
Mindfulness Techniques to Help With Anxiety
Anxiety is a feeling that can often be overwhelming. The feeling of fear, nerves or dread tends to be all consuming, not allowing the person to fully see, hear or feel the things around them.
Many people who deal with anxiety actually use the term “being mindful”, meaning they try to be both aware of their surroundings as well as their own feelings and emotions.
Pinpointing these surrounding elements can be a way for those who deal with anxiety to relax or be aware of triggers and what helps them get through an anxiety attack.
Meditation
Finding a peace within yourself as well as your surroundings is something that those who meditate try to focus on.
Meditation is a way to try and find a sense of calm and a clearer state of mind. Often with anxiety, your mind gets so full of emotions and thoughts and it can be very overwhelming and overstimulating.
Practicing meditation allows you to take time for yourself and focus on your feelings. It helps you connect with what your body needs as it reacts to stress and fear.
The practice of meditation can have many long term advantages such as helping you to recognize your triggers, help you develop coping mechanisms and to teach yourself to be less reactive. The latter being the most beneficial to many people.
As you sit and meditate, you think through how or why your anxiety came to be, this allows you to address the feelings and emotions when they eventually do arise again, but instead of launching into a panic attack, you can be mindful of the way your body is reacting, take a step back and allow yourself the peace of mind while you work through the best way to react to the situation.
Meditation has been around for thousands of years, even dating back to before 5,000 BCE, so clearly there is some science behind the technique and the lasting effects it has on someone.
Breathing
The idea of someone saying to you “just breathe” while having a panic attack can be annoying. The truth is, breathing actually is one of the most beneficial things to do while dealing with anxiety.
Anxiety attacks are the body going into fight-or-flight mode. When you allow yourself to take deep breaths while in this state, it tells your brain that you are safe and can help you relax.
It can also be a bit of a tease on your mind with pretending that you’re ok. If you try to stop the short breaths during a panic attack and focus on your breathing, it can help calm you down. This allows your brain and nervous system to clear and return to a more peaceful state.
The brain can be overwhelmed and too full when anxiety is present. The emotions can be too much, but taking deep and calculated breaths allows oxygen to get into the brain, essentially clearing out all those wild and erratic thoughts. Kind of like blowing out a candle.
Being present
“Take things one thing at a time.”
“Stay in the moment.”
“Focus on now.”
All of these sayings are ways people cope and handle anxiety.
The idea of staying focused on what is happening in that moment or that day, or even focusing on what only you can control, can significantly reduce anxiety.
A good percent of the time, anxiety is caused by overwhelming thoughts or feelings. Mostly about things we cannot control or things that could be, but haven’t happened yet.
Making sure that each and everyday you are aware of yourself and your actions is a start.
For example: When you’re reading a book, you are going to focus on the words right under your nose, rather than jumping ahead to another part. Otherwise you’ll spoil the ending or you’ll miss important details.
This is just like life. You want to focus on the moment you are in, especially if you cannot control the outcome of the scenario you are in.
This technique is a bit harder to master, since we as human beings are always wanting to be in control or want to know the next step. But that’s why it works.
It allows us to slow down and take life one step at a time. Therefore not allowing the anxiety the time or effort to build up and fester.
RAIN techniques
- Recognize:
Understand and recognize what is going on with both your mind and your body. Going through each point of your body and adjusting how you’re sitting, how you’re breathing or even how tensed up parts of your body are can give you a headstart on dealing with an anxiety attack.
The next part is to go through your mind, which can be a bit more tricky, especially in the midst of an anxiety attack. With all the jumbled up thoughts and emotions swarming your mind like a bunch of buzzing bees, the main goal is to group them up and take it one at a time.
Going through each thought and telling yourself which ones you can control in that moment and which ones you can’t is a great starting point. Even if it is that you are only able to control your breathing and nothing else. That is a start.
- Allow:
Sometimes society tells us that we have to hide our emotions or bottle them up for later. This is dangerous because those feelings and emotions can build up so much that that cap explodes off the bottle and the emotions and feelings come out in anxiety.
So feeling what you need to feel is sometimes what’s best.
After recognizing that you’re having an anxiety attack, it’s important to be kind to yourself. Allowing yourself to feel what’s happening can help calm you down.
Using your energy to finally allow the time and space your mind and body needs to feel a reprieve will allow the healing process to begin.
- Investigate:
Remember how I said to be kind to yourself? Well, that comes in handy with this next step.
Investigating where the emotions and feelings have come from often happens after the anxiety attack. It is like a mini reflection.
Look back and try to figure out what triggered the anxiety as well as look at the main thoughts you had. These few simple steps can lead a trail right back to the root of the problem.
And that leads us to our final step.
- Nurture:
Knowing where it came from and what caused the anxiety allows us to take the time in our everyday lives to love ourselves enough to heal.
Just like people say, “we learn from our mistakes”. We can also learn from our anxieties.
When we go through the investigation phase, it gives us the chance to see what triggered the emotions. Once that trigger is found, the nurture step helps us to look to the future and either avoid or approach the trigger differently, allowing for a different outcome.
Handling anxiety is all about healing, but healing is not a one step kind of solution. It takes time and grace with yourself to let it happen.
5-4-3-2-1 technique
Often, we don’t realize how much our surroundings mean to us, until we need them.
This technique allows the person who is going through anxiety to center themselves and be more mindful of where they are.
The technique goes like this:
- Name 5 things you can see.
- Name 4 things you can touch.
- Name 3 things you can hear.
- Name 2 things you can smell.
- Name 1 thing you can taste.
The idea is that naming, looking around and touching things surrounding you, helps you to get you out of your own head. Grounding you back to where you are.
Many find that sitting on the ground during this technique can help as well.
It can also be helpful to have someone guiding you through this process. Having someone ask you to name these things can be easier than remembering the list on your own. If you’re by yourself, writing it down on your phone or on accessible paper can help.
Remember anxiety is not something that controls you. You control it. Focus on being mindful and aware of what is happening to your mind and body is a key factor to mastering anxiety.
Mindfulness has many different elements. You just have to be willing to try out different techniques and tricks to see what works for you and your anxiety journey.

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