How to Calm Anxiety in the Moment

In recent articles, I’ve covered many aspects of understanding anxiety- knowing what is going on and why is important before taking action to interrupt the pattern. Today I’m covering how to calm anxiety in the moment so that you feel calmer and better in yourself.

Many of my anxiety clients in Ely tell me that when their anxiety suddenly rises, it can be difficult to think about anything else. It can feel as though your mind and body are working against you.

Your heart may start racing. Your breathing changes. Your stomach churns. Your muscles tense and your thoughts seem to speed up at exactly the same time. You may worry about what is happening and whether something is wrong.

Then another thought appears: “How do I make this stop?”

After helping hundreds of people with anxiety in Ely, Newmarket and online, one thing I’ve noticed is that people often become frightened not only by whatever originally triggered their anxiety, but by the anxious thoughts and physical sensations themselves.

You notice your heart beating and worry about why it’s happening. You feel dizzy and wonder whether you’re going to faint. You realise you’re anxious and start worrying that you’re losing control. Before long, you’re anxious about being anxious.

I know that pattern well because I used to do exactly the same thing during my own years struggling with anxiety. When anxiety appeared, I wanted it gone immediately. I’d monitor how I felt, try to work out why it was happening and desperately search for something that would make me feel normal again.

The difficulty is that trying desperately to get rid of anxiety can inadvertently tell your brain that the anxiety itself is dangerous. You add another layer of anxiety to what you’re already feeling.

A more helpful goal is to learn how to respond differently when anxiety appears, helping your mind and body settle rather than adding another layer of fear.

Here are some practical things you can do to help calm anxiety in the moment.

 

Quick Summary

When anxiety rises, your body’s fight-or-flight response has become activated. Your aim isn’t to battle with the anxiety or try and force it to disappear immediately. Instead, you can help your nervous system settle while reducing the thoughts and behaviours that may be feeding the anxiety.

Things that can help include:

• slowing your breathing
• bringing your attention back to what’s happening around you
• reminding yourself what anxiety is
• reducing catastrophic “what if?” thinking
• allowing uncomfortable sensations to settle rather than continually checking them
• moving your body when appropriate
• stopping yourself from constantly testing whether you feel better yet

One of the most useful changes is learning: “I don’t have to make this disappear immediately. I know what’s happening and I know how to respond.”

That takes away some of the fear that can keep anxiety going.

 

Related Anxiety Resources

• Anxiety Support Hub
• Physical Anxiety Symptoms
• How to Calm a Panic Attack in the Moment
• Why Anxiety Isn’t Going Away On Its Own
• Hypnotherapy Reviews in Ely

 

 

How to Calm Anxiety

Here are some ways to help you calm anxiety in the moment.

 

1. Slow Your Breathing

When anxiety rises, your breathing can become faster and shallower. Your body is preparing you to respond to what it believes is a threat. Your heart rate increases, your muscles prepare for action and your breathing changes to support that response. Every part of you is primed for action and movement.

The problem is that faster breathing can create additional sensations such as light-headedness, tingling or breathlessness. Those sensations can then become another source of worry.

Slowing your breathing can help interrupt this process.

You might find it helpful to breathe gently in through your nose and then allow a comfortable, slightly longer breath out.

For example:

• Breathe in gently for around four seconds.
• Breathe out slowly for around six seconds.
• Then repeat.

Don’t worry about achieving the numbers perfectly. This isn’t a test you need to pass. You may find it helpful to let the out-breath be a little longer and slower than the in-breath.

If counting makes you more anxious, forget the counting altogether and simply concentrate on making your breathing slower, gentler and more comfortable.  Alternatively, you can quietly say a short word to yourself as you breathe in (for example, “calm”) and a slightly longer word or phrase as you breathe out (for example, “relaxing”).

And don’t wait until you’re extremely anxious before practising.

One thing I regularly encourage my clients to do is practise calming skills when they’re already relatively calm. You’re then rehearsing something you can call upon much more naturally when you actually need it.

