Chapter 9 Calming Our Anxiety In The Moment

Today’s episode will be a bit different. Today I will be reading one of the chapters in my new book titled Abandon Anxiety: Techniques to take back control. Yesterday in prayer group a lot of the ladies were saying they knew people who were struggling with anxiety, so I thought I would read this chapter as it is called Calming Our Anxiety In The Moment. There are lots of things that go into anxiety, and there are ways to decrease it. Yet some of them take time to learn and implement and become habits. I wanted to give people strategies they can use when they are in the middle of an anxiety attack and need some immediate help. I hope you find them helpful.

I have talked a lot about our thoughts and the stories we tell ourselves.  I discussed how important it is we shape those thoughts and are conscious of the stories that we tell ourselves.  I have talked about the RAS, which serves as a filter for our brain, and how we can work on setting our filter so that we don’t worry so much.  I have discussed scripture verses that you can turn to and different prayers that can help you both at the moment, such as the St. Michael prayer, and long-term in developing more trust in the lord, such as the Litany of Trust.  However, all of these things, except for the St. Michael prayer, take time.  You probably won’t change your thought patterns overnight.  You won’t wake up tomorrow having forgotten these deeply held beliefs you have had for years.  Worrying less is definitely possible, and I truly hope after reading this book, you are motivated to begin your journey to getting rid of your worry.  

I also know some people reading this book have anxiety/panic attacks.  I know that some of you reading this are looking for answers to what to do at the moment.  You don’t have time to focus on changing your thoughts because, at the moment, when you are overcome with worry or anxiety, you can’t think about anything.  I thought it was important to address this matter as well, as I have several friends who suffer from panic/anxiety attacks, and I know how debilitating they can be.  I know how scary it can be, and if I can provide any help to make it easier at the moment, I want to do that.  

I want to begin by saying I am not a mental health counselor.  If you are having panic/anxiety attacks, it might be advisable to speak with a counselor, as they could help you out with your particular circumstances.  I have seen a counselor for years, and I think everyone could benefit from seeing someone and talking about any issues.  The techniques I am going to talk about in this chapter are techniques I have found over the years from research to help my friends.  I also talked to my sister, who is a mental health counselor, to make sure I wasn’t steering you in the wrong direction or telling you something that wasn’t true.  

I have been told the important thing is to try to get back to the present moment.  There is no anxiety in the present moment.  When you are anxious, you are thinking about what will happen or what has already happened, but there is no anxiety in the present moment.  In order to do this, you can try a variety of different things, depending on what feels right to you and what you can remember to do in the moment.  I would suggest if you are prone to attacks, you have a list of techniques you look at often and even practice when you are not having an attack.  From what I understand, you will not be able to think of much in the moment, so the more you have prepared in advance, the more likely you will be to think of these strategies in the moment you need them.

This is similar to anything that you want to get good at.  When you want to be good at something, you need to practice it.  If you want to be good in a crisis, you need to practice the techniques when things are calm.  Let’s think about it in terms of sports for a minute.  If you want to be really good at baseball, you can’t wait until you are in the middle of a game to practice working on catching a ball or even throwing a ball.  This is why athletes need to put in hours of practice before the game days.  Think about surgeons.  They need to go to school for a long time, and then they need to do a residency where they are under the supervision of surgeons who have been practicing for a while.  We wouldn’t expect a surgeon to just walk into an operating room and know how to perform a surgery without lots of practice.  

We do not expect people to be good at things without practicing them.  And yet when it comes to mental health, we just expect people to know how to handle it.  When our children are little, we expect them to be able to handle their anger without hitting others.  However, how much time do we spend teaching them and practicing other methods with them?  Often times, when they are acting out, we try to give them options of what they can do to express their anger.  Has this happened to you?  Have you had well-intentioned people try to give you all sorts of advice on how you should handle your anxiety when you are in the middle of it?  How well did that work for you?  I guess it worked as well as it did for my kids when I tried to help them with their anger in the middle of it.  

