At the very least, anxiety is uncomfortable. But it can also be scary and overwhelming.
Relationships and work can become exhausting because of worrisome thoughts and a body that’s often tense and on edge. Anxiety is the most common emotional struggle we face today. About 40 million American adults, which is roughly 18% of the population, have an anxiety disorder.
And it’s no surprise with a culture that wants to move at impossible speeds and pile on
expectations. Whether you’re a mom, husband, employee, CEO, or high school student, the expectations from family, your job, your social life, places you volunteer, your children’s schools are basically insurmountable for anyone. Add to that, the personal struggles we each face--our insecurities, losses, wounds--and it’s no wonder that so many of us struggle with anxiety. The good news is, there are some simple and effective tools for easing anxiety.
#1 Mindfulness- We can be quick to want to push our feelings down or distract ourselves from how we feel. Mindfulness takes another approach that allows us to be curious about how we feel. We can do this without judging ourselves for having these feelings and because we’re not judging ourselves, we can also ask questions without judgment. “How does my body feel right now?” “What do I notice about my body when I feel anxious?” “What’s been on my mind today?” “Did an I have an uncomfortable encounter or was I treated badly by someone who may not be safe for me?” How your body feels when anxious is a helpful warning system telling you something is not right. Step out of a place of judgment over how you feel and move to a place of noticing and being curious about how you feel.
#2 Safety Statement-Particularly when anxiety is becoming intense, maybe even turning to panic, a safety statement can be a quick and easy phrase to recall when worry feels overwhelming. It can be short and easy, something like, “This feeling cannot hurt me.” Or “This feeling will go away in a few minutes, just breath.” Or simply, “I am safe.”
#3 Grounding-Again, if we are talking about overwhelming feelings of anxiety, something happens in our brain called flooding. An emotionally flooded brain takes at least 20 minutes to feel relief. In these moments it can be hard to think clearly because the emotional flooding makes it hard to access the prefrontal cortex--or thinking part of our brain. Grounding is a good distraction from the emotion as we wait for the relief. It’s an easy one to remember if we ground based on our senses. In those moments of anxiety notice your environment and the things that you can see, hear, taste, smell and touch. In your car, you might hear the hum of cars driving around you, smell the leather of your seats, feel the firmness of the sterling wheel, and see the skyline ahead of you. Use your senses to distract from the intensity of the moment.
#4 Deep Breathing- This sounds like a cliché therapist thing to say, but there’s more going on here than just breathing. When we take deep breaths, we engage what’s called our parasympathetic nervous system. This is the system in our body that tells us to rest and digest. It is the system opposite of the sympathetic nervous system, which prepares our body for fight or flight when we sense danger. There are a variety of breathing exercises, but basically you are going to breath in for a few counts, hold it, and then breath out for a few counts. Trying to take long, slow breaths is the goal.
#5 Unhelpful Thinking-In the therapy world there’s a term called cognitive distortions, or unhealthy ways of thinking. Most of us do this without even realizing it. Some of the common unhealthy ways of thinking are mind reading (imagining what someone else might be thinking, and usually it’s negative), personalizing (believing that something that occurred was personal to us), fortune telling (predicting what we think will happen) and catastrophizing (imagining the worst case scenario will happen). The downside to this negative thinking, is that our bodies have really real responses to these thoughts, even if there is no truth to them. When we think something, we have an emotional reaction. Anxiety is one of these emotions. Pay attention to your thinking. Do notice mind reading or personalizing? And how do you feel when you have these thoughts? Challenge the thoughts with what you know to be true about the person or circumstance and replace the unhealthy thinking with what is more likely to be true.
#6 Daily Habits- If we wait until we're overwhelmed and anxious to practice these skills it may not be as successful. Practice needs to happen in small situations, with less risk, so when the big moments of anxiety happen, these are familiar ways of coping. There are daily habits that will help keep your stress level consistently lower and this is important because, let’s say for example, if your stress is usually from a 4-6 on a scale of 1-10 at any moment of any given day, then an added stressor might bring it a 7 or 8. If you have a daily practice of yoga, making note of what you’re grateful for, or deep breathing, then your daily average anxiety might be more of a 2-3 and an added stressor still feels manageable at 4-5.
#7 Learn to Accept it- I think there are some myths about anxiety. Maybe that it’s solely our doing or that we can follow 6 steps that will make it disappear forever. Neither is true. Shame won’t help us here. And neither will waiting for the day that it is finally gone for good. Because we are human, we will have struggles. If we shame ourselves for our struggles or work to reach a place of never feeling anxious again, then we will be disappointed or feel like a failure or both. Similar to being mindful, being accepting of the fact that you may experience some level of anxiety for the course of your life will give you permission to stop fighting or hoping for perfection. Give yourself grace. And make peace with being human instead of perfect.
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