Helpful Tools For Coping With Anxiety Part 1, As A Licensed Therapist

“I don't believe in coping with anxiety, I believe in healing it.”

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. I find that somewhat useful, but we'll start there. In my experience, at it's core, is your body experiencing a threat response without the actual threat. When working with clients, I've found that their anxiety is always present as an appropriate response to trauma that's been taken out of context. Let's think of it this way - if you grew up in a household where adults didn't communicate and regularly went from neutral to raging, it would benefit you to constantly be thinking of what could come next and what you'd do. It would benefit you to constantly be scanning their emotional state and making their happiness your responsibility. It would benefit you to think of the worst case scenario all the time.

Because the brain holds onto what it deems important (necessary for survival), it holds onto these survival strategies, even when the environment changes. This is likely why you experience anxiety - you developed these skills because you needed them at one time, and your brain went "Well damn, these worked so well I'm gonna keep using them for everything," even when the same threat is no longer present. Mind loses the ability to discern when danger is and isn't present, it just defaults to "always danger." And, because survival mode makes everything feel threatening, and mind believes that keeps them safe when danger is present (and when you're in a situation where abuse is present, or chaos or neglect it does) then it holds onto that too. Hence, anxiety. Anxiety is a set of survival mechanisms taken out of context.

Why "coping with anxiety" is the wrong answer.

Here's my issue with "coping" rhetoric. It teaches you that anxiety is something you can't do anything about, and the best you can hope for is to make it suck a little less. Which... no thank you. Anxiety is not a death sentence, you can heal it. Will worry or nerves or fear go away entirely? No, and we don't want them to. Emotions are valuable information, and eliminating the isn't possible but learning to stop letting them take over is. Coping with something means you are powerless against it, which isn't the case with anxiety at all.

I prefer to heal it. I prefer to teach people how to feed helpful thoughts and ignore unhelpful ones. I prefer to teach people how to use discernment and to be able to accurately assess a threat level. This is a process I go through with all of my clients, since they're all working on healing trauma to some degree. Trauma leaves a lot of clues, and anxiety is one of them.

What does healing anxiety look like?

Healing anxiety is a lot of different skills rolled into one. Imagine a wrap with the following ingredients:

Brain Rewiring - what thoughts you give attention to, your language, how you perceive your surroundings and other's behaviors, learning to think clearly when activated.

Emotional Regulation - learning to be clear and present when activated, the ability to assess emotions and let them be felt without being kidnapped, using emotions for feedback.

Heal Trauma - in order to heal anxiety, trauma must be healed as well. If mind continues to perceive that traumatizing events haven't been fully processed, it will continue subconsciously putting energy into survival.

Problem Solving - the ability to think logically and accurately assess situations, to be able to solve potential issues, to know which problems to put energy into.

There are plenty of blog posts that will have you track when you feel anxious, use apps to journal or tell you to fight with your anxiety. I haven't found any of those to be useful because it feeds the wrong thing. I don't want you to put energy into your anxiety, when its so much more useful to put energy into healing and rewiring.

My favorite tools for healing anxiety.

These are the tools I use most often for healing anxiety, in no particular order. Choose which one resonates the most with you, and start there.

Change your language - Stop saying the word anxiety or anxious, and replace that word with what you're actually feeling. Are you feeling nervous, worries, scared, concerned? The issue with calling all of those anxiety is that when you do, mind perceives that your entire day is spent anxious, so it amplifies data about anxiety and pretty soon anxious becomes your identity. If you continually say "I'm anxious," mind perceives anxiety as something permanently part of you, like being 5'0. Replace that with "I'm feeling ....." and watch your body unclench.

Feed your courage, starve your worries/fears - Brains are wired to pay attention to threats, because minds first objective is survival. This was no problem when humans had actual life threatening situations, or depending on your circumstances, when you had literal life threatening situations. As things become safer, mind doesn't magically stop throwing you fears unless you intentionally starve your fears. Most of my clients spend all their time problem solving absolutely ridiculous scenarios, and as soon as they realize how bananas those scenarios are and find out they can just ignore those fears, they experience so much freedom. So if a fear doesn't hit the 80% threshold, its not worth problem solving.

Play Armageddon - This is a game I made up that goes like this. Think of the absolute worst case scenario. Now imagine that happens but stay grounded, then what will you do? Lets say you're afraid of flying because you're afraid the plane will go crash. Let's say it crashes, worst case scenario you die. Ok, then what. Well, technically now it's not your problem so there's nothing to be done. Let's say then your fear is that you'll die without telling people you love them. Ok, you can do something about that, tell people you love them before you fly.

The 80% threshold - If a scenario isn't 80% likely to happen, do not problem solve it. It makes sense to pack extra underwear in your carryon right, but it doesn't make sense to attach anti plane missiles on your roof just because planes fall out of the sky at a 1/11,000,000 chance. Your brain will throw you endless scenarios because it's trying to keep you safe, but honestly most of them are silly. If there's not an 80% chance, ignore that thought.

"There's nothing I need to do about that." - When ignoring feels hard or mind is being particularly persistent, tell mind "there's nothing I need to do about that" and it will shift gears. This may take a few times, but my clients have found it very helpful.

Play - That's it. Play. Do things you enjoy, with no end goal. Go be silly. Even better if you do it with people. Go get Uno. Go play mini golf. Go get some bubbles and blow them.

Get into your body - Anxiety puts your up in your head all the time and pulls you out of your body. Drop into your body. You can do this via physical sensations (think hot/cold shower, ice bath, sitting in the sun and feeling the heat on your skin, controlled pain via working out, balance poses, dance). You can also do something like a body scan (here, here).

Get into nature - Trauma disconnects you from your body and surroundings, and anxiety perpetuates it. Returning to nature is one way to come into the present moment. Go stick your hands in dirt (ideally your own, but maybe you have a super chill neighbor). Get a couple plants. Watch or play with animals, they're always present. Rub some leaves on your face (just make sure they're not poisonous fam). Lay down in the grass and watch clouds go by.

How long does it take?

How long is a piece of string? It depends, right? Yes. Behavior change takes time, and the more you practice the better you get.

If these helped you, please share it on instagram or send it to someone you know who could benefit, and let other's know what's possible for them too!

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