Seven Ways You Can Poke Your Anxiety Bubble Without Anyone’s Help

Find hope and strength — be the blue sky.

I woke up this morning feeling miserable. My stress has built up and the old negative thoughts have spiraled down again:

Something terrible could happen soon and I can’t live with all that unpredictability.

My parents are having health problems. How long are they going to live? Every time I notice there’s something wrong with my body, I’m tripping an illness. The kids are starting school in a few months. Will my fidgety boy sit still or will they train him like a dog? I’m juggling parenting and writing, and I snarl at my children every time they “mom” me. Then I feel guilty because I’m neglecting them.

Will my young pups pick up my negative patterns?

Amid all that thinking, I looked out of the window and thought:

What if I didn’t expect something will scare or surprise me soon? Would I act any worse because I’m not ready for it?

My jumping to the worst-case scenario is automatic and a few decades old. But as I’m making a mental shift, I do several things to feel better. And they work.

#1 Vent Your Frustration with a Game of Squash

When I was in my freshman year, I was strained: Immense curriculum, the student protests, and the danger they would bomb my country. I slept with clenched fists and walked around like Stressed Eric.

No meditation or mindfulness could soothe that energy. I needed something more aggressive to eliminate it.

Then one day, I’d had enough and pushed all my furniture into one corner of the room. I took a tennis racket with its cover still on and started banging a sponge ball against the wall. I’d hit the ball hard so it bounced against the cover and onto the wall. A few minutes later, I was running from one corner to another, swinging the racket with all my might. Half an hour later, I was happy.

What you can’t do with a breathing exercise, you can achieve with some action. Be the thunder and vent those negative feelings.

Let yourself be angry for 45 minutes, swear, and bang the ball. Run, jump, play squash, dance, brisk walk, and unleash the inner demon. You’ll change the biochemistry of your brain.

When you let it all out, deal with your thoughts.

#2 Journal to Holler and Learn

Nowadays I can’t play squash, so I sit at my laptop and write stream-of-thought paragraphs. And it’s incredible what can emerge from it.

No matter how desperate I feel, deep down I know a problem somehow gets solved and it doesn’t end up so bad. I have the power to relax with a simple breathing exercise by the sunny window. This is what I’ve found in my old pages:

Today I managed to calm myself down on my own (I can’t even believe I did it!). I went to the other room very tense, turned toward the window, and lay down. With every breath, I’d locate a tense muscle in my body. Every time I inhaled, I’d send the breath to that muscle. Every time I’d exhale, I would tell myself I was breathing out the tension from the muscle outside my body. In the end I was about to doze off! I couldn’t believe I was capable of this shift!

Write in whatever way it suits you: On your laptop or in a notebook, just let yourself go. Get all that gloominess out. Or jot a thought on a piece of paper and throw it away. You’ll leave it behind you as if it were a white cloud that passes overhead.

Over time in your writing, you’ll notice your negative thinking patterns. How much emotional reasoning is there? How much exaggeration? Is it all “I must” and “I should”?

And then, when you’re feeling good enough, start a new daily practice.

#3 Think of How Much You Know About the Future to Call It Terrible

How often do your anxious thoughts miss the truth? You don’t know because you’ve never counted them. Write them down and after a few weeks see how often the worst really happened. Most likely 90% of the time you’re wrong.

When I’m afraid of the future, I remember I can register a particle of all the information around me. How can I foresee something when I can’t grasp the present? I’m just interpreting what’s going on with my mental patterns according to a tiny piece of information I get.

When you feel trepidation, ask yourself:

How do I know a catastrophe is going to happen?

After a while, you forget all the thoughts that made you anxious in the first place. You’ll realize you’re a crap fortune-teller just like you can’t predict the weather in two months. Feel free to reject your automated negative thoughts. Your mind does create your reality but it’s distorted.

Turn to what you can change instead.

#4 What Can I Influence and What Concerns Me?

You can’t control life and that makes you scared. Your mind wants patterns — something predictable to rely on, so you feel you aren't in danger.

What you can influence is what you do. And you have to know the difference between the changeable and the inevitable. Instead of focusing on a result to achieve something (and then get tense or frustrated if you don’t), better focus on what you can do. These two different categories of worry are called the circle of influence and the circle of concern:

The circle of concern is all the things you worry about but can’t change: The weather, politics, what other people say about you, etc. The wisest thing is to accept them as the current situation you can’t modify.

