How to Manage Random Bouts of Anxiety

Anxiety comes in waves that can crash upon your shore just as quickly as they recede into the horizon. It can muddle your perception, cloud your judgment, and interrupt even the most meticulous of plans. Bouts of anxiety can appear to come from nowhere, and it’s not always easy to recognize your triggers. We all have to cope with our anxieties, but that necessitates learning how. Here are six ways to manage your anxiety when it boils to the surface.

Stop.

Stop whatever it is you’re doing, and take a deep breath. If you’re at work, take a five-minute break. If you’re driving on the highway, pull into a rest stop. In the throes of anxiety, there can be intense pressure to keep pushing, even to the detriment of your physical, mental, and spiritual health. Making a conscious decision to slow down, be mindful, and loosen your attachment to control sends the message to your body that you are safe.

Create A Safe Environment.

Make your immediate field of vision when you’re having an anxiety attack safe, soothing, and beautiful. If you feel like the environment around you is unsafe, soothing your anxiety is going to be an uphill battle. In order to escape the cycle of escalation, anxiety, and panic, it requires taming the chaos both internal and external. This can be something that maintains the aesthetics of your environment like cleaning your house or throwing the trash out of your car, or it can be something that transforms it into something novel like putting up a piece of art. Beautifying your immediate surroundings can do miraculous things for your mental state, and calm the storm within.

Argue With Your Inner Critic.

The inner critic of an anxiety-fueled brain can be cutthroat to the point of exhaustion. It can be productive and enlightening to interrogate the stories you tell yourself when you’re struggling with anxiety. We can make any situation feel like a catastrophe if we tell the wrong story, and you owe it to yourself to be gentle.

Remember Your Circumstances.

It can be easier for people who regularly face issues of anxiety to treat it as a fact of life, rather than a result of the complicated processes of their conscious mind. Your anxiety does not exist in a vacuum separate from your history and feelings. When you feel anxious, it’s important to recognize and identify the external and internal circumstances that brought you to that anxiety. What was the sequence of events that brought you into a panic, and how does that tie into the anxieties that you’ve felt in your past? Remembering your circumstances is vital to achieving both self-knowledge, and self-compassion.

Exercise.

The connection between mind and body is inescapable. It helps to release all that pent up energy that your anxiety has built up by running up and down the stairs, doing jumping jacks, dancing wildly to your favorite songs, anything that is high energy and will allow you to release the excess energy that is fighting against you.

De-escalate The Situation.

Don’t give your anxiety the power to take you away from your relationships, community, spirituality, creativity, or any value that you feel most connected to. When experiencing random bouts of anxiety, controlled breathing is one of the first tools I reach for. To do this, breathe slowly, and use your diaphragm. Slowly breathe into your chest, and then breathe out. Then, breathe into your ribs, and breathe out. Finally, breathe all the way into your stomach, take an extra sip, and then breathe all the way out. Repeat this until you feel calmer.

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Sunny Ebsary is an educator, multi-modal artist, and writer specializing in the intersection of myth and mental health. Sunny’s writing walks the line between poetic and logical, giving readers a chance to interface with the mind and imagination. Sunny’s been putting pen to paper since he was a child, writing everything from albums, novels, and plays, to essays, interactive games, and of course, many articles! While studying both psychology and writing, he realized his real passion in life was helping others unlock their creative spark. Whether he’s leading a D&D game, directing a production, or diving deep into the brain, you can be sure Sunny will be ushering you toward finding meaning in your life.