5 Anxiety Calming Strategies That Work
I didn’t know I was an anxious person. I thought everyone replayed conversations word-for-word in the middle of the night. I thought it was normal to feel your heart race and palms sweat at big family events or on the anniversary of a difficult surgery.
I was wrong.
A year in counseling taught me those are signs of anxiety and they don’t have to happen. We can calm anxiety before it happens and while it happens. Praise the Lord!
Here are five ways I’ve learned to calm anxiety.
1. Treat ANxiety Before It happens
When your amygdala gets triggered, it takes control of your brain. This is why something seemingly inaucious can send your heart racing. Your amygdala made a connection between your current circumstances are a previous stressful event and decided to react in the same way sending your body into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. It happens in the blink of an eye. You may not be aware it’s happening or why. All you know is that your body is freaking out, right now!
A trained counselor can help calm your amygdala (the part of your brain that reacts to stress whether or not you want to) through various methods. He or she can do this when you are not stressed. How nice! Some methods include:
The goal of these methods is to help you take a past event that wasn’t fully integrated in your mind and process it so that it becomes integrated and no longer an event your amygdala considers a threat.
Think of your amygdala as a Junk Drawer and your mind as a File Cabinet. The File Cabinet holds all your memories and feelings in nice tidy files. One file might be labeled “Christmas.” Another might be labeled “First Day of School.” The File Cabinet is a safe place. You can pull out a file and look at it without getting anxious. That’s what we want.
A stressful event or emotion that isn’t fully processed or understood gets tossed in the Junk Drawer and your amygdala can pull it out an any time. Events or emotions that end up in the Junk Drawer might include the day your father hit your mother and you have no idea why. The day your beloved dog died. The day your team lost the championship game and your coach didn’t say a word to you and your teammates, just packed up the gear and left. Therapies like EMDR and the above list help you pull a memory or emotion out of the Junk Drawer and process it so your mind can put it in the proper file in the File Cabinet where your amygdala cannot access it anymore.
So, the first thing you can do to calm anxiety is find a good counselor and start cleaning out your Junk Drawer.
The rest of the list focuses on methods you can use in the moment, as your anxiety rises. They are designed to align your emotions with your body. You are an embodied being—focusing only on your emotions, and not on your body, will hinder your ability to calm your body’s physical response to stress. By connecting our emotions with our bodies, we can calm them both down.
2. Breathing
When I’m feeling anxious, the first thing I do is breathe deep. Breathe intentionally. Breathing intentionally slows me down when anxiety wants to speed me up. It also brings my awareness to my body and what’s going on internally. When I can name what my body is feeling, I can start to regain control.
Square Breathing:
Think of the four sides of a square and try to breath in-out-in-out in four equal segments. Maybe count to three on the inhale, three on the exhale, three on the inhale, three on the exhale. Repeat your square in longer segments until you feel calmer.
Poof Breathing:
Inhale deep and slow. Then seal your lips and push all the air out in one big “Poof.” Something about the pop of saying “Poof” in a big exhale triggers your body to settle down.
3. Name 5 Things
Don’t move. From where you are, use your five senses to name:
5 things you can see
5 things you can hear
5 things you can feel
5 things you can taste
5 things you can smell (Smells are powerful. This one might be your best tool.)
You don’t need to actually taste and feel, etc. Just name something in your surroundings that you could taste or feel, etc.
Let’s say your anxiety gets triggered while walking along Fisherman’s Wharf with friends. Stand still and look around you. You can see a candy store selling Sweet Tarts and Gumdrops, a San Francisco sweater for sale, a pigeon eating popcorn off the ground, a seagull flying overhead, and the sun’s reflection off your friend’s sunglasses.
You can hear a seagull squawk, a sea lion barking under the wharf, the wind in your ears, the music of the merry-go-round and the far-off ring of a trolley car.
You get the idea.
By focusing on your senses, you bring awareness to your body again. This is what is real. You really are standing with your friend on a warm San Francisco day. Your amygdala might want you to believe you are reliving the stress of a horrible Christmas Day when you stared at a trolley car ornament on the Christmas tree to escape the stress around you. But you aren’t there. That was in the past. You aren’t in danger. You are actually having a pleasant afternoon with a friend. This is the truth. You are reminding your body of the truth.
4. Grounding
This is another way to remind your body of the truth of where you are. For this one, you will need to get down on the ground, or the floor if you are indoors. Lay down and place your palms on the floor so you can feel the texture of the surface beneath you. If it’s grass, move your fingers to feel the poky blades of green grass. If it’s carpet, rub your palms on the plush fibers. Feel the hardness of the floor. Is it cool or warm? Is it even or bumpy? What else can you feel? Can you feel behind your calf? Behind your shoulder blades? Behind your head?
Stay there for a few minutes. Do some slow breathing. Let your body feel the solid reality of the earth. The earth is real. You are real. This moment is real.
Grounding is powerful. It is my ultimate anxiety calming strategy. When I am most anxious, grounding will eventually lead me back to my Creator, the One who made the ground, who made me, and who will carry me out of this freak-out moment.
5. Enjoy a Pet
Even if you aren’t a pet person, this one works. Did you know that watching fish swim in an aquarium is a treatment for people with high blood pressure? It’s calming to focus on something other than you, your body, and your stress and instead focus on the fluid movements of a beautiful creature.
If you have a cat or dog, stroking or combing their fur is calming. The repetitive movement along with the sensation of the soft silkiness of fur is calming.
If your pet is calm, place your hand or ear on their chest and listen to the sound of their breathing and the beat of their heart. Let your body focus on the steady rhythm of your pet’s body.
Bonus #1: Move
Break up the cycle of anxiety by moving your body intentionally. Movements like stretching and yoga, even faster movements like jumping jacks or doing the Hokey-Pokey, can disrupt the physical affects of anxiety. While you’re moving, pay attention to your body—the feel of the floor under your hands as you stretch, the feel of your palms slapping your thighs as you do jumping jacks. Let your body reset itself by reminding it of where it is and what is true in this moment. There are no rules against having fun while you do it. And if it gets you laughing, you win. Anxiety loses.
Bonus #2: Recite from Memory
Recalling a positive memory can also disrupt anxiety. Try to recite a favorite verse or poem. Or describe a pleasant memory using as many sensory words as possible. (I like to describe my memory of a perfect day on the beach in Maui with my husband.) Here are just a few verses that I use when anxiety rises:
Matthew 6:26 (v.25-33 are beautiful in The Message and a biblical example of using your senses to calm anxiety)
Your Turn
If you struggle with anxiety, what strategies have worked for you to calm your body down in a stressful moment?
I love sending my subscribers special goodies and encouragement straight to their inbox. One of those goodies is a list of 12 Verses to Help You Endure. I’d love to send it to you.