Anxiety is not all bad. We need it to survive. In ordinary situations, anxiety can move you to meet deadlines, obey the law, avoid hurting others, and take other actions necessary to avoid negative consequences. In extraordinary situations, anxiety can save your life.
If you are hiking in the woods and see a mountain lion, your anxiety sets into play physical reactions designed for survival. You become hyperaware of your surroundings. A surge of adrenaline gives you energy to flee. Your heart rate and breathing increase. Your mind screams at you to flee, fight, or freeze, whichever will keep you alive. You are prepared to act.
These responses are adaptive in many circumstances, but what if your anxiety is the product of your active mind, or worries of an imagined future, or memories of a traumatic past? Your body goes through the same motions, even though there actually is no real danger in the moment.
An important way to calm your physical response is to ground yourself in your body in the present moment. To bring yourself back to here and now, try anything that increases your awareness of your body as you experience it at this moment.
Grounding Techniques
These are called grounding techniques, because they ground you in the present moment as it is now, not as you fear it to be. (Of course, I am assuming that you are safe in the present moment. If not, please take action to protect yourself. If you are safe, remind yourself of that. You can even say aloud, “I’m safe right now in this moment.”)
Many grounding techniques are described online and in books, and I include a few powerful ones below. It is important to note that, even as you try to remain focused on your physical sensations or immediate surroundings in the moment, inevitably your mind will wander. You will get lost in your thoughts. When this happens, return to your present focus without judgment.
1. Observe Your Breath
Notice your breath as it enters your mouth or nose. Follow it as it travels to your lungs. Feel your chest or belly move in response. Make note now of what happens when the breath leaves your body and another enters. Is there any overlap? How much space exists between the exhalation and inhalation? Observe the many aspects of your breath again and again. You might even count your breaths, or picture them as a specific color or as a wind that passes in and out of you.
2. Focus on Physical Sensations
Place your feet on the ground and sit up straight if you are sitting; if you are standing, place your hands on a surface. Note how it feels to be planted where you are. How do your feet feel? Your butt? What other physical sensations do you observe? If your heart is racing, note what that feels like without attaching any thoughts about its significance. Observe as the pace of your heartbeat fluctuates. If you do observe with judgment, try to watch the judgment as it passes through your head, without holding on to it, encouraging it, or giving it a hospitable place to grow. Be a witness to your body.
3. Engage Your Senses
Dialectical behavior therapy calls this skill “soothing the five senses”: vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. You can do this in many ways. One example is to get a piece of ice and hold it in your hand, noting the sensations. (Be careful not to hold it too long in one place, to avoid frostbite!) Take a soft fabric like fleece or velvet, or an abrasive material like a rock or sandpaper, and run your fingers over it. Notice how it feels on your fingers. Now run it softly along other parts of your body, like your arms or legs. Pay attention to the sensations. Focus solely on them. Do similar exercises that engage your sense of smell (for example, smell a piece of food or flower), taste (have a piece of candy or something salty and pay full attention to the experience), hearing (you can listen to a favorite song or even a song you detest, to give you something to focus on), and sight (focus on specific objects and describe them in detail).
4. Pay Keen Attention to Your Surroundings
Count all the instances of a specific color in the room. Notice where straight lines occur. (One mathematically inclined person I know counts the right angles in the room.) Listen for sounds. Take in the smell, if there is one. This grounding technique can incorporate your five senses, as well, while using only what is immediately in your presence.
5. Focus on an Object’s Physical Movement
Run water in the sink and watch as it leaves the faucet, hits the surface, creates bubbles, circles down the drain. Intensely focus on how it changes in appearance as it moves. Or you might light a candle and observe the flame’s dance, or watch leaves rustle on a tree. Whatever moves, observe all the facets of its movement: the changes it undergoes, the sights you see, the sounds it makes. When you look closely at something in movement, you might be surprised by what you see.
6. Practice Mindfulness
All of the above exercises encourage mindfulness of the present moment and whatever you observe in that moment. You can also try activities that focus more fully on fostering mindfulness. These include meditation, mindful eating, mindful walking, and yoga. A great place to learn more about the practice of mindfulness is Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, The Miracle of Mindfulness.
7. Exercise
Taking a vigorous walk or jog can help you release some of the anxious energy that bounds inside your body. While exercising, try focusing on the physical sensations you experience.
The Relaxation Response
Many of the above techniques for physically coping with anxiety can help trigger a relaxation response, which in turn calms your body. For more information on techniques to ground you in your body in the present moment, try The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, by Martha Davis, PhD, Elizabeth Robbins Eshelman, MSW, and Matthew McKay, PhD.
What are Your Ways of Coping?
Do you have methods of coping with anxiety that are not listed here? Please feel free to share! You can submit a comment in the box further below.
© Copyright 2015 Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW, All Rights Reserved. Written for www.speakingofsuicide.com. All photos purchased from Fotolia.com.
