How To
deal with anxiety
Anxiety hijacks the body with alarm and floods the mind with what-ifs, making the future feel like a threat happening now. You cannot argue anxiety away, but you can calm the body and change your relationship to the fearful thoughts, and that is where every path below works.
◆ Rooted in: Everything Happens in the Now3 paths · same lever
Anxiety is a body state before it is a thought. Slowing the breath, especially the exhale, signals the nervous system that you are safe and the mind follows.
- Sit with both feet on the floor.
- Inhale gently through the nose for a count of
- Exhale slowly for a count of
- Keep the exhale longer than the inhale for at least ten rounds.
- Notice the ground beneath you and three things you can see.
Anxiety grows when we brace against it. Meeting it with attention and kindness, rather than fighting it, lets the charge soften and pass.
- Recognize: silently name it, ‘anxiety is here.’
- Allow: let it be present without trying to fix it.
- Investigate: where is it in the body, and what does it want you to believe?
- Nurture: place a hand there and offer a kind phrase, such as ‘It’s okay, I’m here.’
- Rest in the space that opens afterward.
Tapping on acupressure points while naming the worry can calm the body’s stress response and lower the intensity of anxious feelings.
- Rate your anxiety from 0 to
- Tapping the side of the hand, say: ‘Even though I feel this anxiety, I deeply accept myself,’ three times.
- Tap through the points (eyebrow, side of eye, under eye, under nose, chin, collarbone, under arm, top of head) while naming the feeling.
- Take a breath and re-rate the intensity.
- Repeat the rounds until it noticeably drops.
Anxiety is a false alarm you can learn to quiet. Whether you slow the breath, turn toward the feeling, or settle the body by tapping, you remind your system that this moment is safe, and the storm loses its grip.