5 Goals to Reduce Anxiety in the New Year

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Did you make any mental health goals for the new year?

According to a recent American Psychiatric Association poll, 38% of Americans made mental health resolutions this year. A majority of those surveyed reported anxiety about one or more areas of their lives.

As a psychologist who specializes in anxiety, I often talk about how having zero anxiety is not a reasonable goal. However, there are distinct things that could lead to decreases in long-term anxiety.

Anxiety Goals for 2026 and Beyond

If you struggle with anxiety, consider choosing one or more of these goals to address in the coming year.

#1: Accept Uncertainty as a Part of Life

So many people who have anxiety issues think uncertainty is a bad thing. However, uncertainty is everywhere, and it’s usually not a sign of something bad about to happen.

People with anxiety tend to automatically assume that if something in the future is important or scary, it must mean that there will be a bad outcome. This is just not true. Because something is happening in the future, it carries at least some uncertainty. Uncertainty is neutral, not bad or good.

Action Item: Think of previous times when you had uncertainty about something. What actually happened? Was it always something bad? The next time you experience anxiety related to uncertainty, you can remind yourself that uncertainty is not inherently negative.

#2: Challenge Your Catastrophic Thoughts

Anxiety and uncertainty fears are often accompanied by catastrophic thoughts. For example:

• If I didn’t lock the door, someone will break in, and it will be all my fault.
• This headache must mean I have a brain tumor.
• Nobody will want to talk to me at the party.
• I’m going to lose my job and end up homeless.

The list can go on and on.

Action Item: When you have a catastrophic thought, ask yourself, what is the most realistic thing that will happen? You could also ask yourself how you would cope if your catastrophic fears did occur; people often underestimate their ability to deal with adversity.

#3: Reduce Reassurance-Seeking Behaviors

When people are anxious about something, it’s often a natural inclination to ask for reassurance. Here are some examples of reassurance-seeking activities:

• Searching the internet or asking AI about a medical concern/bodily symptom.
• Asking a loved one for reassurance on a wide variety of topics.
• Checking heart rate when someone has a fear of panic attacks.
• Being overly attentive to how others are relating to you in social situations.

The problem with reassurance is that it often causes anxiety to decrease a lot, but the next time the person feels anxious, they might be inclined to resort to asking for more reassurance. Thus, they get trapped in a cycle of anxiety and reassurance. The answer is to work on delaying and then eliminating urges to seek reassurance, to learn to tolerate anxiety and uncertainty better.

Action Item: Assess your reassurance-seeking behaviors, so you are more aware of what you do. Work on delaying the urge to seek reassurance, with the goal of eliminating it. Practice tolerating the anxiety of not knowing.

#4: Reduce Avoidance

When something causes you anxiety, it’s natural to want to avoid it. There might be situations where that makes sense, like avoiding a dinner with a particularly demeaning family member or avoiding doing something that is objectively unsafe. However, people with anxiety tend to avoid things that most non-anxious people would agree are safe to do. Here are some examples of avoidance:

• Someone with social anxiety avoids giving speeches, attending social gatherings, or raising their hand in class or meetings.
• A person with panic disorder avoids driving, going to the grocery store, or doing anything else that they associate with panic attacks.
• After experiencing a trauma, someone with PTSD might avoid thinking about the trauma or avoid doing anything they associate with it.
• A person with health anxiety avoids going to the doctor for fear of finding out that they have a medical problem.
• Someone avoids flying because of fears that the plane will crash. They end up missing out on a lot of important events because of this fear.

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Action Item: Examine your avoidance patterns and ask yourself whether you could develop a plan to start confronting these situations. Can you break down reducing avoidance into small steps?

#5: Accept Anxiety

This is the issue that people often have the most difficulty addressing. Often, people just want all anxiety to go away and do things (like avoid and seek reassurance) to get rid of it.

Many develop secondary anxiety; that is, anxiety about their anxiety, which just makes the original anxiety even worse than it originally was. The irony is that if someone accepts their anxiety, lets it just be there, without doing anything, then the anxiety will likely decrease on its own.

Action Item: The next time you find yourself getting anxious about being anxious, or doing something to actively push your anxiety away, consider just accepting it. You could tell yourself something like, “I’m feeling anxious now, and it’s not the end of the world. Anxiety always goes away.”

Consider Getting Professional Help

If your anxiety is very distressing and is interfering a lot in your life, you might benefit from a therapist who specializes in anxiety and can help you. Anxiety does not have to rule your life.

To find a therapist, please visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.