7 Techniques For Dealing With Anxiety
Does it feel like stress is controlling you, rather than the other way around? Are you feeling overwhelmed, or anxious about something coming up? Allow me to share seven simple techniques that can get you back on a level playing field.
Stress is, unfortunately, a part of life. Everyone, no matter how successful or “healthy” they are, will at some point experience some kind of stress. It may be nerves ahead of a job interview or public speaking, or it could be overwhelm so intense it results in an anxiety attack.
Such feelings are a sign that we are experiencing a situation from our sympathetic nervous system, often known as our fight, flight, freeze or fawn mechanism. This part of our brain has a vital evolutionary role, in that it helps us identify and respond to danger. This isn’t part of our DNA where we pause and reflect, making heavily considered decisions about what to do next. If a predator is approaching, we have to respond immediately. This isn’t the time to analyse in which direction we want to run and at what speed will be most efficient. We just have to start running.
Unfortunately, our brain isn’t always as effective as we’d like in distinguishing between real threats (“my life is at risk”) and imagined threats (“people might think less of me if I make a mistake”). This means that an activity such as public speaking – where our safety is essentially guaranteed – can still leave some completely and utterly overwhelmed. “This situation is dangerous”, your brain is saying, “you need to get as far away from it as you can”.
“Unfortunately, our brain isn’t always as effective as we’d like in distinguishing between real threats (“my life is at risk”) and imagined threats (“people might think less of me if I make a mistake”)”
Obviously, this isn’t always helpful. There are times when we feel stress, anxiety, or overwhelm and would rather not. This can be when we find ourselves unable to make an important decision, or finding ourselves tripping over our words when talking to someone who makes us feel nervous.
So given this can happen when we don’t want it to, and at a time where we’re least able to process what we’re experiencing, how can we overcome it?
We need something fast, efficient and simple. If it’s too hard to do, frankly, we won’t do it. During times of stress and overwhelm our brain isn’t interested in anything it perceives as complex. It wants easy answers. That’s why giving up and walking away often feels the most tempting – if impractical – option.
“We need something fast, efficient and simple. If it’s too hard to do, frankly, we won’t do it.”
The key is to focus on the fundamentals of the human experience; our breath, our senses, our surroundings. If we can put our full attention in to something so simple our primitive ancestors would have had access to them, it only has to take a few seconds to lessen the immediate stresses of our modern lives.
With that in mind, here are seven techniques you can do almost anywhere and that take just seconds to do:
1) 4, 7, 8 Breathing
Regulating our breathing is the quickest way to provide us space to get on top of feelings of anxiety, so much so that I’ll provide four examples in this list. The first you may know of as pranayama in yoga.
To do this you take a deep breath for four seconds, then hold that breath for seven seconds, and then breath out for eight seconds. And repeat.
It’s that simple. The lengths involved can seem a little overwhelming at first, but don’t let that put you off. If all you can manage is in for 3, hold for 4, and out for 5, do that. The important thing is than the out-breath is longer than the in-breath. Breathing out for longer than you breathe in will bring your nervous system down in just a few seconds.
2) Box Breathing
As with 4, 7, 8 breathing mentioned above, box breathing focuses on slowing our breathing down, which in turn calms the nervous system.
To do this one, breathe in for 4, hold for 4, breathe out for 4, hold for 4, and repeat.
To help remember this one, imagine a box. You can do this by looking at a computer screen, a TV, or a picture frame if needed. Breathe in as you follow up one side of the box, hold as you go across, breathe out as you follow the box down, and hold as you go back to where to started.
3) A Good Old Sigh
Okay, so that isn’t the technical term, but it helps to explain why it works so well.
It’s something we often do subconsciously. When everything gets too much, we sigh. We vocally expel air out of our body as though it’s unwelcome.
Doing this exact action consciously can be a powerful way of managing anxiety. Take a deep, breath in, focusing on filling your belly with air, and then sigh. As big a sigh as you can manage. Make it a loud one, too. Feel the air leave your body, and notice how you shoulders fall when you do. A couple of these a day can help to feel like you’re sighing the anxiety all the way out of your body.
4) The Physiological Sigh
This is another technique that focuses on sighing, but differently than how we’d often think of. It mirrors what our body does automatically at times of needing more air, and yet we don’t even notice it.
