Managing Anxiety: A Quick Guide

Medically reviewed by Paige Henry, LMSW, J.D.

Updated April 16, 2024by BetterHelp Editorial Team

Virtually all of us will experience some anxiety from time to time, such as before a job interview or a first date. In addition, some people live with diagnosable anxiety disorders, which are when feelings of anxiety have escalated to a point at which they disrupt daily functioning and cause significant distress. Regardless of the intensity of your anxiety, learning healthy coping mechanisms may help you manage its impacts on your everyday life. Here, we’ll explore five simple tips that may be useful to those living with anxiety.

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Experiencing symptoms of an anxiety disorder?

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Defining anxiety disorders

The American Psychological Association defines anxiety as “an emotion characterized by apprehension and somatic symptoms of tension in which an individual anticipates impending danger, catastrophe, or misfortune.” Again, anxiety is a natural emotion, but it may qualify as a disorder when it’s persistent, hard to control, and interferes with daily functioning.

There are various types of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, specific phobias, and others. Each one has their own unique set of symptoms, but some common symptoms of anxiety disorders in general can include:

Feeling like you can’t stop worrying
Difficulty concentrating
Sleep disturbances
Anxiety attacks
Panic attacks
Muscle tension
Headaches

Treatment for anxiety disorders can depend on the specific illness a person has, their symptom severity, and other factors. In general, however, some form of talk therapy is typically the first-line treatment for anxiety. In some cases, certain medications may also be prescribed to help control symptoms. A mental health professional might recommend certain lifestyle changes as well, including some of the tips listed below.

Techniques to cope with anxiety

If you’re experiencing signs of an anxiety disorder, it’s generally recommended that you meet with a licensed healthcare provider for support and treatment advice. They can also provide support to individuals who do not have a diagnosable disorder but are looking for a listening ear or tips for coping with challenging emotions. In addition to seeking professional treatment, the following tips could help you learn to ease anxiety or better manage this feeling.

1. Build time-management skills

A common source of stress and anxiety is feeling like you don’t have enough time to do what you need or want to do. If this sounds familiar, it could be helpful to look at your schedule and time-management practices with a critical eye to see where you might improve. Some practices that could help a person build better time-management skills to decrease anxiety and worries and reduce stress can include the following:

Track how much time you spend on various activities (working, cooking, watching TV, etc.) every day for a week to see where you might carve out more time for productivity or rest
Prioritize your tasks on a daily, weekly, and/or monthly basis to ensure you cover your most important bases
Manage procrastination by setting achievable goals, using productivity tools or methods like the Pomodoro technique, or getting an accountability buddy
Keep an organized environment, since clutter in your workspace or your home could be distracting when you’re trying to stay on task

iStock/Courtney Hale

2. Engage in activities that help you feel relaxed

Humans aren’t designed to be on the go every waking minute. The need for rest and relaxation is built into our DNA, and ignoring this need may increase anxiety. While it may seem difficult to build time for rest into a busy schedule, it can be paramount for physical and mental well-being. Finding relaxation practices that work for you and then building them into your regular routine can be a healthy goal worth pursuing.

For example, you might find solitude and time to think on a daily morning walk or run. Or, you could carve out time to take a hot bath or read a good book each evening, spend time with friends every weekend, or take a yoga or meditation class on your lunch break twice a week. Exactly what promotes relaxation can vary from person to person, but spending some time figuring out what works for you and then baking it into your routine may help you feel less anxious in your daily life.

3. Cultivate healthy habits

You’ve probably heard this advice before: Exercising regularly and eating nutritious foods are two habits that can play a significant role in overall mental and physical well-being. A robust body of peer-reviewed studies continues to suggest these practices as effective strategies for improving emotional control, boosting resilience, decreasing symptoms of anxiety and depression, increasing longevity, and lowering the risk of various physical health problems, among other potential benefits.

When it comes to anxiety in particular, consider the findings of a scoping research review published in 2021. It suggests links between less anxiety and eating habits such as:

Consuming more fruit and vegetables
Incorporating foods with omega-3 fatty acids
Eating breakfast
Eating foods with nutrients like zinc, magnesium, and selenium
Getting adequate protein and whole grains
Limiting intake of sugar and refined carbohydrates

Each person is different and there’s no one set of eating patterns or “healthy foods” that’s right for everyone. It’s also recommended that you meet with a doctor or nutritionist before significantly altering your eating habits. That said, it can be generally productive to incorporate nutrient-dense foods whenever possible if you’re looking for a natural way to help manage anxiety.

