Anxiety is a serious mental health condition that impacts both the mind and body when a person is triggered by a stressor. It’s possible to live with and even control your anxious thoughts, but sometimes, a particular trigger hits, and you’re suddenly in the midst of an “anxiety attack.”
Also called a “panic attack,” this condition isn’t an official diagnosis, but when you’re dealing with one, you know it’s not possible to ignore the symptoms. Anyone can have anxiety. In its most intense form, anxious thinking gets a hold of your mind and takes over your emotions, rational thinking, and even your physical responses.
So what can you do to calm your anxiety before it becomes a panic attack? What you don’t want to do is “ignore it and make it go away.” The internal hormones and neurological processes going on in your body when anxiety rears its head usually don’t work that way. Instead, use these 4 calming techniques to soothe your brain and body.
1. Play Soothing Music
The old adage “music soothes the savage beast” is based at least partly in truth. Research shows that listening to music can lower stress hormone levels (cortisol and adrenaline), increase the release of pleasure hormones like dopamine, and promote alpha brainwaves that lead to calmer thinking.
When it comes to simple methods that don’t require much effort, playing soothing music is an effective and quick choice. To help prepare for an anxiety attack, create a playlist on your favorite streaming app, and tell your phone to “play calming music” the next time you feel too stressed.
As a plus, playing this type of music before bed can also reduce bruxism (teeth grinding and jaw clenching) — a common co-condition that happens when people have chronic stress and anxiety. This article by JS Dental Lab explains more about how to reduce teeth grinding using occlusal guards and other helpful techniques.
2. Just Breathe
It sounds a little too easy to be legitimate, but your breathing is a crucial factor in your stress level.
Think about your breathing behaviors when you’re feeling scared or anxious. (Alternatively, watch how the characters in a movie breathe through different emotions.) The human body’s respiratory system is both autonomic and somatic, which means it happens without thought but can be controlled by thinking.
When you’re afraid, stressed, or otherwise on alert, you tend to breathe fast and shallow. This has the chicken-or-egg result of telling your brain to be even more alert, sending stress hormones to the rest of your body, and increasing your panicked thinking.
However, if you purposely and consciously control your breathing, slowing it down through deep breaths, you tell your brain to knock it off and calm down. When you’re feeling a little stressed but not too bad, try these breathing exercises. Find one that works for you, and use it the next time you need to calm your anxiety quickly.
3. Ground Yourself
No, you’re not putting yourself in time-out, but it kind of works like that. Stop what you’re doing and bring yourself to the present through the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 grounding technique.
In this method, you distract your mind by finding sensations in your environment. Look for 5 things you can see, and speak them out loud. “I see the white wall in front of me.” Then, find 4 things you feel. “I feel the cool breeze from the air conditioner on my arms.” Listen for 3 things you hear. “I hear the birds in the background.” Search for 2 things you can smell. “I smell my shampoo in my hair.” And finally, notice 1 thing you can taste. “I taste my toothpaste.”
This grounding technique redirects your focus to the present and interrupts the neurotransmitters attempting to send stress hormones into your body.
4. Write Your Thoughts
Racing thoughts have a tendency to sound scarier than they really are. When you corral those anxious tendrils into words on paper, it helps to gain perspective on what you can control before the worries take control of you.
Journaling is a technique used in many therapeutic treatment plans, but it doesn’t have to be done any particular way. If you enjoy writing, you might like to start a journal and pencil your thoughts onto paper. Or, you can use your paper and pen to do a “brain dump” of everything you’re thinking about and then analyze each idea to decide what to do with it.
Whatever type of writing you choose, penning your thoughts to paper activates the prefrontal cortex in the brain, which is responsible for rational thinking, and reduces activity in the emotional processing part of the brain (the amygdala). You’ll also get similar results from coloring or sketching, so if writing isn’t your thing, try creating some artwork!
Conclusion
The first few seconds after anxiety is triggered can be the difference between keeping control of your rational thoughts and spiraling into a panic attack. It’s crucial to have techniques in your strategy pack that you can pull out quickly and easily. These four simple methods can help you calm your anxiety without any effort or physical tools, letting you get your thoughts back on track and get back to your day.
