Self growth 4 months ago 7 Steps to Get Out of an Anxiety Spiral by Amy Cai 53 Views Ah, anxiety. The old friend that follows me everywhere in life. The inner critic that drives me to doubt myself and run away from challenges I am strong enough to face. Anxiety is a crippling feeling that has stopped me from chasing after my dreams and achieving my full potential. Faced with a task that brings uncertainty, where I cannot guarantee a positive or known outcome, my anxiety can paralyze me from working on the task. I end up scrolling on Instagram or TikTok, binge-watching mindless reality TV shows and reading trashy romance novels, all in the effort to run away from the problem. Before I know it, I’m stuck in an anxiety spiral, where running away from the problem worsens my anxiety over the problem, which in turn heightens my desire to run away. Over the years, I’ve learned to let go of the shame and self-hate of being in the midst of an anxiety spiral. I’ve accepted that this is part of what makes me me, and that in fact, having a certain level of anxiety is even a good thing, because it means that I have something I deeply care about. But I still experience really bad days when my anxiety spirals me into the basement of my mind. For those days, I remind myself that there are still things I can do to slowly get myself out of that place. Here are six steps I take to get out of an anxiety spiral, and I hope they can help you too. Step 1: Identify the source of your anxiety, and question how rational it is. Anxiety is ultimately driven by fear – a basic human instinct that helps our survival, but also inhibits our progress. So, to truly understand your anxiety, start by asking yourself what the source of your fear is. The type of fear that triggers our anxiety is usually a deep-seated narrative that we tell ourselves. Maybe it’s the fear of failure. The fear of rejection. The fear of disappointing others. For many of us, our fears stem from our uncertainty about the task we need to face. It could be that we don’t know how to begin, or we don’t know what the outcome will be. Maybe you want to start a business, but there is no roadmap to help you guarantee success. Or maybe you want to write a book, but you’re not confident a publisher is ever going to pick it up. When we don’t know what the road ahead looks like, it’s easy to catastrophize and let our negative thoughts fill in the gaps for us. We tell ourselves – we can’t do this. We’re not smart enough or accomplished enough or confident enough. This is when the anxiety spiral starts to pick up momentum, and we find ourselves losing faith in our capabilities. So before that happens, ask yourself where your fear is coming from. Once you know what your monster looks like, ask yourself if your fear is actually rational. Is failing on your task going to kill you? Is it going to leave you permanently damaged if you don’t achieve success? Is everyone in your life going to think of you as a failure? Chances are, none of this is going to happen. The human species evolved with fear as a survival mechanism that has helped us live through dangerous conditions. Once, listening to our fears was a matter of life and death. But in the 21st century, we no longer need to give our fears the same level of autonomy in our heads. What’s the worst thing that can happen to us? Maybe it’s pain and humiliation, the loss of time and money, or perhaps a bout of short-lived societal judgment before the world moves on and our failures are forgotten. But that’s it. Fundamentally, none of these things will actually kill us. Most of the time, the monster we’re facing actually isn’t as big and scary as we think it is. Step 2: Put down your phone. We’ve all been there – doom scrolling on TikTok or Instagram for hours on end. The cheap entertainment we get from an endless flow of content can give us short bursts of pleasure, but it doesn’t really affect our baseline happiness. We can numb our anxiety for a while, but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. If anything, ignoring it only worsens the anxiety. Put down your phone, walk away from it and force yourself to do something else. Here are a few things you could try: Go for a walk and take in your surroundings. Close your eyes and listen to some meditative music. Stretch on a yoga mat. Focus on deep breathing for 10 minutes Attend a high-intensity exercise class. Take a cold shower. Unplugging from the quick dopamine hits that technology constantly gives us will help to quieten and clear your mind. Sometimes, this is all you need to turn down the volume of your anxiety in your head. Step 3: Ask yourself, what is the smallest action you could take here? Anxiety is fixated with thinking about the future, and all the things that could happen in our imagined futures. What if I fail to lose ten kilos? Or, how on earth am I going to write a best-selling novel? When we fixate too much on the end result, a goal post somewhere in the distance, we can easily get overwhelmed by the challenge lying ahead. So to step out of that frame of mind, shift to thinking about the process itself rather than what could happen. Let’s take on the monster bit by bit. Focus on just the here and now. Focus on the next step. Maybe you’re feeling anxious about your career. You yearn for a career change, but you’re also