To do this, take a breath in. However, before you breath back out, inhale again. Two in-breaths in a row. And then breath out. It’ll go: breathe in, breathe in, breathe out.
It may sound unusual, but have you ever been so upset that you make that repeated air sucking noise, like you're gasping for air in the tiniest in-breaths you can manage at that moment? It's a noise parents may recognise when their child has just stopped crying, with the *sniff* *sniff* *sniff* noise before each out-breath. These in-breaths mimic these experiences by filling up the vast excesses of our lungs in a way a regular breath doesn't, and goes a long way to decompressing and getting us back on a level playing field.
5. Grounding Your Senses
Moving on from breathing, this is a personal favourite of mine. When feeling anxious or overwhelmed I take things back to the very basics of my being; my senses.
To do this, firstly identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
The problem with anxiety is that it’s often based in hypotheticals, rather than reality. Anxiety loves a “what if…”. Where this technique works so well is it moves us away from the hypothetical and in to the real. What are you actually experiencing right now in this very moment? It’s what you can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. It is the very essence of what it means to be human.
Don’t worry if you try it and find you can’t remember the order. It’s ordered this way because you can smell more than you can taste, hear more than you can smell, and so on. But if you find yourself doing 5 things you can touch and 4 you can hear, that’s fine. The order isn’t important. Getting back to what you are experiencing in this very moment is.
6. 20, 20, 20
This is one helpful for if the thing bringing you stress is coming from something right in front of you, such as your computer screen at work.
The goal here is to look at something 20 metres away, for 20 seconds, every 20 minutes.
For me, that often means looking out of the window of my house at a tree down the road. By focusing on this it takes the energy away from the immediate danger (at least, that’s how our brain processes it) and on to something far away. It has the added benefit of being good for our eyes to focus on something far away as well as several inches from our face.
7. Scanning
Anxiety comes from a primitive part of our brain. As we’ve already explained, it serves a clear purpose in our lives; to keep us safe. When our anxiety moves from keeping us safe to causing harm, finding a way to reassure our nervous system that there’s no immediate danger can be effective.
If we were in immediate danger, the one thing we wouldn’t be doing is scanning. If you were being chased by a bear, you wouldn’t slowly be looking around the horizon for what else you can see. You’d run first, and worry about where you were running later. So the opposite is true; if you are able to slowly scan your surroundings, that’s a sign for your nervous system that you’re not in immediate danger.
I recommend two approaches to scanning for you to pick from:
Focus on the thing you can see that is furthest away from you, and then the thing that is closest, and repeat. For me, the closest thing is often the rim of my glasses, so that’s where I start.
Sit or stand still, and slowly turn your head to look over your shoulder. Slowly move your head back to centre, noticing everything you see as you go. Continue until you’re looking over the other shoulder, and then back. Repeat as many times as you need.
Of course, you don’t have to do all of these at once, which is what makes them so valuable. If you find one that works for you, great, focus on that. If you find that doing a combination of these brings heightened results, that’s brilliant. Personally, I like to start with 4, 7, * Breathing, then Grounding Your Senses, and then sighing. But everyone will be different.
Where these techniques can be most powerful, however, is in not waiting until feelings of stress to use them. Proactively calming your nervous system can have an immense effect on our ability to process stress in the first place, and so incorporating any and all of these techniques can give you the best footing to take on the challenges of the day. The best cure is prevention, after all.
I hope these techniques go some way to helping you stay calm, and if you have any questions on any of these techniques you can use this contract form to get in touch and I’d be happy to discuss further.
Top Three Takeaways:
Stress is a vital part of our evolution: our sympathetic nervous system helps us to stay safe, but isn’t always effective at identifying how real a danger is
Speed and ease are critical to stress management techniques: we often don’t have the luxury of time when feeling stressed, so identifying quick and easy tools will be the fastest way to de-escalating
Focusing on human fundamentals are key to remaining calm: activities that are a core part of the human experience, such as breathing or our senses, are the quickest way to removing excess stress
If you’re looking to go further with overcoming stress and anxiety, check out my Services page to see what I can do for you as a Mental Health and Wellbeing Coach.