You can read more about Controlled Breathing to Calm Anxious Feelings.

 

2. Bring Your Attention Back to What’s Actually Happening

Anxiety often pulls the mind into worrying about the future or imagining worst-case scenarios.

Anxiety loves the future.

• “What if I panic?”
• “What if something goes wrong?”
• “What if I embarrass myself?”
• “What if this gets worse?”

Your emotions respond to what you’re imagining.

If you’re sitting safely in a room but vividly imagining something terrible happening ten minutes from now, your nervous system can start responding to that imagined threat as though it’s already happening.

One way to interrupt this is to deliberately bring your attention back to what’s actually around you.

• Look around.
• Notice what you can see.
• Listen to the sounds around you.
• Notice the feeling of your feet against the floor or your body supported by the chair.

You can also use the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique. You describe to yourself:

• 5 things you can see
• 4 things you can feel
• 3 things you can hear
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

You don’t need to use the technique perfectly. Its purpose is simply to move your attention away from the frightening future situation you’re creating in your imagination and towards what is actually happening right here and now.

There’s more on this method for anxiety here: 5-4-3-2-1 Method for Anxiety

 

3. Remind Yourself What Anxiety Actually Is

When anxiety feels intense, it’s very easy to forget everything you logically know about it.

• A racing heart suddenly feels dangerous.
• Dizziness makes you wonder whether you’re going to collapse.
• Tingling makes you worry something is physically wrong.

Your mind starts producing frightening explanations for sensations created by the anxiety itself.

Reminding yourself what is actually happening can remove some of that additional fear.

You might simply tell yourself: “This is anxiety. My body’s alarm system has switched on. It feels uncomfortable, but I know what’s happening and I can handle it.”

• Your heart is beating faster because your body is preparing for action.
• Your muscles are tense because they’re preparing to move.
• Your breathing has changed because your nervous system believes you’re facing a threat.

Understanding these sensations doesn’t necessarily make every feeling disappear instantly.

But it can stop you adding: “Something terrible is happening to me” to an already activated nervous system.

You can learn much more about these reactions in my Physical Anxiety Symptoms guide.

 

4. Be Careful What You Do With the “What If?” Thoughts

When you’re anxious, your mind can produce one frightening thought after another.

• What if I faint?
• What if I can’t cope?
• What if everybody notices?
• What if I have a panic attack?

The natural response is to try to answer them.

You start reasoning with yourself, you search for reassurance and you run through every possible potential outcome. Your thoughts spiral from one possibility about what could go wrong to the next.

You might even search online to prove that you’re going to be okay, only to find that the vague online answers you get only fuel your worrry.

I used to spend huge amounts of time trying to think my way out of anxiety. Unfortunately, every answer seemed to create another question. I’d try and plan for how I would handle all the disasters created by my own imagination but that just addd to the stress I was feeling.

Instead of automatically engaging with every anxious thought, start recognising what your mind is doing. “There’s another anxious what-if thought”

You don’t have to solve it. You don’t have to prove that it couldn’t happen.  And you don’t have to follow the thought all the way to the frightening conclusion anxiety is suggesting. You may know logically that things are unlikely to turn out the way your anxious feelings are leading you to imagine them.

Let it be a thought rather than treating it as a prediction. It’s a possibility not a probability.

 

5. Stop Checking Whether the Anxiety Has Gone Yet

This is an easy trap to fall into.

You slow your breathing for thirty seconds. Then you check: “Am I calmer?”

You try grounding. then think “Is my heart still racing?”

You distract yourself and then wonder “Why am I still anxious?”

Without realising it, you’ve started monitoring the anxiety even more closely.

It’s a little like repeatedly checking the clock when you can’t sleep. Every check reminds you of the very thing you’re trying not to focus upon. You can become hyper vigilient to what your body is doing in case it means something.

Use the technique and then return your attention to what you were doing.

