You know that feeling when something happens that just throws you off your day, and the anxiety it creates stops you from being able to focus on anything properly? Most of us don’t manage stress and anxiety effectively, and a lot of us go to the most easily available chemical relief we know of – alcohol.

Unfortunately, this is a short-term solution at best (and we know it). When it wears off, we’re usually left feeling more anxious, and over the long-term it adds to our stress levels. On top of that, whatever relief it does provide gives us little clarity to handle the situation at hand, and often makes it a whole lot worse. For some, such as young people or those in addiction recovery, alcohol simply isn’t an option to begin with. With that in mind, I’ve learned a few ways to help manage anxiety, all of them backed by science, that I would like to share.

A couple of years ago, I heard some news that I wasn’t expecting. This really got my heart racing, while my mind went into a thousand different places I wasn’t wanting or needing at the time. I couldn’t focus, and I needed to, so I decided to phone a friend. He heard my situation, offered me a number of different possible scenarios as to what could be happening, and gave me some solid advice: go for a run, have a cold shower, phone another friend, and leave my intermittent fasting aside for that particular day.

Just a year or two prior to this, my instant reaction would have been to either go straight to the bottle shop, or jump in the deep and try to “fix” things from a place of panic. Either way would have made them worse. Instead, I took my friend’s advice, and in addition to all of that, I wrote down my troubling thoughts and read them back to myself. The end result was that I was not only able to calm down, but I was able to handle the situation without using alcohol and making things worse.

So with that in mind, I’d encourage you to try a few of the following options next time you’re highly stressed and want to avoid the booze:

1. Go for a walk/run

Research shows that cardiovascular exercise is one of the best ways to manage anxiety that we know of. It releases endorphins – our body’s natural version of morphine – and taps into that ancient mechanism of the brain that tells us we have either escaped a threat or secured a bounty. It also decreases muscle tension, activates the frontal regions of the brain we need for decision-making, and diverts you from the very thing you’re stressed about (Ratey, 2019)

2. Have a cold shower

The theory behind cold water therapy is that the physical stressor diverts the mind’s energy from thoughts “out there” to the present moment “right now”. Because of the high density of cold receptors in the skin, cold water therapy sends a huge amount of electrical impulses from the nerve endings to the brain, which creates a “shock” to the system and, strangely enough, an anti-depressant effect. While this intervention is still in the early stage of research, a recent study showed that just one session of cold water therapy improved the mood of participants compared to control group (Kelly, 2021), and there is now a lot more research being done in this space.

3. Write down your thoughts

The mental health benefits of journaling have been known for a long time (Smyth et al., 2018), and there is something about writing down our thoughts in the moment and reading them back that can make us do a double-take in the moment. All of a sudden, whatever was racing around our mind as “truth” a moment ago can seem either questionable when it’s written down on paper, or even downright ridiculous. Write down your thoughts – you’ll be surprised at how much clarity you can find.

4. Speak to a trusted friend, colleague or family member

This one is a bit like writing down your thoughts, but you’ve got the added advantage of having another perspective. When we have someone to share our concerns with, not only do we get things out in the open, but they can often see something we’ve completely missed or simply point out our own biases and blind spots. Regardless - even if they just listen, simply getting what you’ve got in your mind out in the open helps a tonne.

5. Breathe

Breathing deeply into the belly activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for the "rest and digest" mechanisms of the body and brain - the reverse of the "fight or flight" mode we get into when we're stressed (Zaccaro et al., 2018). Try inhaling for four seconds, holding for four seconds, exhaling for four seconds, holding for four seconds, and continue to repeat this for as long as you need.

Got any tips for how to calm down in the heat of the moment? Drop a comment below!

References

Kelly, J.S. (2021). Improved mood following a single immersion in cold water. Lifestyle Medicine, 3, 1-9.

Ratey, J. (2019). Can exercise help treat anxiety? Harvard Medical School. Harvard Health Publishing. 24thOctober. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-exercise-help-treat-anxiety-2019102418096

Smyth, J.M., Johnson, J.A., Auer, B.J., Lehman, E., Talamo, G. & Sciamanna, C.N. (2018). Online positive affect journaling in the improvement of mental distress and well-being in general medical patients with elevated anxiety symptoms: A preliminary randomized controlled trial. JMIR Mental Health. 5(4).

Zaccaro, A., Piarulli, A., Laurino, M., Garbella, E., Menicucci, D., Neri, B. & Gemignani, A. (2018). How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12. 1-16.