The circle of influence is all the choices you can make: What you eat, how you react, how and who you spend your time with, etc.

Draw these two circles on your desk to remind you: This is what I can change, and this is what I have to accept so I don’t lose my mind. Remember things evolve and today’s bad can disappear tomorrow. What’s more, it can prompt you to become better.

Don’t wait for the situation to improve on its own. Enjoy small pleasures instead. Eat a chocolate bar underneath a leafy tree, give your stuff to charity, or send someone a sunny emoji for no reason. Create your own happiness with your actions. Strengthen your circle of influence.

Whatever life throws at you, you’ll manage it. You will either adapt or it will change in the end. Just don’t expect.

#5 Be Aware That Mental Shift Takes Years

If you were stuck in pessimism for years, you have to build a new perspective from scratch. Relapses are normal because your mind operates like a machine. It likes to go back to its old autopilot.

See your “what ifs” as guesses, not something that will happen for sure. And accept small amounts of restlessness as excitement because you care about that thing. This will help you get used to anxiety as just another emotion.

When I was a child, they taught me to be afraid of the world so they could protect me. They taught me to think negatively so I didn’t get disappointed. I learned to be self-critical so I could be better than others.

As I’m older, I’ve become more gentle toward myself. Even when I catch my critical self-talk, I think:

OK, I did the best I could. I’ll survive whatever happens.

I laugh when I fall in the wet street or when I say something ridiculous. I try to be more compassionate toward that old gal on the scooter.

Your self-talk reflects how you see yourself. How often do you praise or comfort that person in the mirror? How can you expect to feel strong when you don’t support yourself like you support your best friend?

Be gentle in your thoughts and start to accept what you’re feeling.

#6 Remember You Create Your Anxiety

You want to be calm all the time. You believe big feelings are your weaknesses and want to control them. You still care about what others think of you, so you’re on guard.

But you shouldn’t be stoically calm and resilient. What if your resilience hides in giving your emotions the space to come out? Why not discharge the negative like the sky lets rain fall?

Don’t be afraid of what others will say. Your wellbeing lies in what you think of yourself, not what the world thinks. Remember — the circle of influence.

It is tiring to live when you believe you are weak. You can’t forbid yourself to feel. Change your wrong expectations.

If you are sensitive, you are like a pressure cooker, filled up to three-fourths with water. It takes a little for you to whistle and blow off steam. Yes, you should practice your resilience but you also need enough space to recuperate. Take some rest whenever you feel like it. Don’t push over your limits because you may turn into a hurricane.

#7 Although You Don’t Know What Life Brings to You, You’ll Survive

When I feel life is getting me down, I remember:

You are the blue sky. All feelings come and go like clouds but the sky always remains.

Every emotion lasts up to a couple of minutes and then disappears. Still, we’re afraid and embarrassed by some of them. We ruminate when they occur instead of just letting them pass.

Forgive yourself for your weaknesses because they’re a part of you. There is no contentment without self-acceptance. And your body has the capacity to withstand hard blows, so you won’t die whatever happens. You just have to believe you are elastic and everything’s changeable.

But don’t force yourself to the maximum either. Respect your body and mind and give them enough time to recover from blows. Turn to creativity to fill your emotional well.

Takeaway

Even when the world feels scary, there’s always something you can do to decrease your anxiety:

#1 Physical activity: Be the thunder and vent all those negative feelings with some sports.

#2 Journaling is powerful: Get all that gloominess out on a paper and leave it behind you as if it were a cloud. Learn from it.

#3 Remember you don’t know what’s going to happen: You can’t predict the weather in two months, so you can’t know how bad the future will be either.

#4 The circle of concern and the circle of influence: You can’t change the weather, but you can stay inside or carry an umbrella with you. Focus on what you can do.

#5 Remember: To change, it will take you years. See apprehension as excitement, laugh when you fall on a wet street because it’s not that big a deal.

#6 Anxiety starts from you: Don’t be afraid to feel. Discharge negative emotions like the sky lets the rainfall.

#7 Remind yourself that you’ll survive it all: Your mind is the blue sky.

You can always do something to improve your wellbeing. Start by telling yourself you’re the sky. All those clouds will pass but you’ll still stand tall and wonderfully blue.

Subscribe to my weekly digest on what makes life worth living or read my other popular pieces: