What is the best thing to do mentally when you find yourself getting sucked into an anxiety spiral in your relationship or in your day-to-day life?
Do nothing mentally.
Do nothing mentally, and try to regulate your nervous system physically.
This means getting out of your head and back into your body.
Before we go further, please note if you have any severe trauma or PTSD that cause you to fear getting into your body, I recommend working with a trauma therapist or somatic practitioner and not doing it on your own.
So what the heck does getting back into your body even mean?
Backing up a bit, to get a little nerdy here—let’s talk nervous systems.
Our nervous system is the part of our body that coordinates our behaviors and transmits signals between different body areas.
We have two parts of our nervous system—sympathetic, and parasympathetic.
Our sympathetic nervous system is involved when we're in fight or flight mode, aka when we're highly activated, and adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones) are pumping through our body.
Our parasympathetic nervous system is involved when we're "resting and digesting"—when we're feeling more calm and grounded, our blood pressure slows down, etc.
When we're feeling really anxious, our sympathetic nervous system is the one that is activated, and we need to shift into activating our parasympathetic nervous system, the one that allows us to rest.
When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, you'll know—it's the moments of having the tight chest, the lurching stomach, the fast heart rate, the sweaty palms. in this state, trying to think your way out simply doesn't help.
And when your body is in fight or flight mode, its only focus is on finding safety and protection, not having a back and forth inner dialogue…
Trying to think your way out of anxiety only further perpetuates the anxiety cycle that you're experiencing.
Whether that cycle started as anxious thoughts affecting anxious feelings affecting thoughts affecting feelings—or the opposite, anxious feelings affecting anxious thoughts affecting feelings affecting thoughts—the way to interrupt this cycle is through connecting to the body.
So how do we do that?
What does connecting to our body even mean?
I say it a lot on social media, but let's break it down in a little more detail so you feel confident trying for yourself.
In my experience, getting out of my head and back into my body is when:
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I no longer feel like there are a million things going on up in my mind
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The “problem” I needed to solve did not feel as urgent or big
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My body relaxes and I feel more present in the current moment, not looking back into the past or ahead into the future
There are many ways to get out of our head and back into our body.
Some of them seem simple—almost TOO simple—but that’s the magic with these strategies and practices.
They’re not necessarily hard to do, they’re just sometimes hard to remember to do in the moment, or hard to do consistently.
First, I will start with two ways that are always available to you at any given moment.
These are the breath, and the five senses.
(or however many senses are available to you).
Let's start with breath.
The reason breath is a big deal to help us get back into the body is because deep breathing not only gives us a movement/rhythm to focus on, but it also regulates our nervous system.
Breathing through our diaphragm slows our heart rate, lowers our blood pressure, and helps stimulate our parasympathetic nervous systems, which bring us into a calmer state.
And as we learned, if the parasympathetic nervous which allows us to rest is active, the sympathetic nervous system (which is involved when our body is in fight or flight) becomes less active.
It's important to deactivate the highly reactive sympathetic nervous system through tools that your body can easily understand, such as breath.
We don't want a 10-step solution during a moment of high stress, but rather a simple one that we can use at any moment, such as the breath.
There are many breathing techniques you can try.
I highly recommend trying the Oak app (free) which has 3 different types of breathing exercises included in it.
You can also lovingly place one hand on your stomach and one hand on your chest and feel your body breathing in and out until you notice yourself slowing down and feeling more safety.
For any breathing technique you use, try deeply breathing in and out with your stomach expanding, not your chest.
This ensures it’s a deep diaphragm breath and not a shallow chest breath (which can actually make you feel more anxious…shallow breathing is a sign that we are not relaxed).
Additionally, try to allow thoughts to come and go without feeling frustrated that they're showing up.
There is no right or wrong way to breathe, and when you're frustrated at yourself for thoughts coming up, that gets you back into the mind not focusing on connecting to the body.
You may need to spend 5, or 10, or even 15 minutes using a breathing technique before you notice it beginning to help regulate your nervous system. That's okay.
I am a big believer that it's better to get into a more calm and grounded state and take a few extra minutes to move on with my day rather than trying to push through a to-do list when I am feeling anxious and distracted.
And if for whatever reason, coming back to your body from the mind does not feel safe—please don't force it.
I will say it again, if you have any severe trauma or PTSD that cause you to fear getting into your body, I recommend working with a trauma therapist or somatic practitioner and not doing this on your own.
Another way to get out of your mind and back into your body and into the present moment is by using your senses.
There is a technique I want to share with you called the 5,4,3,2,1 technique, where you use your 5 senses to connect back into the present moment and your body.
At any time when you notice your thoughts racing or feel your body and mind becoming anxious, you can look for:
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5 things you see around you
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4 things you can hear
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3 things you can touch (and this can include your clothes and body)
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2 things you can smell
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1 thing you can taste (maybe a cold sip of water, or a hot tea)
By using this technique (and repeating it as many times as you need to in the moment), you come back to the present and refocus on the space and moment that’s happening right here right now, not a future worry or a past experience.
Again, this technique seems simple, but it’s literally forcing us to not stay up in the mind and come back to what we’re doing in the moment. Don’t knock it til’ you try it! And if you’ve tried it a few times and aren’t seeing results quite yet—try it a few hundred more before you decide it’s not for you.
It's not always easy to release a rumination cycle. Many of us have had past experiences or traumas that are with us constantly. It's not always as simple as just saying "stop thinking about them!"—right?
However, what if instead of “stop thinking about them” we shifted into “start re-connecting to your body and to the present moment” instead?
That feels more attainable to me.
Because we can choose to interrupt the pattern and habit of staying up in our minds.
We can choose to notice when our mind feels overly-active and pause and reset.
We can choose to take a break from the mental ping-pong and try something new.
Our anxiety tries to trick us into thinking it is in control and that we are powerless. But that isn't true.
Yes, we can't just magically snap our fingers and have it go away overnight, but we can notice when anxiety is high and use it as a cue to reconnect to our body so that the mind's endless racing is forced to slow its roll.
We can't prevent our anxious thoughts from happening, but we can notice them in the moment and shift to using our breath or our 5 senses to re-center and move forward differently.
If this is your first time hearing to get out of your mind and into your body, or if you've tried it a few times and still haven't gotten the hang of it—just know that this is likely not something that instantly clicks and you never have to practice it again.
I still am working on getting out of my mind and back into my body regularly, and it's something I have to remind myself of often: that I can't think my way out of my anxiety.
It takes time, it takes practice, and it takes consistency, but we absolutely can shift out of the anxiety spirals that overtake us if we stop letting them run rampant and use the tools we have (such as breath and our senses) right in front of us.
Whether you choose to use your breath, your 5 senses, going for a walk without screens, turning off your phone for a few hours and drawing or painting, doing a stretching video, dancing, shaking your body out and releasing the energy stored up within, vacuuming, anything to get up and moving—do something. Try it out and see how it goes. And then keep trying again and again.
There is no right or wrong way to get out of the mind, but you'll know you've shifted into a more regulated nervous system. You can feel it.
And I’ll end with a loving reminder that in moments of anxiety, I know it can be hard to remember what to do. If you feel like anxiety takes over and you don’t know how to handle it, save this article to a note in your phone, write your preferred method of connecting back to your body on a sticky note where you can see it, or set reminders on your calendar to reconnect to your body throughout the day.
You’ve got this, my friends.
I am rooting for you!