My grandfather and my father both had suffered from acute anxiety. But I didn’t know that when, as a college student, I felt I would drown in it. I was driven to excel, but I felt like a fraud. Although I made excellent grades, only I knew that it was from herculean study efforts. That was all that separated me from my slovenly, profane frat brothers, destined for failure. Walking across the quad to take an exam in another impossibly complicated subject, my gut again churned, heart raced, and I felt the only solution was escape – I could die. I caught myself, literally stopping in my tracks. I looked at the quad around me – beautiful, trees blowing in the wind, blue sky, the green of spring everywhere. I may fail an exam but I’ll walk back across this quad and all that is beautiful and peaceful will still be here. “Here” is where I choose to live. That moment 40 years ago, sustains me still.
Jimmy,
What a beautiful testament to the power of living in the present moment, mindfully. Thank you for sharing.
When my anxiety becomes unbearable and I find myself in panic attack territory, the only strategy which has ever helped is to sing aloud to music. It’s not a perfect solution and it doesn’t magically make my panic disappear, but it does curb the intensity of the anxiety somewhat and gives me a chance to avoid a complete emotional breakdown. Possibly it has something to do with the deep breathing required to sing aloud, along with the focus necessary to remember the lyrics and stay in key. Just focussing on my breathing alone during a panic attack doesn’t do anything for me, and nor do “grounding” type exercises where you’re supposed to count objects around you etc. But singing combines both breathing and focus with music, which most of us respond to in a positive way when we hear it. So it works better for me than anything else I’ve tried.
Hey guys, I’m Jessica, I’m 19, and I want to help, I know I’m young and may not understand everything you as an individual are going through but I want to listen and help in any way I can, even if it’s just being there for you or your friend in dark times. I don’t judge, I won’t belittle what you’re going through, because it’s all real to you and I understand that.
A little about me, I come from an abusive family, I’ve been in many relationships, some were good, one was physically abusive and one was emotionally and mentally abusive. I’ve been sexual assaulted, had my best friend commit suicide, and just recently overcame a kind of anorexia/bulimia. Now I don’t say all this to get your sympathy, maybe I can grab the attention of a fellow sufferer and help. Anyway, please, if you need support or a listening ear, email wesurvivetolive@gmail.com
I’d love to hear from you,
Jessie
having gums with different tastes but you like.Then choice one of them without looking whenever feel stress so much then you chew a gum that you don’t know the taste it helps very much because you concentrate to something else unwillingly .
drinking water is useful,too
for me these are a rapid way in front of others
I have wanted to kill myself for a long time. I will eventually. I feel like there is no reason or logic that can save a truly suicidal person. Or maybe it is just that I have been in the battle for so long that it seems no solution is forthcoming. I have never attempted suicide, but I have held a knife to my wrist on several occasions over the past 20+ years. Sometimes I wonder, what life is, who the people in it are, what they are, why they are, why I am. And then I realize that to wonder about it is to validate it, and if there is one thing I think about life, it is that it is invalid. It is a null condition. There are no answers, no reasons, and no purpose to which we can strive. The universe is null. There is nothing to consider. It is a broken riddle. A puzzle where some of the pieces can be fit together, but not all. In other words, it is a trick. I will tell you this, there is always a voice, from life, from inside, from somewhere, a feeling, a guilt, a hope, a fear, a desire, a nagging doubt, that will always crop up to dissuade you from what you know is the truth. The truth is, my friend, if you read this when it is your turn, none of those things are real, only you are real to you.
Hello Shonbohn,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You capture well the ambivalence that often accompanies suicidal thinking. A person can want intensely to die and, at the same time, experience as you put it so well “a voice, from life, from inside, from somewhere, a feeling, a guilt, a hope, a fear, a desire, a nagging doubt, that will always crop up to dissuade you….”
Note that I put ellipses where you put “from what you know is the truth.” I do not think it is so clear-cut that suicidal thoughts are truth. Otherwise, why the nagging doubt?
I urge you to talk with someone about your suicidal thoughts. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a good place to start if you don’t feel comfortable sharing with family or friends. The Lifeline’s number is 1.800.273.8255 (TALK). I have listed other resources for help with suicidal thoughts in the Resources section.
Good luck to you, Shonbohn, and I hope you are wrong when you say that you will eventually kill yourself!
I feel out of place, that I should have died a long time ago but something holds me in place. My family I suppose, but the older I get the more I feel I don’t belong here and my time is running out to be where I’m ment to be. I don’t know what I’m waiting on. Maybe for the feeling to pass. It causes me great anxiety/ depression. I have no peace at home or work currently and I can’t gain control of any aspect of life. I almost feel like I’m not a human and a lot of times invisible. I’m just waiting for my changing moment. Whatever that is. There is a voice though always reminding me of my never-ending responsibilities and how my family will blame themselves or follow in my footsteps and I don’t want them to feel like they have to do what momma just did. They can fight the urges for death and wait for it to come by nature or accidental disaster, spin the wheel and see which of the 3 will win. I’m still waiting.
Once again an excellent article Stacey! I’ve excerpted the first paragraph as a teaser on my forum ( http://www.chronicsuicidesupport.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2648 )
Thank you very much, Alfred, for the compliment and the share! I appreciate it.