4 Anxiety Coping Skills That Work for Me
For examples, check out the video on this topic here!
Today I'm here to help by sharing four anxiety coping skills that actually work for me.
Just to let you know what kind of anxiety I deal with—-because there's definitely a variety of types of anxiety—-these days I'm mostly dealing with social anxiety. My social anxiety tends to happen after the socialization already occurred. It's not always during, it's afterwards. And what happens for me afterwards is that I overthink everything that happened, I suddenly get very concerned about every little thing I said, whether it was received right, what do people think of me, things like that. I get stuck in negative thought loops and that usually leads to catastrophizing, and then i just can't focus on anything that I'm trying to do. It tends to happen, for me, a lot in the evening when I'm trying to wind down. A lot of times in my wind down time, I'm trying to watch TV and I'll find that I could watch a whole episode of something and I don't even know what happened because I was stuck in my head the whole time. So, that's what the anxiety I'm navigating currently looks like, and the things I'm going to share are based on my current experience of anxiety. They might work for you if you have a different type of anxiety, or they might not, and that's totally fair and valid, but it doesn't hurt to try.
#1. Reality checks
I talked about how I overthink a lot and I get stuck in my head, and a lot of times it turns out that I'm kind of blowing things out of proportion, or I'm making assumptions, or making up insinuations about what happened, and it tends to not be true. So, I try to bring in logic by reality checking the situation. If I'm overthinking a particular social encounter, for instance, I will break it down into pieces of what I'm overthinking, and then I'll take each piece at a time and I'll say, “What is the evidence to support what I’m over thinking about or what I'm catastrophizing about?” If I cannot find evidence to support that my fear or anxiety is true, I then try to negate it or combat the anxiety by coming up with evidence to support that it's not true.
A recent example that I can share about this would be that I joined a new support group for non-binary people. I had a blast all throughout it, I was really looking forward to it, and then afterwards I started overthinking things. One thing that I was overthinking was that I shared too much. I started worrying that I talked way too much and that i took up too much space. The way that I reality checked that was asking myself, “What is the evidence that I talked too much and took up too much space?” All I could really come up with is that I felt like I talked more than other people. When I reality checked what is the evidence against this, I said, “Okay, so, the way the support group worked is that there would be a question or a prompt and then each person had an opportunity to share on that. I never shared more than once during one of these prompts, and if I never shared more than once, then how could I have shared too much?”
Another thing i did in reality checking this particular situation is that I started trying to remember things that the facilitators shared. At one point, the facilitator said, “You can take up as much space and as little space as you want.” So I thought, “Oh, I'm worrying about taking up too much space, and even though I'm starting to reality check and realize I don't think I actually took up too much space, the facilitator themselves said take up as much space as you want or need.” So, that helped.
The more I started reality checking the situation in particular, I also realized this was a brand new situation for me to be in, with complete strangers, and it was the first time I had been in a new social environment with complete strangers in a very, very long time. That, in and of itself, is a valid reason to have a little anxiety or fear or worry, because at least for me, I know I do not do well with the unknown, and something new and dealing with strangers is very much unknown. Not that that solves my problem in terms of being uncomfortable with the unknown, just acknowledging that that was a piece of the equation helped me to understand why I was going down this rabbit hole around a situation that, again, while I was there I enjoyed it and had a pleasant time and everybody was cool.
So, that's an example of reality checking. I think it's really helpful when we are very heady in our anxiety, like I just explained. If we're stuck in our head then maybe we ca shift that functioning to something helpful instead of unhelpful. That's why I think it works for me, because I'm already in my head, so it's like, well let me just use this active energy that's occurring and just adjust it, like, move the needle from here to here, if it's gonna be an active energy anyway.
#2. Talk it out with someone you trust
Another strategy that I use when I am feeling anxious is talking it out with someone—-out loud. I really like to do this for a few reasons. I think that it kind of piggybacks on the reality checking coping skill. I can say out loud the reality checking that I'm doing and have a person close to me affirm those things and be like, “Yeah, you're right, it is a new group and of course you might have some fears and anxiety when you're dealing with new people, and that's okay.” Having somebody else affirm it so I don't stay stuck in my head and let myself try to talk myself out of my reality checking, it's easier for me to remain firm in those things when i have an outside source being like, “Yes, that is a perfectly sound reality check and it is likely correct.”
Another reason I like talking it out with people is that I am a firm believer in just getting shit out of our body that isn't feeling good to us, even our thinking and our feelings. Talking it out loud to another person gets us out of our head, especially if you're like me and you're dealing with overthinking and negative thought loops. The longer that I'm stuck in my head, the deeper down the rabbit hole I go. So, once I talk to somebody about it, I get it out of my head, and very often I find relief just in speaking it out loud and getting it out of my brain and my body.
Another good reason to talk to somebody about it is if you are having a hard time reality checking and you're just stuck in your anxiety and your fears or worries and feelings, the other person might be able to help do the reality checking for you. For me, when I have somebody else letting me know the reality of the situation, sometimes it's just a little bit easier to combat those negative thoughts when it’s somebody else saying it and not myself. I know when I'm in really deep anxiety, it's really easy for me to continue to tell myself that I don't know what I'm talking about and to talk down to myself and be mean to myself. So, if I'm in that kind of place, talking to somebody else can help me come out of it and not just solely relying on the unhelpful voice in my head.
#3. Breath work
My next anxiety coping skill is a little bit more physical: breath work. I love this. It might sound silly because we all breathe, but taking control of our breath, especially during an anxious time, can provide a lot of relief especially if we’re nearing something like a panic attack. I find that I can actually use breath work to help prevent a panic attack if I'm getting into the space of anxiety where i'm having a lot of physical symptoms. For me, when I have physical symptoms of anxiety, I have short shallow breath and my heart rate goes up. I sometimes also will start to physically shake. It's usually noticeable in my hands. So, when I'm having physical symptoms of anxiety, I can try a few different types of breath work depending on where I'm at.
Pick a number
One thing that I do is, I'll just pick a number. I like numbers because of tarot, there's different numbers that mean different things in tarot. So, if I'm in a space where I'm feeling I want that kind of support, I'll pick a number from tarot, let's say eight. For me, eight is a power number and I'll use the number eight to count my breath. Inhale eight, pause, and then exhale for eight seconds. Not only does it start to slow down the breath, but counting actually helps me distract whatever unhelpful thinking I was suffering with.
Do this as many times as you need to. You can set a timer, you can do it the number of times as the number you chose for the breath count, you could play a song while you do this. You can close your eyes or lower your gaze. I usually close my eyes because it helps me not get distracted from the breath work by the things I see around me.
Box breathing
Another type of breath work is called box breathing. This is where you use the same number of seconds that you're counting for each breath and pause. For example, you could inhale for four seconds, pause for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, pause for four seconds, and continue. It helps you have a steady breath and, again, I think that the counting really helps in distracting from the unhelpful thoughts. I’ve always seen the example of four or five seconds, but I don't think it hurts to have intention behind it if you want to choose a different number for a different reason.
You can do this as many times as you need. If you're having physical anxiety symptoms, it may be worth it to not put an end time on it and just do it until your breathing slows or until you stop shaking or your heart rate goes down. But if you want to have some intention behind it, you can absolutely choose a number of times that you're going to repeat it. Or, again, there's no reason why you couldn't put on a song and do it for the duration of the song.
No count deep, slow breaths
Another way you can do breath work if you are not in the space to be counting and you just kind of want to clear your mind, is to take deep, slow inhales and very slow exhales. You don't have to count, but usually when I do it like this, I’ll breathe very slowly all the way in as deeply as I can until I can't anymore. I'll pause for a few seconds, and then I'll exhale slowly as much as I can exhale until I can't exhale anymore. A lot of times when I do this kind of breath work, I'll actually listen to music because of the way my anxiety manifests, it's so much thinking, so sometimes silence doesn't work for me. So, I'll play a song and I'll just do this very slow inhale and exhale for the duration of a song.
The point of all of these is to slow your breath, so you don't want to be breathing in very deeply and harshly. You want to be breathing slowly all the way through. Something that helps me when I'm doing this type of breathing is I really pay attention to my chest and my belly. So, when I'm trying to inhale as much as I can, sometimes I'll put my hand on my chest as I inhale, and I'll feel my chest expanding so that I know I am inhaling as slowly and deeply as possible. When I stop being able to puff my chest up, I know I’m at the top of the inhale. And then I’ll feel the exhale in my belly and I'll feel like I've pushed out as much air as I can. When I feel that I pushed out all the air that I can, then I know I’m at the bottom of the exhale.
Combined somatic & CBT technique
The last technique I'm going to share is a combination of two different techniques that combines a physical and a mental technique. In one half of the technique is a somatic technique that a friend of mine actually told me about. It is moving your head to the right, then to the left, and then to the center. They explain that doing this just kind of makes them pause for a moment and helps them feel centered by adjusting the view and then eventually coming back to the center. Just like the breathing, we don't want to do this quickly or harshly, we want to do this slowly and gently.
And then I like to combine that with a technique that I think is from CBT, which is is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And this technique is another form of healthy distraction from the unhelpful thinking that's occurring during anxiety. So, what I will do is when I turn my head each way, I will pick an object and I will just describe it to death, every little thing that I see. And if there's a memory associated with it, I will also start thinking about that memory and just describing where I got or whatever. I really go all in and try to think of as much as I can, even beyond the descriptors. I really love bringing in the memories associated with items, especially in times of anxiety, which is kind of a negative feeling that can be painful. So, i really want to bring in joy and hope and optimism when I'm in those kinds of spaces.
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Yay! So, those are four anxiety coping skills that work for me. I promise you I'm not pulling this out of my ass. Even in my work, I don't like to share things that I'm not personally using or have used or have benefited from, or at the very least have heard from somebody else that it worked for them. These are legit, I do these almost on a daily basis sometimes, especially when I'm dealing with a lot of active anxiety. I'm really hoping that they can help you too. <3