day for weeks, that's worth a conversation with a clinician.
How to read your results
There is no score. The result is whether you did something. If you did one of the picks and your shoulders dropped, the randomiser worked. If you didn't, that's still useful — it tells you that even removing the choice wasn't enough, and you probably need a different tool entirely (usually one of the breathing tools, or a person).
Common questions
Why are the actions ordered quickest first? ▾
Because the point is to do the first one. Most of the time, a 10-second action is enough to break the freeze, and the longer actions are there for when it isn't. If you only have 10 seconds, do the first pick and stop reading. If you have 10 minutes, work your way down.
Where are my starred actions stored? ▾
In your browser's localStorage. They stay between visits on this device. They don't sync, don't back up, and don't leave your device. If you want them elsewhere, write them down — the starred set tends to be small and stable.
I rolled and got 5 things I can't do right now. ▾
Roll again, or use the category filter to limit the pool to actions that fit your situation. The filter is the more honest fix — if you're at work, "Environment" and "Social" picks will be a poor match.
Why isn't "take medication" on here? ▾
Medication is between you and your prescriber. We don't want a generic list on the internet quietly shaping treatment decisions. If you have a prescribed PRN, that's an action you already know how to take — it's not what this tool is for.
What are the common mistakes when using Calm-Down Randomiser?
Most common mistakes come down to four habits: entering 20 when the field expects 0.2 because the field is a percentage; leaving a field blank and accepting the default without checking what it stands for; changing one input and reading a result that was calculated before the change; and quoting the output as an exact figure when the page describes it as a reference estimate. Press calculate again after any edit, and treat the number as a reference point rather than a final answer.Advertisement