All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
If you asked me a few months ago, I might’ve ventured to say I had gotten pretty good at managing my anxiety. I hadn’t tamed it completely or anything—I doubt I ever will—but years of therapy had equipped me with plenty of tools. When my anxiety reared its noisy head, I could soothe myself, talk myself off the ledge, distract myself, or do whatever I needed in the moment. Like, not to brag, but I was well on my way to the 10,000 hours needed to master the art of calming myself the fuck down.
And then, well. The coronavirus happened. Now I’m learning the hard way that even my most well-worn tools don’t really stand a chance against the anxiety-inducing shit storm that is a global pandemic. So many things I used to rely on—from certain cognitive behavioral therapy exercises to escaping into a good book—aren’t working the same way they used to. Which, understandable. It’s hard finding comfort in, for example, telling yourself that the thing you’re anxious about will pass when uncertainty about the future is lurking around every corner right now. Hell, I even wrote an article last month about anxiety coping mechanisms around the coronavirus that felt personally helpful at the time, but reading it again now, I’m like, “THIS IS ALL USELESS.”
The thing about managing your mental health, though, is that you always have to adapt your methods—not just in the face of something as huge and life-altering as a pandemic, but in little ways throughout your life too. So even though it feels harder right now, and the answers are less clear, I’m doing what I always do: experimenting and trying my best to find new ways to take care of myself in the specific ways I need in the moment.
Here’s what I’ve figured out about managing my anxiety, which has been at an all-time high the past month and a half. Maybe these tips will be obsolete in a month. But maybe they’ll help you right now, too.
1. I ask myself, Is this helpful?
Somehow, this has become an accidental refrain for me the past month and a half. I blame my therapist. In our sessions—long before the pandemic—I had a habit of going on tangents, winding down the clock, and finding ways to be anxious about what-ifs that hadn’t even happened yet. And my therapist, bless her, would occasionally ask me, “Are you finding this helpful?”
Which, ugh. A good vent session is occasionally helpful, yes, but more often than not, you wind up just ruminating and getting yourself more worked up than when you started. Same goes for anxiety. The more I indulge my anxious thoughts, the further down the rabbit hole I fall, and the more hypothetical scenarios and outcomes I find to be stressed about. You can probably imagine how my experience of the pandemic has been going.
So I’ve been playing my own therapist. When I get myself going about all the things there are to be stressed about right now (my health! my loved ones’ health! work! family! the economy! the world!), I’ll ask myself, Is this helpful? The answer is almost always no and it allows me to take a moment to reflect on what I’m doing and why. Honestly, when I intervene early enough, it shuts me up.
2. I listen to music that evokes nostalgia.
Music has always been a huge staple in my self-care arsenal, and using it to deal with anxiety is no exception. That said, finding the right song, artist, or album to soothe my anxious soul is always a process of trial and error. In the past, I’ve turned to mellow acoustic songs sung softly by British men, angry feminist icons whose righteous rage cut my anxiety off at the knees, and even some old classical masterpieces that lulled me into a meditative state. None of those had been working since the coronavirus hit, though, so it was back to the drawing board for my pandemic anxiety playlist.
Lately, it’s been a lot of angsty emo, pop-punk, and, well, old Glee covers. If that seems like a weird mix, you’re not wrong, but these genres have something really important in common: They fill me with nostalgia. Everything going on with the pandemic constantly feels huge and uncertain and scary; this music transports me back to a time when the world felt smaller and safer. Your nostalgia playlist might not be filled with emo classics and songs from one of the most awful train wrecks in television history, but tapping into something that used to bring you unfettered joy, hope, and release might be just what you’re looking for right now to ground yourself when everything feels Too Much. I highly recommend it.
3. I lie on an acupuncture mat.
A few years ago, this acupuncture mat ($20, amazon.com) took my corner of the internet by storm. I am nothing if not weak for viral wellness goods, so I bought one. It’s been sitting at the back of my closet ever since. But a combination of stress-induced muscle tension and touch starvation inspired me to pull it out a few weeks ago.
