5 Coping Tools for Anxiety
1) Take a Deep Breath & Sigh (Audibly!)
Pause whatever you are in the middle of worrying about, interrupt those racing thoughts in your head, stop doing whatever action you are doing (i.e. shaking your leg, playing with your pen, picking at something, or even writing that assignment).
The first step is always to pause.
Then roll your shoulders back. (You probably didn’t even notice how hunched over you were.)
Now, take a deep, steady breath - in through your nose, filling your lungs, before letting it out with an audible sigh on the exhale. I know it sounds silly, but that’s half the fun of it!
Let that big “AAaaaaaaaAAAAAaaaahhhhHHHHhhhhhhHHHhhhh” out of your body.
The interesting science behind this trick is that your vocal cords vibrate when you sigh. Per the Polyvagal Theory, that vibration is effective in soothing your nervous system, by activating your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation, reducing stress, and conserving energy. Our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) being activated signals a sense of safety in our body. When we are being threatened, as we often feel we are during a panic attack, our autonomic nervous system (ANS) kicks into gear and we are ready to “fight” or “flee” to get ourselves back to safety. Our PNS helps return our body to a calm state, after removing ourselves from any perceived danger. Try this exercise a couple times and see if the calming effect grows.
2) Shake it out!
Perhaps you’ve noticed feeling tense, hunched over, crunched up, shoulders too close to your ears, head tilted far too far forward, and your body feeling achy or tight. When we spend our time hunched over computers and looking down at mobile phones, we don’t even notice how twisted and contorted our body has been for the past hour that we’ve been checking emails or scrolling through social media. Now add some seriously stressful situations into our lives and that tension has probably only grown.
While we tend to think of anxiety as only an “emotional” experience, it is also a physical one. Our bodies physically experience stress when cortisol, the hormone which activates our body into “fight” or “flight” modes and prepares us for action, courses through our system. Experiencing chronic stress means that cortisol is rushing through our system more frequently. This can have serious impacts on our health, so learning to reduce our stress response is important.
Dance Party, Anyone?
A helpful way to reset our physical body is to shake it out!
I mean, full body shaking it out. Not just a little wiggle, but standing up and shaking your whole body while imagining releasing that tension and stress from your being.
Throw a dance party in your room, have a silent disco as you pump those dance beats through your headphones, blast the music on your speakers and jump or dance around! Flail those arms through the sky, shake those legs out, and move your hips. Take up space.
The goal is to shake it all out of your system.
Side note & Disclaimer: You don’t have to do this with music, but for those music-lovers, it can be a great way to pair a song you love with some much needed movement. Additionally, if you have any injuries, please be cautious when engaging in this exercise. This exercise can be modified to do from a seated position.
3) Brief Progressive Muscle Relaxation
As I mentioned above, maybe you haven’t even noticed how your body is feeling lately. Let me tell you, if you haven’t noticed your physical body in a while, it’s time to check in. In our highly digital world, we often forget to notice how our body is feeling or just how hunched over our screens we have been. Our mind has been so preoccupied with the information we are consuming or the to-do list running in our head that we go from one task to the next without pausing to ask ourselves how we are feeling, physically or emotionally.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) is an activity in which you actually increase the tension in your muscles in order to more effectively notice the reduction of that tension upon releasing it. For example, if you are feeling tense in your shoulders and I asked you to just “let go” of the tension or un-scrunch your shoulders, would you notice that much of a difference? Maybe a little, but not much. Now, if I asked you to exaggerate the tension by scrunching your shoulders up to your ears, as high as they will go while taking a deep breath in through your nose, and then pairing the exhale with letting your shoulders drop back down, would you notice a difference between the tense state and relaxed state then? Hopefully yes! This is how PMR works.
Here’s a brief script to walk yourself through a short PMR exercise. Try it out!
Find a comfortable sitting position. Take a deep breath, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Start with your hands. Squeeze your hands into a tight fist as you inhale. Then release the tension in your hands as you exhale, letting your hands gently rest in your lap. Repeat this 2-3 times.