In addition, getting regular exercise is another healthy habit that may help reduce symptoms of anxiety. Physical activity can produce endorphins, which can boost mood. Staying active may also provide a distraction from the loop of anxious thoughts that can exacerbate symptoms. Finding a type of exercise that you enjoy and can engage in regularly is generally the most effective way to implement this habit.

4. Engage in deep breathing exercises

The fight-or-flight response associated with anxiety can lead to rapid, shallow breathing. This may keep an individual feeling tense and may prevent the heart, brain, and other vital organs from getting enough oxygen. Engaging in deep breathing techniques or a routine meditation may counteract this response and enable you to feel calmer, less anxious, and more aware of the present moment.

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Experiencing symptoms of an anxiety disorder?

Speak with a therapist

5. Speak with a mental health professional to address anxiety symptoms

Whether you feel occasional anxiety or suspect you may be living with an anxiety disorder, it can be difficult to manage these feelings on your own. A qualified mental health provider like a therapist can act as a valuable source of support in either situation.

They can recommend a treatment plan and/or healthy coping mechanisms that may help you learn to manage feelings or symptoms of anxiety, from breathing exercises to cognitive reframing to support groups. They can also help you learn to identify and then shift distorted thought patterns that may be contributing to these feelings.

If you live with some form of anxiety, the prospect of calling local therapy offices to find a provider who is accepting new clients and then regularly commuting to appointments can seem overwhelming. Online therapy can represent a more convenient and approachable option if this feeling resonates with you.

Through a platform like BetterHelp, you can get matched with a licensed therapist who you can meet with remotely from anywhere you have an internet connection. Research shows that online therapy may potentially result in “sustained and clinically meaningful improvements” in symptoms of anxiety and depression, so it may be worth exploring if this format appeals to you.

Takeaway

Whether it’s occasional anxiety related to stressful situations or symptoms of an anxiety disorder, this feeling can be difficult to live with. If you’re looking to regain control from feelings of anxiety, some techniques for coping with anxiety can include engaging in deep breathing exercises, improving your time-management skills, and speaking with a therapist who can offer advice.

Frequently asked questions

Read more below for answers to questions commonly asked about this topic.

What are some coping tools for anxiety?

There are many strategies to cope with anxiety that are known to be effective. Some common techniques are listed below:

Diaphragmatic breathing, or “belly breathing,” is supported by extensive empirical research. Although some might scoff at the utility of taking slow, deep breaths, evidence suggests it may be one of the fastest ways to reduce feelings of anxiety. To begin, inhale slowly for four to six seconds. Feel your diaphragm moving as you breathe. When your lungs are filled, hold your breath for a second or two, then exhale slowly, taking another four to six seconds. Repeat until calm.
Adopting an exercise routine may take a bit longer than a few deep breaths, but evidence indicates that the effort will likely be rewarding. Exercise has short-term and long-term effects on anxiety, both reducing a sudden onset of anxiety or panic and helping prevent anxiety attacks once workouts become regular. Aim for at least 90 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week.
Learning a few relaxation techniques can give you more tools to use when anxiety strikes. Common relaxation strategies, like progressive muscle relaxation, have strong support in the mental health community and are useful tools for abating anxious feelings as they arise.

How can I fix my anxiety naturally?

One way to fix your anxiety naturally is to work with a therapist to make changes in how you think and behave. A therapist or other mental health professional can help you understand your anxiety and utilize evidence-based psychotherapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy, which has strong support for its usefulness when treating anxiety. Anxiety can be complex and may interact with other physical and mental health conditions. Working with a professional is likely the simplest way to reduce anxiety in the long term.

A therapist may recommend you try specific natural coping strategies and may help you structure interventions to address your anxiety. One promising intervention, online positive affect journaling (O-PAJ), leverages the advantages of gratitude and positivity to keep anxiety symptoms at bay. A preliminary randomized control trial found that mental distress due to anxiety diminished and well-being increased among general medical patients who participated in the O-PAJ intervention.

What are the three R's of stress?

