Do you ever find yourself stuck inside your mind, unable to hear anything above the noise of your anxious thoughts? Anxiety has a tendency to turn up the volume of your internal dialogue and blackout the rest of the world around you, feeding itself off of hypotheticals of its own creation. By building the skill of staying in the present moment and focusing more on what’s happening in front of you in real time, you can help yourself to reduce anxiety and avoid getting stuck in your head. You can begin to build this skill simply by engaging in mindfulness exercises, which have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing anxiety, even outside of the context of formal therapy (Blanck et al., 2018).
These self-administered strategies are particularly helpful when we’re alone with our anxiety and thought spirals. Although turning to social support and activities can be really helpful, those options might not always be immediately available. Here are some examples of exercises you can try right here, right now. First, it may be beneficial to practice noticing the emotion and its level of intensity. By recognizing whether your anxiety level is low, moderate, or high, you can better select which exercise will be the most helpful.
5-4-3-2-1
Anxiety Level: Low to Moderate
One exercise to help bring yourself back into the moment is the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, where you identify a certain number of items that correspond with each of the 5 senses. The goal of this exercise is to notice what’s going on around you at a deeper level. While it seems simple, you may be surprised by those extra moments of thoughts required to identify things that you are experiencing right now.
First, you take a breath and identify 5 things you can see around you:
I can see my laptop screen, my coffee mug, some dust in the corner, cars driving by outside, and the wind blowing in the trees.
Then, you identify 4 things that you can feel:
I can feel the cool of the air conditioning on my skin, the texture of my clothing, the clamminess of my hands, and a notification on my phone.
Next, identify 3 things that you can hear:
I can hear the hum of the air conditioner, a delivery being dropped off, and my stomach growling.
Then, name 2 things that you can smell:
I can smell someone’s lunch across the room, and the scent of the office’s cleaning products.
Finally, name 1 things that you can taste:
I can still taste this morning’s coffee – maybe I could use a mint.
Worry Time
Anxiety Level: Moderate
If engaging in mindfulness exercises is challenging or uncomfortable for you, another way you can turn down the volume of those anxious thoughts is actually by turning them up for a little bit. Worry time is an intervention borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy that sets aside a dedicated amount of time for a person to let their anxious thoughts run wild. Sit yourself down in a chair or a corner and set a timer for 15 minutes to focus on your anxious thoughts. During this time, you don’t try to change your thoughts, reason your way out of them, or distract yourself – you just honor this space for all of your anxious thoughts.
When you’re finished, continue with your day. When new anxious thoughts inevitably come up, remind yourself that you just spent 15 uninterrupted minutes worrying – that was plenty of time to dedicate to anxiety for the day. If it’s something really important to worry about, the thoughts will still be there when you do worry time again tomorrow. “Postponing” worries in this way has been found to reduce the frequency and length of time spent worrying when practiced for between 1 and 4 weeks (Dippel et al., 2023).
TIPP
Anxiety level: High
When anxiety becomes highly distressful, mindfulness and worry time might not feel as effective to counter that loud inner voice and physical reactions. Incorporating intense sensory experiences can better target and reduce the uncomfortable level of arousal in your body, providing immediate and stronger relief. You can do this by playing with temperature (T), intense exercise (I), paced breathing (P), and progressive muscle relaxation (P), a collection of strategies referred to as TIPP (Linehan, 2014).
T: Temperature
When emotions are high, we can literally “cool down” by exposing ourselves to colder temperatures. This could include splashing your face with cold water, taking a cold shower, holding an ice cube in your hands, or taking a brief walk on a chilly day.
I: Intense Exercise
When it feels like all your energy is being used up on your thought spirals and emotions, you can redirect that energy using intense exercise. Try engaging in 10 minutes of high intensity exercise, such as running, doing burpees, or even turning on some music and having a solo dance party.
P: Paced Breathing
Breathe in deeply through your nose for 4 seconds so that you feel your belly fill up with air, then breathe out more slowly through your mouth for 6 seconds. Repeat this cycle for 2 minutes.
P: Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Progressive muscle relaxation is the process of tensing and relaxing the muscles in your body one-by-one to forcibly induce a sense of relaxation. There are numerous step-by-step guides on YouTube you can follow along with (view example).
Getting out of your head and back in the moment will help you engage more actively with your work, improve your relationship dynamics, and help you see things as they really are, not as the worst-case scenario. So, the next time your anxiety is being too loud, try out making space for it or stopping it in its tracks and see if you can provide yourself with some much-needed relief.
Reflection Questions
- How often do you find yourself getting stuck inside your mind? How do you usually get out of it?
- What does it mean to you to be “grounded”, “present”, or “mindful”?
- How can you integrate one of these practices into your daily life when you’re feeling anxious?
