There’s no delicate way to say it: Anxiety prevents us from living our lives. We do everything we can to avoid the extreme discomfort (and sometimes terror) associated with anxiety responses. Often this means bowing out of the things that make life worth living. And of course this presents the grand challenge. If anxiety prevents us from putting ourselves out there, how the heck are we ever going to overcome it enough to actively find natural relief?
It’s my belief that in order to get back to living your life, you need a strategy. This post will give you a framework for crafting a strategy that works for you, using nature as your guide. With some work up front, you can cut down on the effort needed to soothe yourself during moments of anxiety. Download the PDF template to create your personalized natural anxiety relief strategy as you follow along.
Coping vs. Healing
When it comes to crafting a strategy of natural relief for anxiety, everyone is going to be different. There are very few “bad” things to try. As a simple way to start, I think of it in two categories: coping and healing. Coping involves activities that relieve the physical responses of anxiety in the moment, and help you get back to a more calm state. Healing is deeper – it’s about working through the causes of anxiety, best done with a qualified therapist.
There’s nothing wrong with coping
This strategy guide is all about coping. Most importantly, I don’t believe that healing is possible from reading blogs and listening to podcasts on your own. It’s deep inner work. And while some of the activities outlined here will help you get closer, they are no substitute for time with a qualified therapist.
But let’s get one thing straight: There is nothing wrong with focusing on coping as a strong part of your strategy. Whether you suffer from situational anxiety or you’re a lifelong sufferer like me, there are moments when coping skills are absolutely essential, and we just don’t have the time or the wherewithal to go deeper.
There are many reasons why coping skills are necessary.
First, there is an increasing amount of research that shows that anxiety lives in your body, not your brain. This has been a key learning in my own anxiety journey. When I finally internalized it, it was life changing.
Anxiety in the body
Do you ever wake up with anxiety? I did. For years. And I was so confused about that. I would think: if anxiety is about my spiraling mind, how the heck can I be calm at bedtime and nearly panicked when I wake up? Am I over-thinking in my dreams? Often I was unable to isolate the cause of my anxiety right away. I would just feel it in my body (and feel miserable).
The therapists I had from college until my mid-20s were all primarily trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is focused on sorting through and re-creating patterns of thinking. Don’t get me wrong, there can be incredible value in this approach. But for me, I was so disconnected from my own body that working through my thoughts was sometimes more triggering for anxiety responses than it was helpful.
I was in my early 30s when I learned that our bodies have physical memories of sorts, and that I was re-creating times of discomfort that I experienced in my young life. It made perfect sense. It also made sense as to why re-patterning my thoughts wasn’t helping me as much as I was told it should (more on this later).
Most of us are familiar with fight and flight responses, but the complexity of our automatic responses in the modern world is astounding. I am not qualified to go in depth in this area, but here is an amazing summary article of these responses (plus two more – fawn and freeze) by Pete Walker.
So, with a newfound appreciation for the automatic responses in my body and the need to release my thoughts as opposed to analyze them, I learned coping strategies alongside doing deep healing work in therapy. The coping was equally if not more important than the healing.
The role of acceptance
I’ve got a hard truth for you. I talk to a lot of people with anxiety, and I often hear phrases like, “I’m working on getting rid of my anxiety,” or “When I am cured of my anxiety, I will [insert life goal or aspiration here].” For most of us, there is no end to this journey. It is a lifelong process of maintenance, coping, healing and growth. Personally, I am at a point where I find this knowledge soothing. If there is no end, there is no rush. There is room to try things. And if I know my physical responses will always crop back up (at least) in hard or stressful times, I am motivated to create a strategy that includes everything I will need to be strong and clear in those moments and to find anxiety relief naturally and quickly, as well as work on deeper healing. I think it’s pretty lovely.
If you’re not yet excited about or have even accepted that this is a lifelong journey, I understand. There’s no need to judge yourself for feeling this way. But I would encourage you to be kind to yourself in regard to your anxiety relief as well. If you are trying everything you can and are waiting to be “cured,” then perhaps your mindset about anxiety in general is the best place to start.
Anxiety is a signal
In one of my favorite TED Talks, Johann Hari so eloquently concludes, “Your depression is not a malfunction. It’s a signal.” (He is not just speaking of depression, but also anxiety.) He adds that we have to stop “insulting” the signals, and start listening to the signals for what they are trying to tell us. For me, this was a hard message to grasp. As someone with nearly inexplicable anxiety for so many years, I wondered, “How the heck am I supposed to know what this is trying to tell me?”
What I have learned from focusing my natural anxiety relief is: The exploration of what the signal means doesn’t have to be direct. In other words, I don’t have to sit down and think really hard about what my anxiety means in that moment. In fact, that is very often counter productive. Instead, I go into nature and use the activities as a process of channeling.