Give your nervous system an opportunity to settle without continually testing it.

 

6. Move Your Body

Anxiety prepares your body for action. Often you may be in a situation where you aren’t physically moving and the adrenaline and physical activation have no obvious outlet.

Sometimes gentle physical movement can therefore be helpful.

You might:

• take a walk
• stretch
• loosen your shoulders
• gently shake tension from your hands
• move around rather than sitting rigidly monitoring every sensation

This doesn’t mean you need to exercise intensely every time you’re anxious. The aim is simply to help your body use some of that physical activation while shifting your attention away from monitoring every sensation.

A short walk can also change your surroundings, alter your focus and give you something external to engage with.

 

7. Allow the Anxiety to Settle Rather Than Fighting It

This was one of the hardest things for me to understand when I had anxiety.

I thought success meant not feeling anxious.  So whenever anxiety appeared, I immediately treated it as something that shouldn’t be there. I felt I had somehow failed.

That created another battle.

• “Why am I feeling like this?”
• “I need this to stop.”
• “What if it gets worse?”

Over time, I realised that an anxious feeling wasn’t something I had to fear.

• I could notice it without immediately reacting to it.
• I could calm my breathing.
• I could change what I was doing with my thoughts.
• I could put my attention back onto what was happening around me.
• And I could allow the feeling to reduce without constantly demanding that it disappear.

That’s a very different experience from feeling anxiety and immediately thinking you have to escape from it.

Your mind starts to learn that the anxious feeling itself wasn’t a danger you needed to escape from.

 

One Thing I Learned About Calming Anxiety

During my own anxiety, I spent years looking for ways to make myself feel better.

The problem was that I often judged everything by one question: “Has my anxiety gone?”

If the answer was no, I’d assume whatever I was doing wasn’t working. Then I’d try something else. Or I’d start worrying about why I still felt anxious.

It was like a roller coaster. If I felt better in a social situation I would think my anxiety had finally gone. When it returned the next time it felt like a set back and failure. I thought there was something wrong with me that stopped me from being confident like other people.

I tried reading books, facing the fear, talking about it or ignoring it, subliminal messaging tapes, over the counter sprays and just about anything else I came across that I thought might help me. None of those things taught me how to influence what was happening in my own thoughts and feelings for myself.

Looking back, I was continually checking for anxiety while simultaneously wanting not to find it.

The more I checked, the more aware of it I became. After all, if you look hard enough for a sign of anxiety, you will always find something to latch onto.

What eventually became much more useful was learning that I didn’t have to react to every anxious feeling. I could recognise what my mind and body were doing and calmly change my response.

Instead of: “I must stop this.”

it became:”I know what this is. I can handle it.”

That difference might sound small, but for me it changed the whole relationship I had with anxiety. When you are calmer with your own thoughts and feelings, everything settles rather than escalating.

 

What NOT to Do When You’re Trying to Calm Anxiety

Sometimes the things we naturally do for reassurance can accidentally keep anxiety going.

Try to notice if you’re:

• repeatedly checking your pulse or physical symptoms
• constantly asking other people whether you’re okay
• searching symptoms online
• continually testing whether the anxiety has gone
• immediately escaping every situation when anxiety appears
• analysing every anxious thought
• making last minute excuses to avoid things
• repeatedly asking yourself why you feel anxious
• telling yourself you absolutely must calm down

None of these things means you’re doing anything wrong.

They’re understandable attempts to feel safe.

The useful question is whether they genuinely help you become more confident over time or whether you increasingly feel dependent upon them whenever anxiety appears.

 

What If Anxiety Keeps Coming Back?

Techniques for calming anxiety in the moment can be extremely useful. But there’s an important distinction between managing an anxious moment and changing the pattern that’s causing anxiety to keep returning.

If you regularly need to calm yourself down, it may be worth looking beyond the individual episodes.

