Unwinding Anxiety Emergency Kit

​This month Six Seconds EQ Café’s have focused on Unwinding Anxiety.  If like me, you are on the journey of noticing your feelings and paying attention to their messages it can be helpful to have a quick reference guide or cheat sheet when anxiety starts to take hold. This article contains my personal go-to strategies I put into action the second I notice that growing sensation of “bodily disquiet, a sense that something is wrong” creeping up on me (Sarah Peyton, 2021).  If I can catch my anxiety before it develops into what Brene Brown (2021) describes as a feeling of “escalating loss of control, worst case scenario thinking” then I am better placed to attend to what the anxiety is drawing my attention to in a calmer and more balanced way.
​
Here are the basics I return to again and again. Having these strategies at my fingertips means I’m prepared in advance with techniques to lower my anxiety when it appears. 

The Basics 

Slow Down, Breathe, Ground Yourself

• The very first step is to slow down and take some deep breaths, aim for a full minute doing nothing but focus on your breath.
• Now, combine grounding with breathing, notice your feet on the floor and as you take four or five more deep breaths turn your attention to the soles of your feet.

Name It to Tame It
Giving language to experience calms our brains. The clearer we can be with ourselves about what is upsetting us, the emotion we are feeling the calmer we will feel. This may sound overly simple to be helpful but the proof as they say is in the pudding. This strategy is backed up by Neuroscience. At the end of the day, you will only know if it works if you start to practice this naming of your emotional experience in your everyday life. 

Naming it with precision is important
In the naming of your emotional experience, precision is important. The magic happens when you can precisely name the emotion you are experiencing. When you get the precise name right, it soothes and regulates the emotional alarm you are feeling, and your body will begin to relax (Sarah Petyon).

I have found that it takes practice to get the precision right. And I know it immediately when I hit on just the right word, I can feel the relaxation wash over me. Like most things, it takes practice.  So even if you can’t quite land on the right word for the emotions you are experiencing, rest assured that “merely looking for them is useful because it creates distance and perspective” (Hillary Jacobs Hendel).

Noticing body sensations to feel calmer and more balanced
When our body’s sensations are within our awareness, our brains have an easier time sorting things out and tapping into the biological wisdom they contain that communicates what’s important to us and to those around us.  As we do this, we begin to “feel calmer and more balanced and our courage and self-confidence grow” (Hillary Jacobs Hendel).

Important Reminders

• Emotions are our friend, our allies, here to help us.
• There is no such thing as positive or negative emotions, just simply expressions of our natural life energy.
• If anxiety is starting to affect the way you’re living your life and you feel you may be becoming overly worried and it’s affecting your daily life, it may be an anxiety disorder that you are dealing with (Black Dog Institute). It’s time to reach out and seek additional support and help. The best place to start is by speaking to your GP, your primary care doctor or a mental health professional. ​

​The Fast Track to Transformation 

The fast way to transform anything is to change our relationship with it. The tips in my “Unwinding Anxiety Emergency Kit” are about taking small practical steps to work with anxiety when it rises up. They are simple, everyday practices that will support you to find a doorway into a new relationship with this emotion that is often ignored, demonised and labelled as a troublemaker.
​
As the poet David Whyte says “There is a door beneath everything, you’ll walk right by if you don’t stop to look with that troubled heart and loving eye.
My hope is that these tips will support you to engage with your anxiety with a loving eye and set the stage for transformation for you to befriend your anxiety. As you do remember:

“There is a door
beneath everything
you’ll walk right by
if you don’t stop to look
with that troubled heart
and a loving eye.
David Whyte
​

Diving in Deeper on the Basics

​This deeper dive in the basics is for those who like a little more information and for those who looking for practice tips on how to put these basics into practice. 

Slow Down, Breathe, Ground Yourself

​“Each time you slow down and notice your external or internal world, you are creating and promoting positive brain change. You are taking care of yourself.” 
Hillary Jacobs Hendel
​

Begin with your breath, “for one full minute, do nothing but focus on your breath” (Susan David).
The step-by-step process I use as a daily practice, comes from the work of Hillary Jacobs Hendel listed here for you.

• “Inhale slowly and deeply through your nostrils, breathing into what feels like the bottom of your belly. Feel your belly come out. You should strive to look like a Buddha – belly out as far as possible.”
• “When you’ve inhaled fully, hold your breath for a beat. Now exhale fully through pursed lips, as if you are blowing on a hot spoonful of soup. Pursed lips help you control the airflow out so you can create maximum relaxation.”
• “Your exhale should take approximately twice as long as your inhale.”.
• Now ground yourself by either standing or sitting, with your feet firmly planted on the floor. As you do this sense the floor against the bottom of your feet. Keep feeling the floor underneath you, keeping your attention here for at least thirty seconds.
• Now, combine grounding with breathing. Notice your feet on the floor as you take four or five additional deep breaths. Again, turning your attention to the soles of your feet on the floor.