The techniques I am going to talk about here can help you when you are in the middle of an anxiety attack, or they may even be able to cut it off right at the beginning if you think to use them.  There is the key, if you can think to use them.  You will not think to use them if the only time you try to think of them is when you really need them.  If you do not practice these things when you are not in the middle of an attack then I doubt you will think to use them when you are.  Think about your last panic attack.  When you were experiencing it, how likely were you to use the logical part of your brain?  How much of the attack was instinct, and how much of it was planned?  

If you want to use these techniques out of instinct, then you need to practice them.  You need to build up the muscle memory of the different activities.  What comes to mind for me as I type this is my typing classes in High School.  My teacher would always say we were working on our muscle memory so that, eventually, our fingers would just know which keys to press.  I was very skeptical; however, now I type the fastest when I don’t think about it, and I just let my fingers do what they were trained to do.  

If you always react the same way in a situation, then you teach your body that is the reaction to that circumstance.  Your body will continue to act that way until you interrupt that thinking, and give it a new response for that circumstance.  For instance, when my kids used to say inappropriate words to me, I would get angry and yell at them and then give them a punishment.  They soon learned this was my reaction and so they would say those words even more.  Eventually, I learned to ignore any words I didn’t like them saying, and eventually, they stopped saying them.  It wasn’t easy.  It was a process, and it took time.  

This will take time too.  I don’t want you to think I am giving you any quick fixes here.  I also don’t want you to think I am saying this will be easy.  If you have been having panic/anxiety attacks, then I am sure you are ready for some relief.  I don’t want to mislead you to believe this is a one-and-done remedy for panic/anxiety attacks.  I don’t know the cause of your panic/anxiety attacks.  I don’t know the cure for them.  What I am offering in this chapter, are a few techniques you might be able to use in the moment which will help the attacks end faster.  My hope and my prayer for you is that you will give some of these techniques a try and see what you think.  

I hope you will try them when you are not having a panic attack.  If you are prone to having panic/anxiety attacks, I hope that you will practice them. Take a few minutes each day or a couple of times a day and practice these techniques.  We never know when the enemy is going to strike.  We need to be prepared at all times.  If you think of this as training for when you need it, you will be much more prepared the next time you have an attack.  

Trying to get yourself back to the present moment when you are anxious can be just the trick you need.  However, how do you do that?  There are several different activities that you can quickly do when you are noticing that you are starting to worry.  Actually, even if you are in a full-blown panic attack, you may be able to do these activities to calm yourself down.  I will go over some of these now.

1.) The first and probably easiest to explain is to count numbers out of order or backward.  When you do this, you are shifting focus from one part of your brain to another, and it is harder to be anxious when you are using this other part of your brain.  Let’s all practice this now.  Everyone counts down backwards from 10.  Awesome, nice job!  You can also count numbers out of order.  For instance, 3, 10, 15, 4, 8, 22, 17. Again, this forces your focus to start using another part of your brain.  

2.) The next one is to enlist the help of your senses to pull you back into the present moment.  The Mayo Clinic calls it the 5-4-3-2-1 Countdown to make anxiety blasts off.  Here is how you would do it.  You take a moment and look around at your surroundings.  Now you would list:

5 things you can see: Your arm, a pen, your computer, the rug, the window.  

4 things you can physically feel: Your face, the ground, your hair, your shoe

3 things you can hear: The rain outside, a car passing by, your fridge buzzing

2 things you can smell: your feet, a plant

1 thing you can taste: your chapstick, your drink, gum. These will obviously be different for everyone.  It depends on the room you are in or the place where this occurs.  It depends on what you are doing and what your surroundings are.  However, this is something you can practice and get good at when you are not in the middle of an attack.  You could silently do it in various familiar surroundings. For instance, when you are in your car on the way to work, or anyway, you could quickly run through this exercise.  When you are making breakfast, lunch, or dinner, you could run through it.  The more you practice it when you are not in the middle of a panic attack, the more likely you are to think of it when you are.  

Going back to counting backward or counting numbers out of sequence. These two things require concentration, and when you are doing this, you are accessing a different part of your brain, and so they are distracting you from your thoughts.  Again, this brings you back to the present moment.  These may seem like something that you don’t have to practice.  I am sure we all know how to count backwards or list numbers out of order.  It is not the action that we are practicing.  It is getting used to the idea that we can do this when we need to forget about our anxious thoughts.  

