5 Easy Ways to Break the Grip of Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the most frequent difficulties that motivates people to seek mental health treatment. In fact, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in age 18 and older, or 18.1 percent of the population, every year. Anxiety disorders are highly treatable, yet only a third of those suffering receive treatment.

Whether you are actively seeking anxiety management therapy, or are one of the majority of people who do not seek professional assistance, here are five proven techniques to rapidly break anxiety’s grip.

1. Refocusing. Anxiety has two main components: mental worry, a sense of dread, and physical discomfort like feeling edgy, wound up or noticing a rapid heartbeat, gastrointestinal distress, muscle tension, and headaches. Technically speaking, when people feel anxious, they are pulled into the vortex of interception. Interception is the phenomenon of noticing sensations that arise from within the body.

It is the converse of exteroception – the experience of sensations arising outside the body, usually the five primary senses of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. What’s more, the psychological gravity of anxiety leads to persistent thinking about the expected bad event. In essence, once the grip of high anxiety has seized someone, they are mostly “living in their heads,” focusing on anxious thoughts and sensations rather than experiencing the external world.

This is why a method as simple as merely externalizing one’s sensory focus can be a powerful antidote for anxiety. Specifically, the next time you feel the icy clench of anxiety grab you, look at all the things you can see around you; hear as many sounds as you can; feel as many textures as you can notice; smell as many scents or aromas that you can, and even notice the taste of the atmosphere.

In this way, you pull your consciousness out of the whirlwind of inner thoughts and sensations and focus it instead on the outside world. This causes a shift in brain metabolism because focusing on exteroception activates various parts of the brain that reduce arousal in the “anxiety centers,” thus reducing anxiety.

2. Visualization. The mind and the body are different sides of the same coin, and they intersect most strongly at the level of imagination. In fact, the brain and the nervous system weave into all the body's tissues and affect them in very important ways. And because of the two-way street that connects the mind and psychology with the body and biology, the mind itself can affect the body in many powerful ways.

Consider it if you vividly visualize yourself in a horrible situation as immersively as possible. It is almost inevitable that your body will react similarly to how it would if you were in that actual situation, say, a traffic jam, a flight delay, a worry about a loved one being safe, etc.

But the converse is also true. If you vividly visualize safety, security, well-being, and health, your body will attempt to produce the sensations and thoughts associated with those states.

3. Mindfulness. In essence, mindfulness is the psychological process of purposely bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment. In other words, connecting with the immediacy of one’s experience without attaching any particular significance or importance to whatever one might become aware of or notice. At its deepest level, mindfulness is simply living in the present as fully as possible with an overarching mindset of “radical acceptance.”

The core idea of mindfulness is to cultivate an ability to experience things as fully as possible in the here-and-now without attaching any value judgments to them and without analyzing, interpreting, or evaluating them. Thus, the nonjudgmental experience of conscious phenomena is the foundation of mindfulness. In practical terms, this means during episodes of anxiety. It is helpful to simply notice the thoughts and sensations of anxiety and remind yourself, “This is just what my mind and body are making me aware of right now, nothing more.”

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4. Relaxation. One of the first evidence-based forms of psychological treatment is relaxation training (e.g., A. Lazarus, 1961) which has been used for decades to effectively treat various stress and mood-related difficulties. Basically, there are two major divisions in the human nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. In terms of anxiety, the sympathetic pathway is the “accelerator” that revs up all sorts of activity in the body – the so-called “fight or flight” response system.

The parasympathetic system is the “brake” that slows things down like respiration, heart rate, and muscle activity. Doing systematic relaxation methods “applies the break“ to the nervous system that has been accelerated by anxiety.

5. Move! Not surprisingly, the final and perhaps most powerful method for prying loose the grip of anxiety is action and exercise. Anxiety is at its worst when we feel paralyzed because of it – like a proverbial deer caught in the headlights. But when there is some action we can take, something we can do, some direction we can go in, that gives us some sense of control and agency within the anxiety-provoking circumstances.

I like the “What if / Well then” exercise. In simplest terms, this involves distilling the anxiety into a worry that starts with the words “what if,” such as, “What if this happens?“ or “What if this doesn’t happen?” Then answer these anxiety-driving worries with several reality-based, “Well then” responses such as, “Well then, I’ll do this,” or “Well then, I can try that,” etc. This kind of self-talk provides a sense of direction, an idea that something can be done, and a degree of control. All of which help us direct our energies towards action that helps lessen the grip of anxiety.

As for exercise, vast amounts have been written and disseminated on how regular, vigorous exercise is, perhaps, the closest thing we humans have to a panacea. As I frequently counsel my patients, “Mind, body, and mood all benefit tremendously from regular exercise and as much physical activity as possible.“

Remember: Think well, Act well, Feel well, Be well!

Copyright 2022 Clifford N. Lazarus, Ph.D. This post is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute professional assistance or personal mental health treatment by a qualified clinician. The advertisements contained in this post do not necessarily reflect the author's opinions, nor are they endorsed by him.