Name It to Tame It

“When we name emotional experience, we support our brain’s well-being.”
Sarah Peyton 

Naming and validating our emotions and attending to them “soothes and regulates our emotion alarm (Sarah Peyton).

A tangible understanding of the difference naming what is happening for us can have is beautifully illustrated in a study conducted by UCLA in 2012. This study was conducted with 88 people and giant tarantulas. Not sure how the thought of this study impacts you, but I must confess just thinking about needing to work with these giant spiders makes me feel anxious. I am not sure I would volunteer.

What they found was quite amazing. Participants who were able to describe their feeling became less afraid and less anxious about the spiders and were able to move closer to them than those participants who had not labelled and verbalised their feelings. (You can read more about this study here).

This study provides us with a clear demonstration of the very real and tangible difference labelling our emotional responses can make. They found it was important to verbalize our feelings honestly and not to push them away or to label what we’re experiencing as bad. If we can follow these tenets when we are faced with anxiety it will help us feel less afraid and less anxious.

For most of us anxiety is often accompanied by a combination of emotions that arise at the same time (Hillary Jacobs Hendel).  So next time you notice your anxiety rising, take the core findings from this study and apply it to what you’re experiencing, and it will help you feel less afraid and less anxious.
​
Here is another process from Hillary Jacobs Hendel’s work that I find helpful with this:

• Take a moment, slow down, take a few intentional deep breaths and feel into the mix of emotions you are feeling.
• Make a list of all the emotions you can sense into that are evoking your anxiety. Ask yourself – do I feel sad, fearful, angry, disgusted, joyful, or excited. (Anxiety and excitement feel the same. How we interpret them and label them can determine how we experience them) (Brene Brown, Alision Wood Brooks) (you can read more about this here).
• One by one imagine each emotion you have identified and place some space between each of them.
• Then validate and acknowledge each of them by saying to yourself.
  

​I feel --------------- and ------------ and ----------------- and -------------- 

Naming it with precision is important

“Magic happens for our brains when we put precise words to what is happening for us.”
Sarah Peyton 

“Finding the right word for a feeling creates a powerful synchronization between mind, body and heart” (Nicholas Janni). The research has shown ‘the amygdala calming when precisely correct words for emotions are used“(Sarah Peyton,2021).  As you start to practice this skill you will notice the profound difference in your body as it begins to relax the moment you name the emotion(s) you are precisely feeling.

Take your time with this, most of us have not been raised or encouraged to do this and so it’s a new skill and a new awareness we are building. Tools like Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions can support you as you feel into what you are experiencing and exploring  exactly what you are feeling in this moment. Is it irritation, anxiety, overwhelm, bewilderment, dismay, fear, shame, grief, horror, rage, or alarm just to name a few of the possibilities?

Psychologists call this precise use of words to name emotions emotional granularity.  Studies have shown that the “more emotional granularity a person has, the less likely they are to shout or hit someone who has hurt them”; and the less likely they are to binge drink when stressed. And at the other end of the continuum “people diagnosed with major depressive disorder are more likely to have low emotional granularity” compared to healthy adults (Micahaelen Doucleff). So emotional granularity not only helps alleviate the intensity of what we are experiencing, it enables us to have choice and be intentional about how we rise up to the challenges we face, and meet them.

Noticing body sensations to feel calmer and more balanced

“The body plays an essential role in every part of our journey towards integration. It is always a step ahead of us in emotional understanding. ……… It’s a highway of information that lets us know how we’re doing in the world.”
 Sarah Petyon 

When we experience anxiety, the body is giving us an alert sign that something is wrong. The body is saying “I am agitated, and I cannot settle. There is something that stops me from being able to rest. My system is on edge.” (Sarah Peyton, 2021).

“If you observe yourself for fifteen seconds or so, many sensations start to emerge.  The more you notice, the more you will continue to notice. Emotional observation has similar goals to meditative practice.”  The aim as the observer of your physical experience is to be open and notice the physical sensations you’re experiencing in your body without judgement.  When our body’s sensations are within our awareness and are being integrated, then our relational, contextual brains have an easier time sorting things out” (Sarah Peyton, 2021). ‘They contain biological wisdom and communicate what’s important to us and to those around us.”  (Hillary Jacobs Hendel).
​
An exercise from Sarah Peyton’s Workbook (2023) to get you started and to provide a sense of what you are sensing into and attuning to:
Bring to mind a difficult event that is still bothering you and circle the words that your belly says “yes” to. (“Our bellies are a rich source of information about how our bodies are doing in the world” (Sarah Peyton)).

