How to Manage Anxiety
We have all felt anxious at some points during our lives. Maybe you have felt anxious before a test or an exam, or when you have to speak up in class. It's important to tell you that this is a normal and relatable part of being a human! However, sometimes, anxious feelings can be overwhelming, and feeling anxious all the time can be exhausting, difficult to manage and frightening.
The good news is that there are some simple tricks that you can do to tame your anxious mind and help to reduce the uncomfortable feeling that it brings. But before you learn the tricks you need to know why we experience anxiety and what happens to our body when we do.
The sympathetic nervous system and why anxiety has kept us alive
When we feel in danger our body switches on our sympathetic nervous system, which activates our fight or flight response. This fight or flight response causes changes in our body to occur which prepare us for an emergency. For example, it increases our heart rate, sends energy to our muscles so we can move faster, and helps us to focus on potential dangers. This was useful back in the days where we had to fight off sabre tooth tigers and hunt for food. If we were in danger our fight or fight response helped us to survive by being hyper-focused on all the things that could potentially kill us – if we avoided these things and escaped from them quickly, then we lived to see another day!
However, anxiety does not always know the difference between a sabre tooth tiger and a stressful exam coming up. Our brain has the same reaction. And if your brain is telling you that you are in constant danger, then your body will react accordingly to try and protect you. Sometimes the fight or flight response can be switched on in the absence of any real danger around us.
When this happens, you might be sat in a lesson and
- feel your heart rate increasing
- your palms feel sweaty
- find it hard to concentrate or focus on anything else apart from how anxious you feel
- feel sick and need the toilet
- feel disorientated.
- feel frozen to the spot, unable to speak
This is your fight or flight response speaking, and in the absence of any immediate danger, can be very unpleasant. Luckily, we have also evolved to have a parasympathetic nervous system which helps to calm this fight or flight response.
The magic of your Parasympathetic nervous system
This is your body’s self-soothing system, which gets switched on when we feel calm and contented, safe, and supported. It releases chemicals in the brain called oxytocin and serotonin which make us feel good. This system switches off the fight or flight response. You can take control of your anxious feelings by doing a few simple things that activate your parasympathetic system.
Here are 3 easy things that you can do to reduce feelings of anxiety when you are in a lesson:
- Accept how you are feeling - anxiety is a strange beast and if you fight against it, it grows. Instead, accept how you feel and remind yourself that how you feel is because your fight or flight response is trying to protect you (but getting it a bit wrong!). Say to yourself, this is my fight or flight response, I am feeling a bit anxious, and it will pass. This gentle acceptance helps to calm our fight or flight response and switches on our soothing parasympathetic system.
- Breathing is a straightforward way to reduce the fight or flight response. Mindful breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system which will help you to feel less anxious. The best thing about this, is that no-one can see you doing it! Take a few long and steady deep breaths. Count your in-breath for 5, hold for 2, and then breath out for 5. Do this for a few minutes, and you will soon find yourself feeling a bit less anxious. It is important to do slow and steady breathing, this is the magic key to activating the soothing system.
- Distract your sympathetic nervous system.
- Read a display board
- Look around and spot 5 things you can see, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can touch
- Doodle on your page
- Ask a friend to talk to you about something
- Go for a walk around the corridor and then back into lesson
This distraction helps you to drop out of your own head and back into the room, so you can focus on something else other than the anxious thoughts.
Although these 3 things seem amazingly simple and small, combined they can have an enormously powerful impact – give it a try next time you feel that anxiety creeping in, and see for yourself!
Mindful Activities to try
