5 Tips for Reducing Anxiety

For these strategies to work, you must give yourself fully to trying them. Regulating our emotions is a practice just like any other skill, and it can be developed and improved with deliberate practice.

Anxiety is signaling to us that we fear something bad will happen. Reducing our anxiety doesn’t mean that we come to believe nothing bad will ever happen. It isn’t possible for anyone to provide the reassurance that there is nothing bad that will ever happen in life – it’s just not true.

However, when we learn to regulate the experience of anxiety in the body, we can learn to feel a lot more in control about how to handle the circumstances of our life. We can even choose to feel optimistic or hopeful.

The goal of using these techniques is to feel a little better. If you are used to letting your anxiety drive the bus so to speak, meaning, if you are used to letting your anxiety dictate your state of being, then using these techniques is not going to immediately result in mastery of emotion regulation. It will, however, provide you with a little more understanding of how you can influence your state of being in any given moment. Little by little, with consistent practice, you will see a lessening in the influence that anxiety has over your life.

ONE

Change your breathing: I like to use variations of “box breathing.” Like the 4 equal sides of a box, you are taking equal amounts of time with the inhale, pause, exhale, pause.

Inhale for 4 counts,

pause for 4 counts,

exhale for 4 counts,

pause for 4 counts.

Sometimes it might feel good to extend the amount of time you are “pausing” in between the in breath and out breath. I recommend that you set a timer for 2-3 minutes, commit yourself to doing this type of breathing for the entire time, and then evaluate how you feel afterwards.

TWO

Take a moment to put your hand over your heart, and tell yourself, “It feels really bad now, but it’s probably not as bad as I think it is.” The feeling of anxiety generally signals to us that something really bad is going to happen. Take time to contemplate all the times that things went well, or even just neutral, despite worrying a lot about it beforehand. Keep your hand over your heart for a few minutes, reminding yourself that in the past, things have generally not been as bad as you have anticipated.

Write down your thoughts, but make sure to do this in two parts. To get started, set a timer for 15 minutes and set yourself up with a pen and paper or type in a Word Doc or in a notes app (if you end up taking longer than 15 minutes, that’s fine too).

THREE

Next, write down exactly what you are feeling and thinking, being as specific as possible. For example, “I feel anxious. I feel it in my chest. It feels tight and heavy. My thoughts are racing. I am thinking about my trip coming up. I keep wondering if I am going to have to cancel it…”

Now for the second part: Take a moment to write about what you would like to be feeling right now instead. For example, “I’d like to feel more trust that this trip is going to turn out fine, and even some excitement about what I may experience. I’d like to not worry about things before they happen, and know that I’ll be okay either way.” Try to imagine what it would feel like if you actually adopted these new points of view.

FOUR

Try noticing the space in between your thoughts, and then focus on the space, giving it more and more of your attention.

Anxiety is fueled by our thoughts. The more mindful you become, you will likely notice the anxiety as a feeling or sensation in your body, along with thoughts that seem to give the feeling life. Finding a way to interrupt the thoughts that are fueling the anxiety will allow the tension in your body to dissipate. This freedom from tension, or sense of spaciousness, may only last for a second the first time you find it, but with continued practice you can get better and better at expanding the spacious silence in between thoughts.

FIVE

Reframe the interpretation of what your anxiety means.

Oftentimes we interpret the experience of anxiety something like this, “Uh-oh, I feel anxious. This is bad. I hate this. I can’t do it. This feeling is overwhelming and I feel too overwhelmed. It won’t go well. I won’t do it right. Something bad will happen and I won’t be able to handle it.”

Instead, try to reframe the feeling of anxiety as a natural part of life that is an indication that there is something you care about involved in the situation. Experiencing anxiety can instead be interpreted something like this, “Okay, there is anxiety here. I must really care about something or someone involved in this situation. There must be an important need here.”

Rather than an indication that something is going wrong or will go wrong, we can instead get curious about why this situation or person is so meaningful to us. Approaching our anxiety with curiosity, from a place of inquiry, can give us a way to engage with our anxiety that centers around getting to know our needs, rather than feeling stuck and uncomfortable.

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As a reminder, these suggested practices are not going to immediately eradicate anxiety from your life, but are meant to help you work with the experience of feeling anxious rather than feeling overwhelmed by it. With continued practice, our sense of efficacy in regulating our emotional state will grow.

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash