If you’ve ever experienced overwhelming anxiety, you know it can feel horrible. I recommend working with a therapist to work on methods to reduce your anxiety long term, however I realize that in the meantime you need tools you can use on your journey to long term anxiety reduction. Here are 3 tips to reduce anxiety in the moment.

1. Get Present. When we panic or feel overwhelming anxiety, stress, or worry it is a response to a real or perceived threat. All too often in our everyday lives our safety is not truly in danger when we feel anxious but our “fight or flight” response to threats (perceived or real) makes us react in ways as if our lives were on the line (rapid heart beating, shortness of breath, freezing, etc). Finding ways to increase your feelings of groundedness and connection to the present moment, allows us to decipher real from perceived threats. One easy and quick way to get grounded in the present moment is to try and notice how many items in your present surroundings are red. Then repeat with another color. And so on until you feel more connected to present moment. Focusing on specific items in the room forces you to stay connected to were you truly are and reconnect with reality.
2. Release. Anxiety causes the body to tense and tighten, the breath to shorten or stop, and the mind to be flooded with fear. In the moment, one of the most important things to do to reduce anxiety is to release the tension it causes. The easiest way to do this is to take deep breaths. I like to tell clients to visualize their breath to allow even more connection to reestablishing normal breathing in the moment. Other ways to release such tension are physical movement like progressive muscle relaxation or stretching.
3. Accept it. Like quick sand sometimes the more we try to get out of our anxious state, the more anxious we feel. Instead of giving into the depseration to change the present state anxiety, accept it. By noticing how you feel without panicking to change it, it allows you to be an observer of your anxiety, possibly even learn from the experience, and let it pass naturally without fear of being consumed by it. A tip to facilitate accepting anxiety is to use a positive statement such as “Anxiety is a feeling, I have the power to endure it as it passes by”.

Hope these tips help! Anxiety doesn’t have to rule your life. Tips like these combined with personal development work like therapy can set you on your way to a life with a lot less anxiety.