​Source: Sarah Petyon, 2021, Your Resonate Self - Workbook

​If you were able to circle even one sensation, congratulations, “you have invited your relational brain to awaken” (Sarah Peyton, 2021).  Focusing “awareness on a sensation stimulates nerve cells to fire, facilitating the flow of emotions and as we do this we begin to “feel calmer and more balanced and our courage and self-confidence grow” (Hillary Jacobs Hendel).
​

Important Reminders

Emotions are our friend, our allies, here to help us
All our experiences including anxiety “need to be understood and respected, perhaps even befriended.”.  As Brene Brown says “we need to pull up a chair and sit with them, understand why they’re showing up, and ask ourselves what there is to learn.”

“Our emotions are our friends wired into us by eons of evolution. Their purpose is not to scare us and overwhelm us and make us lose control. Emotions are wired into our brains and bodies and nervous systems to help us cope with our environments and thus enhance our adaption”“(Hillary Jacobs Hendel). In difficult moments, when anxiety feels like it is ramping up, I find it immensely helpful to remind myself of this and that when I know what I’m feeling, I will do better and be able to deal with life better as it happens and unfolds.

There are no positive or negative emotions
All our emotions are simply expressions of our natural life energy and as such are an essential part of our humanity. Nicholas Janni describes emotions as being the “gateway to our deeper humanity.”  When we are able to connect to our emotional states it “allows a richer, more heartful and empathic relationship to life and to leadership” and “the foundation for higher levels of perception, vision, insight and innovation.”

If anxiety is starting to affect the way you’re living your life, it’s important to reach out and seek additional help.

“Showing yourself kindness gets even more important during life’s rough patches.”
Susan David

We all feel anxious sometimes, however for some people with anxiety disorders, what they are experiencing goes beyond what I am talking about here and they can experience fear and worry that is both intense and excessive and prolonged. These feelings can be difficult to control and can last a long time if untreated and cause significant distress.

A generalised anxiety disorder, according to John Hopkins Medicine, “is a condition of excessive worry about everyday issues and situations.” It lasts longer than six months and “in addition to feeling worried, you may also feel restlessness, fatigue, trouble concentrating, irritability, increased muscle tension and trouble sleeping.” (Brene Brown).
​
Feeling anxious is one way our bodies keep us safe from danger. But sometimes we can become overly worried and if it affects daily life, it may be an anxiety disorder (Black Dog Institute). If anxiety is starting to affect the way you’re living your life, it’s important to find help. There are lots of people who can help, and many ways to treat anxiety. The sooner you get help, the better it is for you and your recovery. The best place to start is by speaking to your GP, your primary care doctor or a mental health professional and there is additional information and links to support mechanisms on the black dog institute website.
​

References

Blackdog Institute, 2024, https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/resources-support/anxiety/help-support/

Brown, B. 2021, Atlas of the Heart – Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, Penguin, Random House, London, UK.

David, S. 2017, Emotional Agility – Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life, Penguin, Random House, London, UK.

Whyte, D. 2018, ‘Lough Inagh’ in THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD, Many Rivers Press

Doucleff, M. 2019, Giving A Name To Your Anger May Help You Tame It : Shots - Health News : NP.R

Jacobs Hendel, H. 2018, It’s Not Always Depression – A New Theory of Listening to Your Body, Discovering Core Emotions and Reconnecting with Your Authentic Self, Penguin, Random House, London, UK.

Janni, N.2022, A New Paradigm for 21st Century Leadership – Leader as Healer, LID Publishing, London, UK.

Peyton, S. 2017, Your Resonant Self, Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, USA.

Peyton, S. 2021, Your Resonant Self Workbook – From Self Sabotage to Self-Care, W.W. Norton & Company Inc, New York, USA.

Powell. A. 2023, Can mindfulness help anxiety? Trial suggests yes. — Harvard Gazette.

UCLA Health, 2012, That giant tarantula is terrifying, but I'll touch it | UCLA Health.

Whyte, D. 2024, RE-IMAGINING SHAME The Secret, Hidden Driver of Human Maturation, Three Sundays in March Series.

World Health Organisation, 2023, Anxiety disorders (who.int).
​
Wood Brooks, A. 2014, Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement – Harvard Business School, https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-a0035325.pdf