Written by Francesca Bas
Anxiety, something many of us experience. Anxiety is your body’s natural response to a stressful situation. Anxiety is a very normal and healthy emotion in many cases, it sometimes even helps us keep safe, for example if you are in a dangerous situation anxiety kicks in to help you with your flight or flight instinct and stimulate action.
However, for some people anxiety is an extremely unpleasant and devastating experience. Anxiety can cause unpleasant outcome for people with eating disorders (ED), addiction, and Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Anxiety can often be very triggering, and make it difficult not to act upon your ED voice, addiction or flashbacks.
Through this blog I want to reach some people who feel their anxiety sometimes holds them back or brings them back to a scary state of mind by giving you some small tips which could help you reduce your anxiety in the moment.
Acknowledgments:
I like to think of anxiety being on a 1-10 sliding scale 1 being no anxiety and 10 being the worst mental and emotional stress you could imagine.
These tips have helped me and many others in the 1-8 range especially. However, when surpassing 8 it’s important to be gentle on yourself, calming techniques you typically use may not work when you’re feeling extreme amounts of anxiety. THIS IS NORMAL. When you are feeling this extreme anxiety do whatever you feel may help, if it’s one of these tips we will be talking about or something you’ve previously used, amazing. But if you just have to distract yourself, go to sleep, put on a show, or go on a walk go for it, whatever will make you feel a bit safer.
Practice:
I remember when I was healing from my ED anxiety would knock at my door often, the problem with this anxiety was it would get so loud in my head, it would make it practically impossible for me to continue on the path to recovery and not listen to my ed voice. I know this was a very big issue for me and so through the years I found some in the moment anxiety reducing tools I use every day, these have reduced my anxiety in the moment significantly and made my ED voice lessen drastically, so. Let’s get into It.
10 Instant anxiety reducing tools
1 - BREATHE: When you breathe deeply it sends messages to your brain to calm down, so finding a breath you like to add in your tool box can be extremely helpful in moments of anxiety. Some breathing practices which help include:
• Grounding breath: ground your feet on the floor, sit up straight breathe in through your nose, hold then out through your mouth, do this 3-10 times.
• Diaphragmatic breathing: breathing from your abdomen instead of your chest. This kind of breathing promotes a deeper breath and brings more oxygen to your lungs.
• Box breathing: Breathe in for 4 seconds hold 4 breathe out 4 hold 4.
• Alternate nostril breath: Breathe in through your right nostril gently closing your left, hold, breathe out through your left nostril gently closing your right.
2 - Admit your anxious: Feeling anxious is an overwhelming feeling and in the moment, it feels the anxiety is vailing over everything! Naming to yourself “oh this is anxiety” can help you realize this feeling is temporary which will lead to less catastrophizing and ultimately leaving you a little more balanced and calmer.
3 - Challenge your thoughts: I find challenging your thoughts to be particularly helpful when you’re getting anxious about something in the future. For example, lets say tomorrow you are going to a lunch, the food you’re going to have is a fear food and eating out can be a little triggering. This usually leads us to roommate over this thought and catastrophizing it so much that we may cancel the lunch or feel more anxious in the moment of the lunch because of this build up. But if instead when we start feeling anxious about the lunch we would have reacted differently like “ oh this lunch is making me feel nervous but maybe this won’t be as bad as I think, I might be very hard but also I might be surprised and it could be smoother then I think” Be open to the possibility of things not to be as hard as you think they might be.
4 - Confide or spend time with loved one: Often times I’m moments of anxiety we feel alone also, when we don’t open up to people we sometimes make the anxiety grow to extremes because we are catastrophizing in our mind. When we open up to a safe person such as a family member, loved one or therapist we can be reminded that we are not alone and get a bit of help seeing clearer. If you are in a space where opening up sounds overwhelming it can also be very helpful just to be with a safe person without even talking about the problem. For example calling your best friend and saying “hey it’s a hard day I don’t really want to talk about it but it would be super helpful for me to just be around you”. This way you let the loved one know you are in a challenging space so they are gentle but simultaneously let them know you don’t want to talk about it just be loved or distracted.
5 - Write it out: If being with another person sounds unachievable, writing it out can have similar benefits. Writing is also a way to express how you are feeling and through writing you can understand more clearly whats happening, how you are feeling and how-to sooth yourself.
5 Senses for calming anxiety
1. (6) - Sight: Sight can help balance and bring you back to the present, focus on what’s around you, what do you see? What colors are most prominent, the plants in your room, the sight outside your window focus on what you see here and now.
2. (7) - Hearing: Similar to sight but this time close your eyes and try to hear what’s around you. People walking in the house, birds chirping, cars engines outside. What can you here?
3. (8) - Touch: Touch objects around you, focus on them a rock on your window, your stuffed animal, a pillow. Feel those objects centering all your attention on them. Do they feel hard, soft, smooth, rigged? Try engaging all of your thoughts to this.
4. (9) - Smell: What do you smell now? Cooking coming from the kitchen?, a fresh mode lawn bring your attention to those scents, further if you have some essential oils, lavender, moisturizer, perfume put those around you and treat your nose with some calming senses.
5. (10) - Taste: Is these something around you can safely drink or eat?, Tea, Water a chocolate If yes try mindfully tasting these flavors, “This chocolate tastes particularly creamy, the flavors are explosive, I love the way this tastes” If there isn’t anything around to taste focus on the natural taste which lives in your mouth.
I hope some of these tips serve you and help ease your anxiety instantly
~Francesca Bas