I can’t say if there is any scientific backup to this mat’s many health claims, but I can say it’s been a useful grounding tool for me in a way something like meditation never has because I can’t shut my brain up. There’s no way not to be present when lying on a vaguely painful bed of plastic needles. It forces me to focus on nothing but the sensations in my body and, against the hurts-so-good pressure that eventually melts into buzzy numbness, anxiety takes a back seat.
4. I play mindless games on my phone.
Please don’t ask me just how much time goes into reaching level 79 on Yahtzee with Buddies. I don’t like to think about how many hours I’ve spent staring at my screen gently tapping the “roll” button to listen to the click-clack of imaginary dice. But I can’t deny that the mobile game has distracted me off the edges of many a panic attack. Same goes for games like Candy Crush, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, 2048, and half a dozen more. The more mindless, the better. When my brain won’t shut up and my thoughts start spiraling toward a catastrophic place, I can turn toward the pointless, repetitive therapy of tapping my phone screen until I’ve calmed down.
5. I talk over myself.
I live by myself, so unless I’m on a Zoom call with coworkers or talking to my cats, a lot of my time these days is spent inside my own head. And as anyone with mental illness knows, too many hours with only your own thoughts for company sometimes isn’t the best. It isn’t surprising that my anxious thoughts are festering under these circumstances.
When that happens—and by that I mean the silence inside my head starts to fill with the sound of a particularly mean swarm of bees—I interrupt myself. Out loud. I wish I could say that I say something soothing or grounding or smart or validating. But honestly, I just start saying, “No, not going there.” Or “Haha, not right now, no.” Or “No, thank you.” Or most commonly, “Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope.”
Eventually, I either laugh, feel a little stupid, forget what my anxious stream of consciousness was trying to say, or all of the above. Your mileage may vary, but I trust that you can find your own version of “nope” that works for you.
6. I cuddle my pets.
I mean really, intentionally cuddle with my pets, not just passively pet them while watching TV or working. I often don’t realize how I take advantage of my cats’ presence—they’re always lounging on my bed beside me or curled up on the back of the couch nearby. But if you have a pet and need a reminder like I did, when the symptoms of anxiety start rolling in, there’s nothing quite as relaxing as dropping what you’re doing and taking a 10-minute break to do nothing but pet, snuggle, kiss, and love your fur monsters.
7. I, ugh, exercise.
I don’t share this because I think anyone reading this needs to be told for the first time that exercise is good for mental health (believe me, my biggest pet peeve is when people pretend going for a run will magically cure my depression). Instead, I want to remind you it’s there as an option that might work for you now even if it hasn’t in the past. Like, the fact that I’m even recommending this is a big testament to how effective self-care is an ever-moving and unpredictable target.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always known that exercise makes me feel better mentally, but I accepted this fact begrudgingly, motivating myself to work out only with the knowledge that I would feel better having had done it. Now, though, working up a sweat is a reliable way to nip an anxiety attack in the bud. So much so that on days I’m feeling up for it, hopping on my bike for even 10 or 15 minutes is often my first response when I sense anxiety rolling in. Believe me, I’m surprised, too.
8. I ride out the thoughts.
There is a strange comfort in knowing that, for once, all of my anxieties are completely justified. For the longest time, coping with anxiety has meant talking myself down from irrational thoughts, reminding myself things will be okay, and grounding myself in reality. But guess what? Anxiety is the reality now and denying that only adds fuel to the fire. At least for me.
There’s a time and a place for all the anxiety coping mechanisms on this list—I’m not kidding when I say they’ve been helping a lot—but sometimes, the most helpful thing is to just be anxious. Feel the feelings and tell yourself, Of course you’re anxious. Of course you feel this way. Of course it’s hard. That’s it. No finding bright sides. No telling yourself everything will be okay. Just honoring where you’re at and feeling deeply how valid it is.
Related:
