How to Deal with Anxiety: Habits That Can Help

Imagine a train racing towards you at top speed, and there you are, stuck on the tracks, a human target. Your heart races, your muscles tense, your body starts shaking, and your breath becomes labored as worry consumes your mind and manifests throughout your body. Intense, right? For the nearly 20 percent of people in the U.S. affected by an anxiety disorder every year, this is what anxiety can feel like: Anxiety is a dreadful feeling of unease and worry, perpetuated by fear, that often comes with repetitive negative thinking.

As you’re experiencing it, you can have difficulty concentrating and making decisions. Even if you haven’t been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, chances are you’ve felt the heart pound at some point and know the struggle is real.

What’s Going On In The Brain?
In states of anxiety, the brain is affected by stress hormones like cortisol and excitatory neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine. These factors can lead to a decreased ability to regulate negative emotions, excessive negative thinking, and difficulty relaxing,” he says.

At the same time, the amygdala, or the emotion center of the brain, becomes overactive, which makes it harder for higher brain centers (those in charge of cognitive functions like learning and memory) to regulate emotional and physiologic states to calm down mentally and physically.

The amygdala decides what emotions to give you from moment to moment by providing a constant threat assessment about your environment. When it determines something isn’t dangerous, it does nothing and you feel calm. When it looks at something it perceives as dangerous, it rings an alarm to warn you about the danger and motivates you to do something about it—that’s what anxiety is, it’s the alarm system.

For someone with a fear of dogs, for example, when they see a dog, the amygdala rings the alarm and tells them the dog is dangerous, and the person becomes anxious. That motivates them to get away from the dog. When the danger is gone, the alarm shuts off and the anxiety goes from high to low.

As humans we are wired to repeat actions that make us feel good and stop actions that make us feel bad. Because the anxiety went from high to low by running away from the dog, this kind of avoidance behavior becomes reinforced and we’re more likely to repeat the same behavior the next time we see a dog. It’s an evolutionary response; the body says, ‘anxiety kept me safe, I better get anxious again.’”

Why Does Anxiety Keep Coming Back?
When the body experiences symptoms of anxiety, the brain interprets these signals from the body as cause for concern, worsening anxiety by creating a vicious cycle. The more anxious we get, the more nervous we feel; the more nervous we feel, the more anxious we get.

The important thing to know is not why you have anxiety in the first place, but what’s maintaining it now. The basic idea is short-term avoidance of anxiety leads to long-term maintenance of anxiety. When someone tries to make themselves feel better in the moment (avoiding a dog), it guarantees more anxiety the next time they’re in a similar situation.

How to Calm Anxiety When It Arises
By practicing a few helpful strategies on the regular, when a bout of anxiety strike, you’ll be more likely to get in the habit of doing them automatically—and dial down your angst.

1. Go for a change of scenery: Rather than sitting at home, go out for a brisk walk. In many cases, anxiety creates a rigid mindset in which it seems like nothing can change; doing something different can help with your cognitive flexibility to shift gears. Think of it is stretching before a workout.
   
2. Chew gum: Sounds nuts, right? We know dentists recommend chewing sugarless gum after meals to reduce plaque, but now, research shows popping in a piece may also help reduce anxiety. Scientists aren’t exactly sure why, but they believe it’s because the act of chewing increases blood flow to the brain and may lower cortisol levels.  
   
3. Accept the angst:  When you’re feeling anxious, instead of practicing avoidance behaviors (running away from the dog) or over-analyzing the fear in your head (what happens if the dog bites me?) allow the uncertainty to be there and leave those worry questions unanswered, I believe to that when you open yourself up to ambiguity it gives you exposure to uncertainty without avoidance, and the brain eventually learns uncertainty isn’t actually dangerous. 
   
4. Impermanence: The Buddhist concept that in the moment whatever we are experiencing thinking and feeling will not last. Our feelings, whether they are positive or negative will not last, because our emotional state is always shifting, it is fluid, not static.
   
5. Come back to the present moment: Let’s say you’re in the middle of reading a book and suddenly your mind wanders and you start worrying, “What if I don’t have enough money for retirement.” This is where mindfulness comes in. You need to stop putting work into the thought and come back to what you’re doing in the present—reading a book. It’s about letting the thought go, which is different from avoiding it, so you ultimately become desensitized to it.
   
6. Exercise: According to research, it really can do wonders for the mind—from helping the brain better cope with stress to releasing endorphins, natural painkilling chemicals in the brain, which improve sleep and reduces stress. Get moving, even a 15-minute home dance session a day to your favorite tracks can improve your anxious mood.
   
7. Self-Talk: Thoughts are the things that we say to ourselves without speaking out loud (self-talk). We can have many thoughts every hour of the day. We all have our own way of thinking about things, and how we think has a big effect on how we feel. When we think that something bad will happen – such as being bitten by a dog – we feel anxious. For example, imagine that you are out for a walk and you see a dog. If you think the dog is dangerous and will bite, you will feel scared. However, if you think the dog is cute, you will feel calm.
   

If you or someone you know is experiencing anxiety there are many ways one can learn to overcome chronic anxiety.

Thomas Kessler, LMFT, RAS
415-454-8931
[email protected]
www.thomkesslertherapist.com



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