Critical Resource: Anxiety

These help tools are for people who are now in a state of anxiety of the mind.

If you feel like you need someone right now, and nobody of your support humans is available, please have a look here:

Let us get started right away, and calm your anxiety, by reconnecting your mind to your body’s senses again.

1. First and foremost, find a calm place where you can sit, stand and lean on a wall, or lay down. If you cannot lean onto anything, place your feet a bit wider from each other while standing, and cross your arms in front of your body – similar to the superman pose. You are your own guardian, you can and you will protect yourself.
2. The 5-4-3-2-1 coping method:
   • Look around your room and name five things that you can see. These can be anything, from people, to objects, to birds outside. Count anything you see, up to five.
   • Now name four things, that can be touched by you. These may be objects on your table, things around you in the room, or if you are outside and standing in your guardian pose, touch things on your clothings. Your jacket arm, the fabric of your pants, your backpack, your necklace, anything. Find four things and touch them.
   • Listen up now, and name what you can hear. It can be your breathing, your heart, the fans of your pc or laptop, the birds outside. Find tree things and name them.
   • Now take a deep breath through your nose and focus on what you can smell. Is the air fresh? Is it maybe a bit dusty or stinky? Is something cooking nearby? Can you smell fresh grass, or rain? Potentially you have a pencil that you can smell the graphite in, or your deodorant? Name two things you can smell.
   • And at last, name something you can taste. This can be the leftover taste of your food, in your mouth. The tea that left a taste or the water. Or just your own saliva and nothing else to it.
3. “Storing Thoughts Away” Method
   • Every thought you have, especially occurring at night, when your brain overthinks what still needs to be done, can be stored away.
   • Sit down somewhere, lean back and close your eyes (you can do this at night too).
   • Now imagine you are entering a room where you have a closet in front of you.
   • Open the closet in your imagination.
   • Now you take a thought that you have, may it be a worry or a thing that needs to be done, and place it in the closet. You can hang it up, or place it in a box, or put it onto a wooden plank.
   • You can also say loud of in your mind:
     • “Okay, I see you task XYZ, I will come back to you tomorrow, but right now, I will store you here – here I see you, here I won’t forget you.”
     • “Thank you, brain, that you want to make sure I do not forget about this, but right now, I will place it here, for tomorrow.”
     • “Thank you, brain, that you are worried that event XYZ will happen – it is very kind that you wish to protect me – now let me store that worry right here. It is now with me, you can now relax a bit more.”
     • Continue and try to talk to your inner security systems, your brain, your inner child, addressing that you know that they do this simply to take care of you.
4. Get into movement
   • Especially if you are still anxious after the first two excerpts, put on your clothes and get out moving. If it is dark at night, pace around your home for a while. Make sure you are not holding a phone but look around.
   • The movement of the eyes and “the world passing by” calms your emotional centre – the Amygdala in your brain – by transporting the feeling of “we are moving, we are not stuck with this, we have a plan, and it will get forward”.

Okay, my dear, brave soul – I hope this helped you and I hope you are feeling better by now. 🙏I know these feelings can be quite scary, and maybe it was your first time experiencing this – but despite that, I cannot see you right now, I am sure you did great.

If you have experienced these emotions first of: They are absolutely okay, and you shall never feel shame or guilt for them, yes? They are very, very normal. Depending on where they came from, they might be even old and your system stored them until now. However, it might be for you, it is good that the feelings are flowing and coming out.

A normal, profit-orientated blog would now want you to read more and spend more time here, but I don’t. I want you to be okay, so please – do something now that feels good for you and brings you joy.

If everything feels too much right now, and you are sleepy – this also is very, very normal. See if you can get your hands on something to drink, something small to eat, and maybe retreat for a small nap.

You did well, small warrior.

Rest now, and come back when you are well again.

~Alka.