The Art Of Calm: 9 Simple Habits Of People Who Know How To Ease Their Anxious Thoughts
Ways to help you stop intrusive thoughts and move forward.
Misha Zimin | Pexels Anxious thoughts can overwhelm you, making it difficult to make decisions and take action to deal with whatever issue bothers you. Anxiety can also lead to overthinking, which makes you more anxious, which leads to more overthinking, and so on.
How can you calm your anxiety by learning how to stop intrusive thoughts so you can get out of this vicious cycle? Repressing anxious thoughts won’t work. The thoughts will pop up again, sometimes with more intensity. But research on mindfulness, catastrophizing, self-efficacy, and acceptance showed there are more effective techniques you can borrow from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction exercises and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
Here are 9 simple habits of people who know how to ease their anxious thoughts:
1. They treat anxious thoughts like possibilities, not realities
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Try to see your anxious thoughts as guesses, not facts. Your mind is trying to protect you by predicting what could happen, but just because something could happen doesn’t mean it will.
Look at objective evidence:
- How likely is it that the negative outcome will actually happen?
- Is there anything good that might happen instead?
- Which do you think is most likely to happen, based on experience and other information you have about the situation?
2. They don't let their thoughts run the show
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Stop being fused with your thoughts. Think of your thoughts as moving data passing through your mind, rather than the objective truth about a situation.
Our brains are hypersensitive to threat and danger because this kept our ancestors alive in the wild. Some of your thoughts may just be automatic conditioned reactions generated by a brain that is oriented to survival. A study of the threatened brain helped explain which "brain areas correlate with the subjective experience of fear elicited by the threat." Choose whether or not to believe these thoughts, rather than just accepting them.
3. They get out of their heads and into the moment
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In other words, they practice mindfulness. Research investigating mindfulness for anxiety and depression found "mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy are effective in reducing anxiety and depression symptom severity in a range of individuals." Practice observing your thoughts, rather than reacting automatically to them. Think of your thoughts as clouds floating by.
Which thoughts draw you in, and which thoughts make you want to run away? Is there a way you can untangle yourself and observe your thoughts, rather than reacting?
4. They don't spin wild scenarios in their head
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Your mind makes up stories about who you are and about your safety and lovability. Not all of these stories are accurate. Sometimes our minds are biased by negative past experiences.
What is your experience in the present moment? Is this something that is actually happening or something that might happen? Notice that they are not the same thing, even though your mind may treat them as the same.
5. They label their thoughts appropriately
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Label the type of thought you are having, rather than paying attention to its content. Watch your thoughts, and when you notice a judgment (e.g., how good or bad the situation is), go ahead and label it as Judging.
If you notice a worry (e.g., you are going to fail or experience a loss), label it as "worrying". If you are criticizing yourself, label it as "Criticizing". This helps you move away from the literal content of your thoughts and increases your awareness of your mental processes.
Do you want to be spending your time judging and worrying? Are there less judgmental or worried ways to see the situation?
6. They don't regurgitate the past
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Is your mind regurgitating the past? Just because something negative happened in the past doesn’t mean it has to happen today. Research on coping with trauma found that "focusing attention on prior life experiences was associated with elevated levels of distress long after the trauma had passed. Temporal disintegration was highest among individuals who had experienced the most severe loss, had previously experienced chronic trauma, and had had their identities threatened by their traumatic experience. "
Ask yourself if the circumstances, or your knowledge and coping abilities, have changed since the last time. As an adult, you have more choice about whom to associate with and more ability to identify, preempt, or leave a bad situation than when you were a child or teenager.
7. They try to see the bigger picture
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Are you focusing too narrowly on the threatening aspects of a situation, rather than seeing the whole picture? Anxiety makes our minds contract and focus on the immediate threat without considering the broader context.
"Looming vulnerability," as defined by a study on anxiety and cognition, "is conceptualized as an important cognitive component of threat or danger that elicits anxiety, sensitizes the individual to signs of movement and threat, biases cognitive processing, and makes the anxiety more persistent and less likely to habituate." Is this situation really as important as your anxiety says it is? Will you still care about this problem in 5 or 10 years? If not, then ease up on the worry.
8. They step out of the mental hamster wheel
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Worrying over an issue without creating a solution will not help you solve the problem. It may, in fact, make you less likely to act by feeding your anxiety with stress. A study on the emotional experience associated with worrying explored how worrying increases stress levels that affect depression and anxiety.
When your mind is stuck in a loop, you can interrupt it by getting up and moving around or doing a different task or activity. When you sit back down, you should have a different perspective.
9. They ask, 'Is this helping or hurting me?'
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Even if a thought is true doesn't mean it is helpful to focus on it, at least not all the time. A study of future thought and behavior change explained how contrasting fantasies about the future with the reality of the situation can make pursuing goals more active or can cause disengagement from the goal, depending on a person’s expectations of success.
If only 1 in 10 people will get the job you seek, and you keep thinking about those odds, you may become demotivated and not even bother applying. This is an example of a thought that is true but not helpful. Focus your attention on what is helpful and let the rest go!
Melanie Greenberg, Ph.D., is a psychologist, former Professor of Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology, and author of The Stress-Proof Brain. She's an expert on positive psychology, mindfulness, managing stress, and improving relationships.
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