Stopping yourself feeling anxious is, in theory, straightforward. There is a trigger, a feeling of anxiety and worry, and then potentially a subsequent behaviour. In reality though, it can be difficult to simply “switch it off” and “not worry about it”.
Context: This article talks about ongoing anxiety created through trauma. That trauma could be abandonment, betrayal, death, or the loss or change of something important. It does not talk about physiological or genetic factors.
What is the role of anxiety?
Anxiety has an important role in our lives. It’s information from our nervous system, a warning to encourage action that will keep us safe. But it’s important to remember that anxiety is only a warning, not necessarily evidence that you’re in danger.
Read more about what anxiety is and why we feel it.
One of the difficult parts of anxiety and worry is that you can feel it even when logically you know you’re off-balance and the risk is low to non-existent. So simply wanting to stop feeling anxious isn’t enough to get rid of it.
So, what can you do to stop feeling anxious?
Step 1: Understand what you’re anxious about
As a first step, it’s wise to consider why you feel anxious in the first place, because changing your brain pattern can help when you understand the root cause. Maybe you were abandoned as a child, your partner cheated on you, you got made redundant or you lost a loved one.
Getting to the root cause means you can take any required action to fix a current situation e.g. mend a relationship; learn from the experience e.g. create better boundaries going forward; and simply come to terms with it e.g. that the person you love isn’t around anymore. If you don’t consider these things, you risk ignoring the underlying issue and finding yourself in a constant battle with the anxiety.
There are a number of ways you can come to terms with your trauma. Speak with friends and family, get professional help, write about your worries and simply spend time with yourself. If you need urgent help, please take the step to get support.
Understanding and coming to terms with your pain can take months or even years. But you don’t have to wait until you’re fully at peace with it to start recalibrating your brain and changing your brain pattern. You can work on both at the same time.
By choosing to change your patterns, you’re effectively saying, I’ve learnt from this experience, I’ve considered what I can change or take action on, and I don’t want what happened in the past to keep shaping how I feel today. I now want to move on.
The challenge is that your anxious brain pattern can be triggered even when you’re at peace with what happened.
Step 2: Try not to attach to the feeling of anxiety
One of the healthiest approaches is to recognise the anxiety without attaching or reacting to it. For example, your partner seems quieter than usual and you start to worry something is wrong. Rather than repeatedly asking if everything is OK, you recognise that your anxiety has been triggered, remind yourself that you have no actual evidence something is wrong, and allow the feeling to pass without taking action.
You’ve likely heard of the traffic analogy where you look at your thoughts and feelings as cars and simply watch them drive past you as you sit at a distance.
Step 3: Remove your anxiety triggers
It’s important to accept that sometimes it’s not an option to remove the trigger, at least not yet. That’s why practising not attaching to the feeling is a helpful approach.
That said, identifying your known triggers and deciding what to do about them is a worthwhile exercise. You can make a list of them all, and label which ones are possible to remove, and which aren’t. For example, photos around your house, your music playlists, posts on your social profiles, behaviours of toxic people in your life, and even your surroundings.
If it’s possible, you can then work on removing the triggers, essentially removing the first step in your brain pattern and stopping the feeling of anxiety that follows. For example, that could be changing your thoughts (actively thinking of something else), swapping the photos on your desk, downloading a new track, stopping looking at social media, changing who you spend your time with, moving home or finding a new job.
Distraction and avoidance of anxiety
There’s an important distinction between removing something that’s genuinely harmful to you and avoiding something simply because it makes you anxious. Avoiding situations that are actually safe can reinforce your anxiety, teaching your brain that there really is something to fear.
It’s also important to recognise the difference between distracting yourself to help manage your anxiety and using distraction to avoid facing an underlying issue. You don’t have to have fully come to terms with your trauma to benefit from distraction, but it’s worth considering whether there’s something you still need to understand or take action on.
Take the loss of a loved one as an example. Let’s say that you’ve come to terms with the loss, and you’ve removed all possible triggers. If you do feel the anxiety of further loss, have practised not attaching to it and decide to change your state by listening to a new song, going for a run, or speaking with a friend about their life, that can be a healthy response. You may recognise that there’s no immediate problem to fix or imminent threat, and choose not to engage with the worry. But if the root cause of your anxiety is unresolved, or you could be in danger, then it’s important not to simply ignore it.
That’s why step 1 is so important.
Step 4: Repeat
Recalibrating your brain patterns takes repetition. Even when you understand why you feel the way you do and you’ve removed as many triggers as you can, there may be times when your brain pattern is triggered. So you need a little plan, basically what you want your new pattern to be from the point of being triggered.
In the same document as your list of triggers, write down what you want to do next when they happen e.g. take a breath and let the feeling pass, think about something else, listen to some music, phone a friend and ask how they are.
Refine and repeat your new pattern as many times as you need.
The aim isn’t necessarily to remove every trigger or stop feeling anxious altogether. It’s to recognise when the anxiety is helpful, when it isn’t, and to stop it automatically determining how you behave.