For people living with anxiety, the battle extends beyond upsetting thoughts and feelings. It often includes physical symptoms as well. Often, this ongoing struggle can have a ripple effect—the anxiety, overwhelm, or sense of helplessness invade every part of life. And working with the anxious thoughts themselves can backfire. Fortunately, there are other ways to bring calm to your overcharged system. Grounding, mindfulness, and body-based tools can be an anxious persons’ best friend. Here are some of my favorites: 

Slow your breath

When you slow down your rate of breathing, everything else slows down as well. 

This is because your breath is the one part of your nervous system you can steer directly. When I was a child, I used to get mad when people told me to count to 10. Today, I know that there is wisdom to that age-old advice. And it’s not just about counting to 10. It’s about breathing slowly, with a longer exhale than inhale.

Try it:

Inhale for 4.

Exhale for 6.

Repeat for a few rounds, and see how you feel. That extended exhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system — the “rest and settle” part — and sends a message: we’re safe here. Practice when you’re calm, so the pattern is familiar when you actually need it. A minute or two, once a day, is plenty.

Slow your movements

Move slowly. Your mind can’t race when your body is relaxed. When thoughts are sprinting, we usually start to move faster, breathe faster, scroll faster. But the nervous system takes its cues from the body. Move slowly, on purpose, and the mind eventually falls into step. This doesn’t mean a workout. It means walking slowly, doing some gentle stretches, and a few mindful yoga postures. Even slowly sweeping the broom can help harness the mind-body connection to restore a state of calm. You’re telling your body: we’re not being chased. We can take our time. 

Next time the spiral starts, try changing your speed before you try changing your thoughts.

Write it down

Racing thoughts spin around, over and over, like a not-very-merry-go-round. 

But writing breaks the loop — it forces your thoughts to slow down to the speed of your hand. It puts things in order, and has an end point. And once it’s on the page, your brain can finally stop rehearsing it. And it’s just for you. Nobody else to read it, judge it, grade it. You don’t need a  pretty notebook (but you can use one if you want!). You don’t even have to write full sentences. But after the initial brain dump, the thoughts will start to organize themselves, and your body and mind will recognize that this merry-go-round doesn’t go on forever. There is a beginning, middle, and end – and then you can put your pencil down, and relax. If you don’t know where to start, try finishing this sentence: “Right now, the thing going around in my head is…”

Listen to Happy Music

This might be the easiest — and most underrated — and most enjoyable — tool in the kit. 

It’s genuinely hard to spiral to a song that makes you smile. Music reaches the nervous system faster than logic does — rhythm, melody, and memory all working on you before your thinking brain has a chance to object. While arguing with anxious thoughts is useless, three minutes of the right song can shift the whole room. When I was in graduate school, some of my classmates were studying music therapy and they told the rest of us a little about the research. And you can make a study of it yourself: Build a small playlist now, while you’re calm. Choose those songs you can’t help singing along to, or dancing to, or that make you smile. Then, when the thoughts start racing, don’t think — just press play.

Distraction. 

Yes, it’s allowed. It’s not avoiding, it’s pacing. 

When you are doing it with intention, and will come back to problem-solving when you are calm, that’s not “avoidance”. It’s coping. Somewhere along the way, distraction got a bad reputation — like every hard feeling must be faced head-on, immediately, and steeped in. Here’s the more honest truth: distraction *on purpose* is a legitimate, effective, natural coping skill. It’s a pause button, not an escape hatch. Sometimes the most skillful thing you can do mid-spiral is step away — watch the show, call the friend, do the puzzle — and come back to the problem when your nervous system is steadier. The difference between healthy distraction and avoidance is simple: do you come back? If the answer is yes, you’re not avoiding. You’re pacing yourself.

Mindfulness. 

Don’t let all your thoughts take you for a ride. 

Think of your thoughts as trains pulling into a station. Anxiety wants you on board every single one — riding the worry all the way to its worst-case destination. Mindfulness is standing on the platform instead, naming the thoughts instead of taking a ride: Worry. Failure. Not enough. Too much. You watch the train arrive. You name it…and you let it pass. The thoughts still come. The practice isn’t stopping the trains. It’s remembering you have a choice about which ones you ride — a choice that sometimes you have the capacity to make. And if you went for a ride, it’s ok. More trains are coming. You’ll have the chance to practice.

You don’t need all of these. Just one or two that you actually use — practical, not aspirational — that can make all the difference. Practice them when you’re calm so you’ll have access to them when you aren’t — that’s the trick. So pick your one or two, and make them a habit. Keep them close on the easy days, and reach for them on the hard ones.

And if the spirals feel bigger than these tools — that’s not a failure either. That’s just a sign you deserve more support than an Instagram post can offer. That’s what therapy is for.