• What keeps triggering the anxiety?
• What are you imagining?
• What situations have you started avoiding?
• What reassurance or safety behaviours have become part of the pattern?
• What happens in your thinking immediately before your anxiety increases?

This is where longer-term change becomes important.

The aim isn’t to become brilliant at calming yourself down twenty times every day.

It’s to reduce the anxiety pattern so that you don’t need to.

You can read more about this in Why Anxiety Isn’t Going Away On Its Own and Anxiety and Avoidance.

 

What I Notice With Anxiety Clients

One of the changes I often notice isn’t simply that somebody becomes better at calming anxiety.

They stop being so frightened of becoming anxious.

That distinction matters.

Initially, someone might enter a meeting thinking: “What if I get anxious?”

Go shopping thinking: “What if I panic?”

Or lie in bed thinking: “What if my mind starts racing again?”

As they become more confident in their ability to respond to anxiety, that anticipatory fear starts reducing too.

Eventually they’re not constantly preparing themselves for the next anxious moment. They’re simply getting on with their day.

That’s a much bigger goal than becoming good at managing symptoms.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Calming Anxiety

How can I calm anxiety quickly?

Slowing your breathing, bringing your attention into the present and reminding yourself that your body’s alarm response has become activated can all help. However, try not to put yourself under additional pressure by demanding that anxiety disappears immediately. And remember, the bigger goal is to change the underlying pattern of anxious thoughts and feelings so that this happens less frequently and becomes easier to manage.

How long does anxiety take to calm down?

There isn’t one fixed time. Anxiety can settle relatively quickly in some situations and remain elevated for longer in others. Continually checking whether it has disappeared can keep your attention focused on it, so concentrate instead on responding calmly and allowing your nervous system time to settle.

Why does anxiety feel so overwhelming?

Anxiety activates your body’s survival response. Your heart, breathing, muscles, attention and thinking can all change at once. It also becomes harder to think clearly. Those combined physical and mental sensations can feel extremely powerful, particularly if you don’t understand why they’re happening.

Should I distract myself when I’m anxious?

Redirecting your attention towards something useful or towards your surroundings can help. However, there’s a difference between calmly moving your attention and desperately trying to escape every anxious thought or sensation. The longer-term aim is to become less frightened of anxiety rather than feeling that you must always distract yourself from it.

Why can’t I calm myself down?

Finding anxiety difficult to calm doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. Your nervous system may already be highly activated, or you may inadvertently be adding to the anxiety through catastrophic thinking, checking, reassurance or fear of the symptoms themselves. Calming skills also tend to become easier with practice.

Can anxiety come back after I’ve calmed down?

Yes. Calming one episode doesn’t necessarily change the underlying anxiety pattern. If anxiety keeps returning, it can be useful to look at the thoughts, triggers, avoidance and behaviours that are repeatedly activating it. You can learn how to calm the feeling and change the thought pattern that keeps it going.

Can hypnotherapy help me feel calmer?

Hypnotherapy can help people change habitual anxious responses, become calmer and develop greater confidence in situations that previously triggered anxiety. Rather than only learning what to do once anxiety is already high, the aim is to reduce the patterns that repeatedly create those anxious thoughts and feelings.

 

Anxiety Support in Ely and Newmarket

Learning how to calm anxiety in the moment can give you confidence that you know what to do when anxious feelings appear.

But you don’t have to spend your life continually managing anxiety.

Through my anxiety therapy and hypnotherapy work in Ely, Newmarket and online, I help people understand and change the patterns of thinking, feeling and responding that have been keeping anxiety going.

As those patterns change, people often find that they aren’t simply getting better at calming anxiety.

They’re experiencing less of it in the first place.

You can learn more here:

• Anxiety Support Hub
• Anxiety Hypnotherapy in Ely
• Hypnotherapy Reviews in Ely

Or arrange a free initial consultation to talk about what’s been happening and what might help.

To your health and happiness,

Dan Regan

Anxiety Therapy and Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket