Calm Your Mind: 3 Tips to Tackle Anxiety
Have you ever woken up with a nagging feeling in your stomach? It feels a little like dread, butterflies, or even a sinking feeling? You start to feel nauseous like you can’t even think about eating breakfast but you know you need to so you can fuel yourself for the day. Inevitably, you skip breakfast and just go straight to coffee because that feels manageable to drink. You get to work and you just remembered you have that big meeting today that you feel unprepared for.
Nothing feels settled: your worried about how your friends view you, your parents are nagging you to call them, your work is demanding more and more from you.
You deserve to feel at peace in your life.
As you go throughout your day, you just feel like your on edge but somehow at the same time dragging. Your body feels like its going through a roller coaster of anxiety and exhaustion. How do you get off this roller coaster??
Now imagine this…
Life finally feels calm! You wake up excited for the day ahead! You feel prepared for whatever is going to happen whether it’s a spontaneous meeting at work, or your partner asking you to pick something up on your way home from work. Whatever it is you’re taking it in stride. You notice yourself sleeping deeper, working out, eating good meals, and overall taking care of yourself better. It feels like freedom to finally not have that anxiety hanging over your head all the time! You feel content, relaxed, and secure like you are equipped to handle whatever comes your way.
How can we get there?
First, let’s talk through a few tips that could help with the anxiety:
A disclaimer: I will say what I always say to my clients and that is that not everything works for everyone. You may try some of these and find that they work or you may try all of these and find that none of them work. That doesn’t mean anything about you or what you're experiencing. All it means is that you might need some more individualized help to get you to where you want to be!
Deep breathing. This seems very basic but I promise you the longer you do it the more it will help!
How: Breathe in for four counts (and I mean breathe ALL the way in–not just a little bit), hold for 4 counts, and then breathe out for 6-8 counts and PACE YOURSELF. Don’t just get all the air out in 4 counts, you need to slow the breath down.
Why: The long and short of it is that it stimulates the “vagus nerve” which is a fancy way of saying it turns your body from a stressful place to a more relaxed state.
Another tip for how to breathe (sounds silly, right? I promise it’s worth it): I want you to breathe from your belly! Most of us generally have shallow breaths (you can notice this by seeing if your shoulders move up and down when you breathe) and this will keep us feeling stressed. I want you to focus on breathing from your diaphragm which is in the lower part of your tummy. You’ll know you’re doing it right when you see that part of your body move out when you breathe in.
Mindfulness. Lots of people view mindfulness as sitting in silence as long as you can and trying not to think of anything. This isn’t what I’m talking about! I’m talking about being more conscious of the thoughts your mind is having and letting them be, instead of trying to change them or push them away.
How: What I want you to do is visualize being by a moving body of water (a river, stream, waterfall, etc). Whenever you have a thought whether good, bad, or indifferent I want you to put those thoughts on leaves and let them float down the river. Even if the same thoughts come back, I want you to continue placing those on leaves and letting them float on by.
Why: This helps create space between you and any thoughts and especially the thoughts that are causing anxiety. The point of this exercise isn’t to get rid of your thoughts but instead to not have them impact you as much. So if you’re having anxious thoughts about your to-do list, I want you to put all of those items on leaves and let them float along. This isn’t to say that those thoughts aren’t important but that right now isn’t the time to focus on those thoughts and you will get to them when you are ready.
Defusion. Another fancy word for "giving yourself some space from the anxiety so you can do the things you need to do".
How: Walk through these 3 prompts in your mind and fill in the blank with what comes up for you. Replay each prompt in your mind for 15-20 seconds.
I am _________ (insert emotion/thought)
I am having the thought/feeling that I am __________ (insert same word)
I am noticing that I’m having the thought/feeling that I am _______ (insert same word)
Why: The hope is that this will move you from a place of identifying with anxiety or whatever other words come up for you around that feeling, to a place where the anxiety impacts you less. The reason I say it that way is because we probably won’t get rid of the anxiety completely and forever because anxiety is important and it tells us that something needs to be paid attention to. The problem is when it overtakes our life so that all we can see is the anxiety in front of us and that prevents us from doing things we need to do (ex: take care of ourselves, go to work, invest in friends, etc).
At the end of the day these might feel like bandaids to a bigger problem and that’s okay. Sometimes we need bandaids to help us make it through. And sometimes we need to do deeper work in order to address why the anxiety is so big and how it got to be that way so we can make more lasting changes. I’ll be here to help wherever you are on that journey!
If you want to learn more about how I can help with anxiety, click here!