The 3 R’s of stress typically refer to reframing, response, and resilience. The 3 R’s became popular as a way to frame stress due to workplace conflict but may also apply to other forms of stress. A short summary of the 3 R’s is below:

Reframing stress means changing how you look at the situation surrounding it. While stress can often feel entirely negative, it also sometimes offers positive factors. For example, a person trying to manage anxiety related to an upcoming social event may try to reframe it as an opportunity to practice and improve social skills. A positive association likely lowers anxiety, while negative thoughts increase it.
Response management refers to how a person consciously responds to the physical symptoms of stress and anxiety. They may try to reduce anxiety through relaxation exercises, squeezing in an extra workout, walking in nature, or using another effective coping strategy.
Resilience development helps prevent stress and elevated anxiety symptoms from producing as strong of an effect the next time they appear. Resilience often comes from proactive strategies to manage stress, like learning new coping strategies, avoiding anxiety triggers, or working with a therapist.

When should you push through anxiety?

It can sometimes be challenging to push through anxiety using sheer willpower. Rather than trying to force the anxiety away, it may be more worthwhile to focus on anxiety management. Learning coping strategies to deal with anxiety and understanding your response to anxiety-inducing situations is probably much more helpful than trying to handle the anxiety through force.

What is the 5x5 anxiety rule?

The 5x5 anxiety rule is a popular, quick intervention to disrupt anxious thought processes as they occur. The 5x5 rule is used when physical sensations of stress and anxiety emerge. Once you recognize that you are experiencing anxiety, identify what you are anxious about. Once you know, ask yourself if what you worry about will matter in five years. If it will, continue to managing anxiety as you would have. If, however, you cannot identify a rational reason your worry will manage in five years, give yourself five minutes to engage in the worry before letting go and moving on.

What is the anxiety formula?

The anxiety formula, or anxiety equation, is a theoretical formula that therapists commonly use to illustrate the concept of anxiety to patients receiving cognitive behavioral therapy. The formula states:

Anxiety = (Likelihood x Awfulness)/(Coping + Rescue)

Likelihood refers to the probability that a specific event or outcome will occur. Awfulness is the magnitude of unpleasantness attached to the feared outcome. Coping refers to the patient’s own estimation of their coping ability, while rescue refers to what they imagine the reactions of others to be.

The anxiety formula is not a bonafide mathematical principle supported by research. However, some people consider it a useful tool for understanding how anxiety arises. When demonstrating the formula, therapists or other professionals often assign a score of 1 - 9 to each variable. For example, let’s look at a particularly awful situation that is not likely to occur for a person with middling coping skills and little external support.

We assign the following:

Likelihood = 2

Awfulness = 9

Coping = 5

Rescue = 1

Filling in the variables, we get Anxiety = (2 x 9)/(5+1) = 18/6 = 3.

The person’s anxiety score is 3 for the above example, but what if they had a stronger support network? Changing rescue from 1 to 8 reduces the anxiety score to 1.3, a much lower amount of worry. Similarly, reducing the awfulness to 2 while leaving rescue at 1 gives an anxiety score of 0.66, lower still. Conversely, we can raise likelihood and awfulness to 9, their maximum, while lowering coping and rescue to 1, their minimum. In that case, the anxiety score is 40.5, the highest value possible.

What is high-functioning anxiety?

High-functioning anxiety likely refers to anxiety that is noticeable and uncomfortable but does not interfere with a person’s daily life. They may experience the hallmarks of anxiety, such as physical sensations, struggling to relieve stress, not getting enough sleep, difficulty managing negative thoughts, and a desire to avoid common anxiety triggers. However, although the symptoms are present, they likely do not disrupt a person’s ability to function enough to create a noticeable disturbance. The most severe anxiety reactions, like panic attacks, may not be present at all.

Is anxiety a form of mental illness?

Anxiety describes a cluster of physical and mental symptoms that, when severity is high enough, represent a category of diagnosable mental health conditions known as anxiety disorders. However, anxiety is also a state that most people experience and it may serve several functions, such as motivating people to complete tasks. Anxiety is typically only considered a mental disorder once the symptoms of anxiety become uncontrollable, overwhelming, or otherwise interfere with someone’s ability to function and their overall well-being.

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The information on this page is not intended to be a substitution for diagnosis, treatment, or informed professional advice. You should not take any action or avoid taking any action without consulting with a qualified mental health professional. For more information, please read our terms of use.

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