This post is all about how to reduce anxiety quickly.
You have a lot on your plate, but anxiety probably tells you have way more. You obsess over the past and the future and all of the possibilities that anxiety tells you to account for.
When you make a mistake, it’s not a simple problem. Instead, your anxiety makes you think it’s a catastrophe that you’ll never come back from. When you get stuck in these moments, it’s important to have tools in your back pocket that you rely on bring you back.
This blog includes tools you can use in the moment to get you out of the negative cycle, but you can also use these tools to manage your anxiety overtime. So, make note of a couple activities that will get you feeling better in the moment.
This post is all about how to reduce anxiety quickly.
HOW TO REDUCE ANXIETY QUICKLY:
1. Take deep breaths
Breathing is one of the easiest, most important ways to connect back in with your body. And, when your mind has a mind of its own (haha), you definitely need a “reset” button to ground yourself in the moment rather than your thoughts.
Breathe in and focus on the way your diaphragm fills with air. You can put a hand on your chest or stomach to really get in touch with the way your body is moving and the physicality of breathing.
Exhale until you’ve expelled all the air from your lungs. When you aim to slow down your body and get your mind out of the anxious response, practice pausing between breaths.
2. Practice mindfulness
Anxiety gets you stuck in your head. Often, you spiral about the past or the future and obsess over what you said or did in that moment that you regret or what can go wrong in the future.
This is why it’s helpful to ground yourself in the moment. Notice your surroundings and take in all of the details. Take a moment to acknowledge what your senses are telling you from what you hear to what you smell to what you touch and so on.
Wiggle your toes, breathe in the air, and listen. While you do this, notice your thoughts. Avoid judgment: the point of noticing your thoughts without reacting to them is to get yourself out of the anxiety loop.
3. Engage in physical activity
Move your body. As always, do it in a way that feels good. You can even do it in a way that feels like play. The goal is to move your body in a way that makes you want to return to the activity and do it again.
Moving your body counts as exercise even when it doesn’t hurt you. So, enjoy yourself. When you exercise, you enter a sort of meditation where you can bring your mind and body together.
In other words, you can get yourself out of your anxiety by focusing your energy on moving and engaging every part of you in something that will ultimately release endorphins and make you feel good by the end.
4. Write in a journal
Write it out. Get your laptop, phone, or notebook out and write through your thoughts. No matter how experience you have, this is where you start. If you’ve tried journaling and stopped for some reason or never tried it before and don’t want to, we challenge to five minutes.
Try journaling for five minutes and you can stop if you don’t like it at the end of that time. To really give it a shot, repeat this for five days.
You can write about something on your mind, like the source of your anxiety, or you can respond to a prompt. If choose to write about your anxiety, it might be helpful to write out what makes you anxious and all of the reasons it makes you anxious.
For instance, if you’re nervous about a test, you’re likely scared of failing—which is also the worst case scenario. From there, you can reason that you’ll work with the professor to do better next time and you’ll learn how to improve.
So, by writing out why something makes you anxious, you can also write out why that worst scenario isn’t the end of the world.
5. Practice progressive muscle relaxation
Get comfortable, wherever that is for you, and close your eyes. While this is a popular technique to help people sleep, if you’re working on how to reduce your anxiety quickly, then you probably want to stay awake for this one.
Start with your toes. Tense them up and release them. Feel them give into the bed or floor and move up your legs. Gradually, tense each of your muscles and release after a few seconds. As you do this, notice the way your body feels on top of your couch or your bed.
Finish with your head and a few deep breaths.
6. Listen to calming music
Sit down or lay on your bed and put in your earphones. Find a playlist on Spotify or use the Calm app to play calming songs for you. If you’re not sure where to start, try something instrumental.
While music with words can be just as relaxing, you might benefit from not thinking about the words and simply reacting to the music you’re hearing. While you listen to the music, you can practice any number of calming exercises.
Think of meditating and working on emptying your mind, sitting with your thoughts, progressive muscle relaxation, or journaling.
7. Use aromatherapy
Breathe in and out to really enjoy that lavender, chamomile, or lemon scent in your room. A lot of the time, the biggest trick to getting unstuck from your anxiety is to override your mind with physical sensations.
Just like with grounding techniques and mindfulness, aromatherapy brings you back by focusing on the present and the scent around you. Plus, if you use a calming scent, you also get the benefit of physical relaxation in addition to learning how to reduce anxiety quickly.
So, not only do you get “unstuck,” but you get to feel relaxed too.
8. Engage in a hobby
Think of something you like to do. Writing, singing, dancing, crocheting. Anything that brings you joy outside of your work or school—and that part is important.
Everyone should have some type of hobby, no matter how much they love their job or studies, because we all need something that brings us joy without us feeling the need to produce it to make money.
The benefit of a hobby is that you enjoy what you’re doing and experience fulfillment from it, so, rather than mindlessly distracting yourself (a tempting and okay option occasionally), you get yourself out of the anxiety loop and do something to make you happy.