I use the four phases I’m about to outline to drive curiosity and investigation into my surroundings and into myself. And without needing to have direct answers to my questions, I am able to better understand how to make adjustments in my life to reduce my anxiety and create a better life for myself.
While I have been reticent to call this a spiritual practice, it certainly can be. You will not find any religious association in these strategies, but you are welcome to bend them in any direction that speaks to you. The truth is, these are quite “magical” in a lot of ways. Where we want to place logical explanations and direct feedback mechanisms, we will often find that letting go and allowing space yields better results. So if that’s a spiritual practice, then so be it.
So, why do I need a strategy?
You may be thinking, this is all making sense, but the idea of creating a strategy is daunting and even anxiety-inducing. Trust me I understand that, and the first thing I will say is that there is no rush. Once you understand the phases below, it’s as simple as putting activities or coping mechanisms into each of the buckets.
Once we outline the phases, I hope this will be clearer.
The phases
Through my own journey with natural relief for anxiety and how I have (at times intentionally, at times not) structured my self work, I have thought of the concepts in four buckets. I call them phases but they are not linear. You will jump around with tactics in each phase, and pull what you need as you go. I find them helpful for understanding what I need at any one moment, depending on how anxious or grounded I am feeling.
Phase one: Distraction
This one might surprise you, but I’m calling it what it is! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that it’s “bad” to distract yourself from physical anxiety responses. Yes, if this was your only strategy, then it would be difficult to see any improvement in responses over time. But you know what? Sometimes giving ourselves something else to focus on aside from our extreme discomfort is the best choice for that moment.
So, it’s exactly as it sounds. This phase involves drawing your attention to something other than the sensations in your body or your catastrophic thoughts. It involves focusing on something that gets you quickly away from the discomfort. It’s a temporary relief, but it can be very sweet.
Phase two: Observation
Phase two is about looking and listening. What I love about this phase is that it involves external and internal observation. Here’s what I mean by that. Since these are primarily nature-based strategies, the focus of this phase is on really looking, listening, smelling and immersing yourself in your surroundings. Nature has endless ways for us to really be curious, whether it’s inspecting leaves or deeply listening to the ocean or keeping our eyes out for birds of prey. These practices, as you can imagine, can be distracting (call-back to phase one) and/or grounding. The simple act of observing something deeply is a muscle-building exercise.
As we stretch our observation and curiosity muscles, we begin to learn to observe ourselves as well. Instead of always needing to distract ourselves from discomfort, we can begin to tip-toe into observing what the discomfort feels like within ourselves. Aided by the natural world, we can stand on a beach and bring our attention back and forth from the grains of sand beneath our feet to our feet themselves. We can listen to the sound of the waves, and then tap into the rhythms of our own body – our heartbeat, our digestion, our nerves and hormones. This phase must be done gently, but can be a stepping stone out of distraction and into a beautiful awareness.
Phase three: Connection
The connection phase is where the juicy good stuff starts to happen! Again, as we learn to connect with and in nature, we start to connect more deeply with ourselves.
Connection in nature is a deeper form of observation. As you observe a robin digging around for worms, you might take a moment to reach out a welcoming invitation for connection to her. Maybe for a moment she looks up at you, hops around you and investigates. This is connection. If you’re like me, you might also talk to her a bit, and see what reactions she gives. (Yes some people might think you’re unhinged but who cares?) We’re not talking Snow White level here, we’re just inviting some interaction.
Through this practice, we can start looking at our thoughts and thought patterns, and connect differently to ourselves – as a compassionate, curious, and objective supporter of ourselves. We can also take this connection to the natural world and use it to distill lessons for ourselves, take moments of calmness and begin to work through sticky issues. Like I said, juicy!
Phase four: Growth
Finally, as you explore yourself more deeply and feel comfortable with your coping strategies, you will move into a period of continued growth and personal awareness. Some of the same activities and reflections can be at play in this phase. But you can be more experimental, try new things and become more self-actualized without the burden of anxiety as a constant companion.
Next steps
So, going back to why you need a natural relief for anxiety strategy. A strategy will help you to make the most helpful choices in the moment. If you are (even roughly) aware of what phase you are in at the moment, you know what you should and shouldn’t do. For example, if you are having a pretty major bout of anxiety, you will know that you probably shouldn’t reach into the connection bucket for an activity. You are not grounded enough to do that level of exploration. And similarly, at some point you will recognize that you are in the observation or even the connection phase, and that you don’t need to rely on distraction activities anymore. That is an exciting moment.
Hopefully this has been helpful for understanding why a strategy is so important for managing your anxiety responses, and what mindset will be helpful as you venture into this.
- In part two, we get to work taking inventory on your current situation and getting clarity on what you need.
- In part three, we get to the tactics and activities themselves.
Once again, make sure you have downloaded the strategy template via the form below to help you create your custom plan. And if you have any questions or need support, please send me a message! I would love to hear from you.