scared of trying something new. Ask yourself – what are the steps I need to take here? A small first step could be to simply reach out to a friend or a friend of a friend who has made a similar career change and ask them for some advice. Maybe you’re anxious about your finances. A simple first step could be to download a budgeting app that can automatically calculate where your expenses are going. By breaking your problem down into smaller, actionable sub-tasks that you can comfortably achieve in a short period of time, you are making progress in slaughtering your monster. Step 4: Do the task you’re anxious about for just five minutes. Seriously, just five minutes is enough. Anyone can spend five minutes working on a complicated problem. Often, our anxiety is highest at the time when we haven’t started the task, and we’re panicking over how difficult it can be to tackle. Doing it for five minutes will make you realize that the world hasn’t ended and that hey, this isn’t so hard after all! Anxiety is a fear that exists purely in your mind. You fear how difficult it is to tackle your problem, but five minutes is often enough to remind you that facing what you fear won’t destroy you. Once five minutes is up, give yourself a pat on your back. If you’re feeling okay, keep going. Maybe give yourself another fifteen minutes to work on your challenge. If you’re not feeling good, that’s okay too. Allow yourself to take a break – you’ve earned it. Step 5: Eat something healthy and nutritious. Don’t overlook your diet when you’re feeling low. Science has shown that our gut health has a crucial impact on our mental health. When we’re anxious, we often turn to binge-eating unhealthy foods for a much-needed dopamine kick. But snacks and processed foods hurt our gut health, which in turn worsens our mood and overall mental health. If you’re feeling anxious, try to eat foods that are high in fiber, such as bananas, nuts or whole grains. These foods will improve your gut bacteria and in turn improve your mood. If you’re in the mood for a sweet drink, try a probiotic drink like Yakult or kefir, which will help to improve your gut bacteria. If you’re in thirsting for a soft drink, get yourself some flavored sparkling water that can still hydrate you without the added sugar. If you’re craving a snack, have some berries instead. Berries are a great source of nutrients for gut health, and antioxidants in berries have been shown to help relieve feelings of anxiety and depression. Nuts are another alternative, if you’re after something savory. Nuts are not only packed with healthy fats, but they contain nutrients that produce serotonin and relieve anxiety and stress. If you’re in the mood for something fatty, swap out your fast food for fatty fish such as salmon, tuna or mackerel. The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish are incredibly effective in improving gut health and mood. Step 6: Sign up for a workout class. Lately when I feel like running away from my problems, I sign up for a reformer Pilates class. Yes, I’m still procrastinating on facing my anxieties, but at least I’m not doing something mindless with my time. Instead, I’m working on improving myself in a different way, and there’s something really self-empowering about being able to tell myself that when I’m feeling my lowest. It’s a reminder that I haven’t fully given up. It’s my way of proving to myself that even when my emotions are so negative, I can still push through and do this. Sometimes, that can be enough to help me motivate myself enough to get started again. Exercise releases endorphins which help to boost your mood and lower your stress levels. But when you’re feeling too demotivated to push yourself at the gym, signing up for a workout class can be a great alternative. Having a roomful of people holding you accountable can make it a lot harder to slack off. Step 7: Remember that it’s okay to feel like this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve beaten myself up about being in an anxiety spiral, only for my negative self-talk to worsen my anxiety. It’s okay to feel like this. Productivity experts love to emphasize the importance of building consistency and turning good behavior into habits. And while this is advice I’ve taken to my own life, I’ve also accepted that as someone living with ADHD, my productivity isn’t going to look like one straight line of consistency. Instead, I’m going to go through peaks and troughs –periods where I can feel extremely productive, broken up by occasional periods where I feel low. Accepting that this is how my brain works has allowed me to free myself from a lot of self-loathing that inevitably triggers an anxiety spiral. Now, when I feel the onset of such a spiral, I remind myself that this is just my brain’s instinctive behavior, and I can get myself out of this place. We all have days when we feel low, when our anxiety causes our bodies to shut down. And when that happens, remember to forgive yourself. This feeling is temporary, and it will go away. I have found myself at the bottom of the dark hole that is my anxiety so many times, and every time, I’ve reminded myself that there is an end to this feeling. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel – for some of us, it’s just a little further away. Mental health Share This Article