9. Limit caffeine and sugar intake
Anytime you take drugs of any type, think of caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, or prescribed medication, take the time to reflect on how they affect you. Notice how they increase or decrease your anxiety both in the moment and after.
As always, moderation is key. You’re in charge of what goes into your body and you should consider how drugs help or hurt your body. This is not to say stop because of your mental illness. Instead, take care of yourself like you would a friend.
If you noticed a friend getting increasingly anxious when they ingested an edible, you’d worry for them and maybe bring it to their attention. Do the same for yourself when necessary.
10. Challenge negative thoughts
If you’re reading this blog, you’ve started your mental health journey and you’re already self-aware enough to want coping mechanisms for your anxiety. So, you’re in a great place to start noticing those thoughts and distancing yourself from them.
When you feel yourself going down that anxiety spiral, take a moment to say “this is my anxiety talking, not me.” Sure, it may not end your anxiety right there and then, but it will help you realize how much of your negative thoughts are not you talking.
So, when you notice these thoughts come up, the next step is to respond to them and challenge them. If it helps, think of it as a debate that has been very one-sided for a long time.
11. Visualize a calm place
Everyone has a different trigger when it comes to anxiety and people have different triggers on different days. Sometimes you wake up and you’re already anxious for what feels like no reason.
Other days, you do fine until you go out to dinner and say that weird thing you wish you hadn’t said and you’re now stuck in an anxiety spiral. In some cases, your environment is the source of your anxiety because people are around you and social anxiety is a thing.
So, you can try visualizing yourself somewhere different. Imagine that place that brings you calm and safety and put yourself there in your mind. Feel the wind on your face or the people talking around in you a public space or the water on your feet or whatever it is.
This won’t take away the environment causing you anxiety, but it can give you control over your anxiety and put you back in the moment to enjoy the rest of dinner.
12. Practice self-care
Take a bath, read a book, watch a movie. Do something that makes you feel good. Self-care is more than just facials and candles, but, in this case, we want to focus on how to treat ourselves well.
We always want to ask ourselves if we’re treating ourselves like we would treat a friend. So, do something that brings you joy and allows you to relax a little.
Odds are you’ll want to practice self-care after a particularly anxiety-inducing activity that has left you spiraling and reeling. On that note, think about your anxiety like it’s always lying.
To be clear, anxiety is a normal response to the world around us. But, way too many of us have a nervous system that is way too sensitive when it tells us to feel anxiety.
So, your anxiety is essentially forcing you to worry when 80% you have no reason to be. This is why we do self-care: we deserve to unwind and relax in spite of what our anxiety tells us.
13. Get enough sleep
First and foremost, try to sleep at the same time every day. When you do, your body learns when it should perform its nightly routine, which helps you to stay healthy.
Beyond that, try and get at least eight hours of sleep. You need it no matter what you’ve conditioned yourself into accepting as the right amount of sleep.
Schedule in your sleep like you do everything else and think of it as sacred time. When something needs to give, try to make sure sleep isn’t the first option. This way you’ll be prepared next time your anxiety flares up with these tips on how to reduce anxiety quickly.
14. Laugh and have fun
Watch a hilarious show, go through hilarious reels on various social media apps, or talk to someone who always makes you laugh. Laughter is joyful and fun and necessary and really there’s no reason not to laugh when you get the chance.
Your anxiety probably tells you to be serious a lot of the time because the world is burning and that is not a laughing matter. Luckily, you can take time to laugh and drop your shoulders. Roll out your neck and laugh until your abs hurt.
15. Limit exposure to news and social media
As incredible as social media can be in bringing people together and disseminating information, it can also be harmful and you probably know that. So, take breaks.
Set boundaries with it when it comes to sleeping or schoolwork because it’s an easy tool to use when you don’t want to go sleep (and should) or don’t want to work (and should). Turn off your phone, leave it in the other room, or turn on Do Not Disturb.
16. Practice gratitude
If you feel like you have nothing but negative thoughts, you can probably thank your anxiety for that. Or social media or people in your life or a bunch of other reasons.
But, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. No matter what your experience is or how difficult your circumstances are, you have a duty to find the reasons to be grateful in your life.
Your duty is to yourself because you deserve to live a life that gives you nothing but pain and that’s what is starts to feel like when you don’t see the reasons for gratitude.
Your reasons don’t have to be dramatic or big, but they do need to be specific and hopefully from the same day that you’re do this exercise. Rather than “I’m grateful for my dog,” you could say “I’m grateful that I went on a walk with my dog.”
17. Challenge perfectionism
People make mistakes and, when we are scared of making mistakes, we stop doing things. We stop trying new things, learning new things, and experiencing new things. The fact is that being afraid of failure essentially stops you from living.
Sure, you can enjoy what’s familiar in your life and what you’ve always known, but, you also deserve to feel the thrill and fulfillment and learning something new. So, remind yourself that failure is natural, mandatory, and quite literally the start of a new, incredible experience.