This is another one I think you could easily practice when you are not in the middle of an attack.  Just maybe try once or twice a day to count backward or to count out of order.  If you have anxious thoughts a lot, but they aren’t to the level of a panic attack, then try to implement this technique right when you realize you’re thinking about something that is making you anxious.  This doesn’t have to be something you do outloud.  It doesn’t have to be something that anyone else is aware that you are doing.  If you can get in the habit of recognizing the thoughts that are causing you anxiety, that would be the first step.  Then, try counting backward or out of order to distract yourself from those thoughts.  

The third one is extreme sensations.  For instance, eating a fireball or a lemon head.  This shock to the senses might be just enough to bring you back to the present moment.  Also, the sensation of touching ice.  This would be one that I am not sure you could practice when you are not in the moment.  However, it is one that you need to prepare for.  If you have tried the other two techniques, and you have not found the relief in the moment that you are looking for, you may want to try this one.  In order to try this one, you would have to have something on hand.  If you are at your house, you likely have access to ice.  If you are thinking that you would like to try one of the other things you would have to buy those ahead of time so that you have them on hand when you need them.

This is another way we can help ourselves in the moment.  We can be prepared for them when they come.  If we know we are prone to panic attacks, what can we do to be prepared?  What if it happens when we are out with others? What can we do in that situation?  How would we want to handle it if we could plan in advance?  What about if it happens when we are alone? What will our plan be?  What if our kids are around?  There are many different circumstances where panic attacks can come about. Can we come up with a plan for the different circumstances?  Is it possible to run through these scenarios in your mind ahead of time so if you find yourself in one of these situations, it won’t be the first time?  Almost like you are doing a dress rehearsal in your brain so that you can practice the best way to respond.  

I have been told that our brains believe what we tell them and that the reason visualization works so well is because our brains can’t tell the difference between what we are visualizing we are doing and what we are really doing.  For instance, the best athletes run over their plays or their movements in their heads, even when they are not at practice.  A golfer will visualize holding the golf club; they will visualize swinging it, it hitting the ball, and then the ball going into the hole.  They do this over and over again in their mind, and even though they are not actually doing it, when it comes time to do it on the course, their mind thinks they have been here before.  Their mind feels like it has done this tons of times before, and they act as if they have.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could train your mind to react to these anxious thoughts in a more productive way?  Wouldn’t it be great if your mind automatically started one of these techniques when you felt a panic attack coming on?  Wouldn’t it be great if you were prepared for these attacks before they came?   I believe these things are possible.  It won’t be easy, and it will take work, but it can happen.  You can gain some control in the midst of these attacks if you do the work to prepare ahead of time.

ACTION STEPS

Practice these various techniques daily when you aren’t in the middle of an attack.  Even if it is just once or twice a day, you will be more likely to think of them when you are in the middle of an attack.Visualize yourself reacting to how you want to react when you are having a panic attack.  Don’t just do this once, do it often.  Again, this doesn’t have to be all day, every day.  Just take a few minutes a day and visualize yourself in great detail handling the panic attack in the way that you would want to.Try to notice the thoughts that are making you anxious and try to practice the techniques with these thoughts to try to calm them before they become full-blown anxiety attacks.

Thank you all for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I hope you enjoyed this chapter of my new book. If you know someone who suffers from anxiety, please send this to them. They might find something that works for them. I have not published this book yet, but if you know someone who is struggling and really needs some help with anxiety, I would be happy to send them the PDF or the e-reader version. I will not be posting the podcast next week as I am taking my middle son to England to look at colleges and I want to be fully present with him for that time. I still can’t believe he will be going off to college next year. There are plenty of episodes you could go back and listen to if you still want to start your day off with this podcast. I like just randomly picking one, and it is usually just what I need to hear that day. I feel like when I am doing it randomly then it is really the Holy Spirit picking it for me. I hope you all have an amazingly blessed week, and I look forward to meeting you here again on April 22nd. Please pray for safe and uneventful travels. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I!

Today’s Word from the Lord was received in December 2023 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email [email protected]. Today’s Word from the Lord is “In my peace, children, you will find strength, courage, and boldness. It comes from peace."

www.findingtruenorthcoaching.com

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