Anxiety is a word that can have a broad range of meaning and definitions. You probably have your own idea of what your individual experience of anxiety looks like and how this affects you. Often it can involve extreme worry or fear with catastrophizing thoughts and psychical symptoms. Anxiety is not something that goes away when it is ignored or suppressed, instead you can become curious towards the part of yourself that experiences anxiety and learn how to work with it.
Just like with anything in life there are tools that we can develop and practice using to help calm an anxious mind. This is highly individual and varies from person to person, below are a few suggestions of things you can do on a day to day basis to keep in mind when anxiety creeps up.
Name it
Although anxiety can feel all consuming, it can be useful to name it as an experience for example- ‘I am experiencing anxiety’ as opposed to ‘I am anxious’. Sometimes just naming this as an experience can create a little bit of distance between yourself and the experience. All experiences are transient and will pass, as will the experience of anxiety.
Become Curious
When we experience anxiety it can be tempting to want to be out of that anxious place as soon as possible, sometimes the more we try to fight it the louder it becomes. You can try and reframe this panic into curiosity, what brought on the anxiety? What is happening in your body? What are your thoughts telling you? Curiosity does not need to include judgement, as you start to notice these things try not to judge the reasons, simply observe and be curious.
Breathing techniques
You may find that you experience some bodily processes when you become anxious such as a faster heart rate, shallow and quick breathing, increased sweating. It can be helpful to introduce specific breathing techniques to help bring more awareness to your body and realise the control you have over how your body is reacting. First you can begin by noticing the quality of the breath, as you inhale and exhale notice if it is fast or slow? Is the inhale the same as the exhale? Are you breathing more from your mouth or nose? As you observe practice altering the breath, can you lengthen the time of the inhale, try inhaling for 4 counts and exhaling for 6 counts. Try holding the breath for 2 counts at the top of the inhale and the top of the exhale. Practice breathing from the very bottom of your stomach. I will soon be doing a more extensive blog post about breathing techniques but a quick google is good for this!
Grounding techniques
Another strategy for managing anxiety is grounding techniques, anxiety can feel like a sticky experience or it can make you feel like you might just get swept away. By using grounding techniques it can help you manage the bodily experiences of anxiety. What grounds you is highly personal to you, feeling grounded is when you are connected to your body, the present moment and perhaps even the world around you. If you are someone that dissociates or gets bodily anxiety due to trauma, gender or neurodivergence this can be overwhelming at first. Grounding does not have to involve having your feet on the earth or touching grass or imagining roots from your feet, but it equally could be for you! Perhaps grounding for you is stimming in a way that is soothing, or scribbling or drawing, or even playing a cosy game on the switch. Whatever brings you into the present moment is enough.
Pen to paper
There are two different tactics when it comes to writing about anxiety I would recommend. The first one is if you have anxiety that seemingly comes out randomly, practice keeping a record of your anxiety, think about noting down when it happened, why it happened ( what was in your environment as well as your thoughts at the time) as well as what happened in your body. This can help you to identify potential patterns and triggers. The second is expressing the anxiety through the medium of writing. Give yourself permission to fill a whole book if you need to write in your messiest, most expressive language what the anxiety is telling you and what your current thoughts and experiences are. Do not try at this stage to dispel it or solve it or figure it out just give as much space as you can to that experience and see what comes up!
Reflect
Maybe each experience of anxiety, no matter how unpleasant, is an opportunity to understand yourself more deeply. It is an opportunity to check in with yourself, to reassess your current patterns and thoughts and behaviours and maybe to seek help if you need.
This post is for dealing with mild anxiety. If you are finding that your anxiety is interfering with your day to day life consider consulting your doctor or a mental health professional.