Now move into your arms. Fold your forearm to your bicep and squeeze tightly on the inhale. Then release the tension, letting your arms flop into your lap, as you exhale. Repeat this 2-3 times.
Next, scrunch those shoulders up to your ears on your inhale, and as you exhale, let your shoulders drop back down to your sides. Repeat this 2-3 times.
Finally, Squish your face into a look like you just tasted a sour lemon (think: pursed lips, furrowed eyebrows/forehead, and scrunched nose) as you inhale through your nose . Then find your “sleeping beauty face” as you exhale, letting each of your facial muscles rest in a neutral position. Repeat this 2-3 times.
Check in with yourself to wrap up the exercise: How are you feeling? Do you notice any changes in your physical sensations and emotional mood states?
4) Opposite Action
Take a break when you are pushing yourself to do more, more, more
Opposite Action is a great tool in various circumstances. Essentially, it’s just as it sounds: Do the opposite action of what you are currently telling yourself, or feeling the urge, to do. For today, I’m talking about Opposite Action as a tool for reminding yourself to slow down. When we are stressed and high on that “productivity streak,” we feel like we have no time to slow down because there just “isn’t enough time in the day”. I’m here to remind you that it’s okay (and even beneficial) to slow it down.
When your mind says to “do more, more, more,” the opposite action would be to take a short break. I’m not saying you need to sabotage yourself and completely derail your plans for the day. But I am saying that taking 5-15 minutes to sit still, focus on your breath, or take a “mini vacation” by using some guided imagery to a relaxing place in your mind may help you be more productive in the long run. Taking breaks to rest and reset helps us shift our focus when we are otherwise feeling frazzled. Instead of attempting to accomplish a task while repeating your to-do list to yourself for the 100th time today, try taking a break to write your to-do list out. Or for many folks already using a to-do list, simply reminding yourself that you already have it written down and will get to it after your current task can be helpful. We can really only do one thing at a time.
Believe it or not, practicing shifting your focus from one thing to another, mindfully, helps retrain your brain to focus on one thing at a time, instead of chasing the myth of multitasking in our overstimulated world.
A helpful reminder to repeat to yourself might sound like: “It’s okay to slow down and breathe sometimes. I need this moment. It’s okay to take a break.”
5) Talk it out
Finally, talking about how we are feeling and what we are stressed about can be helpful (in doses). Repetitively harping on the stress we feel is probably not that helpful. But speaking to how we feel, talking out a problem, and exploring possible solutions, can be incredibly effective ways to process our anxiety, recognize when our fear might be holding us back, or when negative self-talk might be getting in the way of us doing what we want or know we need to do. Talking it out loud helps you slow down the racing thoughts and hear your thoughts aloud, where they can then be questioned. When we speak our thoughts aloud, sometimes we recognize how unrealistic those thoughts actually are. Sharing those thoughts with others can be vulnerable and also help us look at our thoughts differently.
Talk to yourself out loud, talk to a friend, talk to a trusted family member, or talk to a therapist
Some people find it helpful to talk to themselves out loud, like when driving alone in the car or out on a solo hike. There’s something powerful about hearing your own voice.
Some folks find it helpful to talk to friends or trusted family members. When we share our thoughts and feelings with someone “who has earned the right to hear our story” (Thank you Brene Brown!), we often feel more connected to them. By sharing our story with others, sometimes we can even receive helpful feedback via similar lived-experiences that others share in response, which might include problem-solving tools or new perspectives.
Talking to a therapist can be a great way to talk to an outside source; someone who can listen to your thoughts and feelings, help you understand what patterns are occurring in your life or which roadblocks you may keep encountering, someone to encourage you to explore your values and goals, and discover tools for living the life you want to live. A therapist can encourage you to be compassionate toward yourself and help you see things from a different perspective.
Disclaimer: Please note that the information offered via the Onward & Upward Blog, written and managed by Dr. Allison Meins, is not, nor is it intended to be, therapy or psychological advice. Established therapeutic relationship communications will be managed via telephone or confidential email.
