Immediate Help for Anxiety
The anxiety is rising!
Do you ever have episodes where you can feel anxiety rising up inside of you? If it’s happened, it is easy for you to identify the symptoms that rush over you. Rapid heartbeat, lightheadedness, shakiness, difficulty swallowing, mind racing or shutting down, sweaty palms, and trouble breathing are some of the most common. I have been there personally, and if you fight the battle of anxiety, you know how unsettling and disorientating it can be.
I never thought of myself as an anxious person. I felt pretty peaceful most of my life … until right before my 40thbirthday. I had been serving as a pastor at a local church for 18 years. As a pastor, I often did weddings and I enjoyed being a part of this special day for hundreds of couples over my first couple decades in ministry. One day, I was doing a wedding for a couple in a gorgeous backyard with some of their family and closest friends in attendance. It was a beautiful and peaceful setting. Then suddenly, and without warning, I was overcome with the worst anxiety I had ever experienced. My heart rate shot up and was beating so hard and fast I was certain people could hear it. My hands started shaking, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, my mind was spinning, and I started to feel dizzy and faint. I didn’t know it then, but I had just experienced my first panic attack.
To this day, I am not sure how I got through the ceremony. I do remember telling everyone to bow their heads in prayer more than normal. While they had their heads bowed, I frantically tried to regain my breath and my composure. It was an awful and frightening experience. As I look back on this event, I don’t think I had anxiety about the wedding. But I think I had lots of other emotions I had been pushing down because of a very busy and hectic schedule. My father had passed away suddenly a few weeks earlier and I was preparing to defend my master’s thesis before a committee of my professors at the end of the month. I was at the end of a three-year season of more than full time work, almost full-time graduate school and raising four children. In retrospect, I think it all just boiled over.
If you have ever had a panic attack, you know how one usually leads to others. You become keenly aware of the danger as you begin to strategize on how to avoid them. For me, I had additional weddings booked on my calendar on most weekends for several months ahead. The all-important question in my brain became: what if this happens again? I came to learn that worry about having another panic attack usually leads to additional panic attacks. It was a rough several months. I was thrown headlong into trying to get help for anxiety while I was continuing to fight against panic as I officiated weddings almost every weekend. For many years, even hearing the sound of the wedding march, or seeing a wedding in a movie would cause my heart rate to rise.
Over time, I became better at managing anxiety and I have not had a full panic attack for many years, but it is still an ongoing part of my health and daily functioning that I work on keeping healthy.
There is good help for people who struggle with generalized and social anxiety disorders, panic disorder and agoraphobia. There are a variety of therapeutic approaches that can be helpful such as CBT, DBT, mindfulness, and exposure therapy. There are also some medications that may be helpful for getting your brain chemicals back to a more balanced and less anxious state. These are the long term therapeutic and medical approaches to treat anxiety disorders and reduce anxiety overall.
But the title of this article is “Immediate Help for Anxiety.” I want to give you several tools for managing the feelings of anxiety when they arise in the moment:
1. Deep and slow breathing. One of the most helpful tools when you feel anxiety rising is to take control of your breathing and focus on taking very slow and deep breaths. Taking in a breath over 8 seconds and then exhaling for about 10 seconds and repeating this for several minutes can be very effective for calming anxiety. It actually activates the Vagus nerve that runs through your body and signals your brain that everything is OK, and we are at peace. This is the number one tool I use when feeling anxious.
2. 4x4 breathing. This technique used by Navy Seals (also known as box breathing) is a process of breathing in for 4 seconds, holding the air in for 4 seconds, breathing out for 4 seconds and then waiting 4 seconds before taking your next 4 second breath. Regulating your breathing in this way for several minutes is another tool to bring immediate help when you feel anxious.
3. Grounding techniques. There are many exercises to help you feel grounded and present in the moment which can be very helpful with anxiety. One popular grounding technique is called 5,4,3,2,1. In this exercise, you seek to be present in your surroundings and you actively notice: 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you are hearing, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. It is a quick exercise using all of your senses to bring you back to the present moment.
4. Thought replacement. When we are feeling anxious it is normal to start thinking about and focusing on our anxiety. Replacing these thoughts is another immediate tool to use when anxiety is starting to rise. I have memorized many different passages of scripture that talk about God’s presence and His peace and it has been very helpful to bring them to my mind when I am feeling anxious. Hebrews 13:5b-6, Isaiah 41:10, Psalm 27:1 and John 8:36 are some of my favorites. The truth I most often bring to mind is John 14:27 where Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
There is great hope if you struggle with anxiety, and the Renewing Life Center is always available to help you on this journey. Most people find longer term healing through therapy and medical help and the use of these tools can be an immediate help for managing feelings of anxiety as they arise in the moment.