Anxiety is a universal emotion that is common in many different types of species. For humans, we have a part of our brain that is designed to protect us from life-threatening situations and this part usually responds by putting us into the fight, flight, or freeze mode. As our world has evolved, humans have been facing fewer situations that are life-threatening, however, this part of our brain can still become activated even though our lives are not in danger. When this part gets activated, we still experience those fight, flight, or freeze reactions. One example of this may be when you are at a crowded grocery story and feel this sudden urge to want to leave as quickly as possible. Although this response is not logical, we still feel intense emotional and physiological symptoms. In this post, I want to discuss some common ways for managing anxiety and discuss why these methods are used.
The first thing I like to differentiate with managing anxiety is understanding that how we respond will probably depend on how intense our anxiety feels in that moment. For example, if you are feeling mild anxiety (say 4/10 – 10 being the highest) your response will look different than if you are having a panic attack. For this post I am going to focus on three levels of coping for mild, moderate and severe anxiety.
Mild anxiety: This may look anywhere between a 2-5 out of 10 on the anxiety scale (please keep in mind that everyone’s experience of each level will feel different and cannot always be compared to others). When we are feeling mild anxiety, often we are better able to distract ourselves from whatever is making us anxious. Distraction strategies may include reading, watching TV, hanging out with friends, going for a walk, or engaging in any activity you enjoy. Although distraction is effective, it also does not help us solve the problem. At this level, you may also be able to engage in strategies involving looking at the situation in a different way. For example, if you worry that you will fail your math test, you may be able to also see that you could just as well pass. You can also offer yourself advise like what you would say to a friend. For the test example, you may be able to tell a friend “Study as best as you can, try your best, and if it does not work out, it will still be okay”. It’s important to note that we do not want to ruminate about these situations either, or once a plan/solution has been decided it’s okay to go back to distracting yourself.
Moderate anxiety: this could be from 6-8 out of 10 on the anxiety scale. The higher we go on the scale, the harder it is to “think” our way out of a situation. It’s important to note that the thinking/problem part of our brain and the emotional centre are in different areas. Once the emotional centre is activated, the thinking part becomes more disconnected. At this level, I encourage people to continue to try the distraction activities that they enjoy, but they may need to move to grounding and calming strategies. Grounding strategies are activities that cause us to feel more connected to ourselves in a calming way. Some of these could be belly breathing, tensing and relaxing out muscles, or focusing on our 5 senses (often through going through each sense and identifying one thing we can hear, see, smell, taste and touch). There are many other grounding techniques that can also help.
Severe anxiety: this category is usually classified for intense anxiety and panic attacks. At this point, it is important to turn to strategies that continue to focus on calming our mind and bodies. The same distraction and grounding techniques can be used for this, but you may need something slightly more intense. This could be having a safe person support you though the attack, or a crisis line. You could also try the TIPP skills that were created by Marsha Linehan for DBT therapy. Below is a link to a video that walks you through these techniques:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuvH_j9O0f4&t=2s&ab_channel=DBT-RU
There is no doubt that managing anxiety is a draining challenge. It’s hard to constantly calm your mind and body, ride out feelings of nervousness, and deal with uncertainty. I can tell you though, that through personal and professional experience, that it is possible to learn to deal with these emotions in different ways. If you have any other strategies or questions please feel free to post them in the comment section below.
