How to Reduce Your Stress & Anxiety in 5 Easy Ways

The Monsters That are Stress & Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are monsters that we battle with on a daily basis. These monsters can take the shape of hyper vigilance in any social setting that you don’t feel safe in. Or that feeling like the weight of the world is on your shoulders every month when it’s time to pay the bills.

Anxiety is that monster pounding on your heart leading up to a public speaking event, the dread of being called into the boss’s office, the fear of the unknown. Stress is an overwhelming monster that leaves your body feeling as if it’s been so tightly compacted into itself that you just might explode or simply fall apart with the slightest additional weight added on.
 
Just like in any fantastical battle against monsters like dragons and behemoths, you’ll need some weapons and tools of your own if you are to go up against stress and anxiety. In just a second, I’m going to share with you 5 coping tools to help you manage and cope with the daily ups and downs of stress and anxiety.

These are quick and simple tools that you can use at any time and in any place, that ‘s the beauty of them. I teach and practice these tools with most, if not all of my clients as a way to set them up for success and to ultimately help them reign in their levels of stress and anxiety to more manageable and healthier levels so that they can get back to living.
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5 Easy Ways to Reduce Daily Stress and Anxiety

1. The Emptying Breath: The goal of this technique is to repeat as many times as possible until your body forces a yawn. Yawning gives your brain the signal that you are feeling stressed and anxious and need to release some of that tension.
   1. Inhale as much air as your lungs can hold
   2. Once your lungs have taken in as much air as you can, take one more sip of air
   3. Exhale your breathe with a verbal sighing sound “ahhhhh”
   4. Repeat as many times until you are forced to yawn.
2. Box Breathing: The goal of this technique is to bring your mind out of the focus of your stress and anxiety and to focus on your respiratory system. Doing so, is known to regulate and reduce your level of distress and bring you back into a mode of self-awareness.
   1. Inhale for a count of 4
   2. Hold your breath for a count of 4
   3. Exhale for a count of 4
   4. Hold for a count of 4
   5. Repeat as needed
3. 5 Senses Technique: This technique is meant to bring your mind into a state of a calming environmental and situational awareness and out of your state of anxiety or stress. The goal is to use all 5 of your natural senses to bring focus back onto the world around you and anchor/ground you in your 5 senses (The order in how you use each sense doesn’t matter). Example:
   1. Find 5 things that you can see that are blue
   2. Find 4 things that you can smell
   3. Find 3 things that you can hear
   4. Find 2 things that you can touch
   5. Find 1 thing that you can taste
4. Imagery: This technique is better known as “finding your happy place”. The general idea is to displace the immediate tension of stress or anxiety by placing your mind in sort of mental landscape or situation that brings you calm, so that you can cope with the stress and anxiety of the moment.
   1. (Sometimes it can be helpful to close your eyes) Create a landscape or location that exudes a genuine sense of peace and calm in your mind, i.e. sitting at a cabin in the mountains, standing in a cool shallow river, hitting a punching bag in your home gym, etc.
   2. Focus on that mental landscape/action until you can feel a calming sense of control return to your present situation
5. Grounding: This is a fun one but depending on where you live, it can only be done according to seasonal weather.
   1. Get outside on a sunny day and go somewhere that has grass, either your own yard or a park should be fine enough
   2. Take off your shoes and walk around on the grass for 10-15 minutes, walk around, scrunch up your toes in the grass, stretch out your toes.
   3. Getting outside and connecting with nature while getting a healthy dose of vitamin d from the sunshine is proven to elevate moods and decrease stress and anxiety levels.

Written by
​Dax Johnson
 
Sources:
American Psychological Association. (2023). Stress in america 2023: A nation recovering from collective trauma. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2023/collective-trauma-recovery

Bence, S. (2023, June 14). Grounding: Its meaning, benefits, and exercises to try. Verywell Health. https://www.verywellhealth.com/grounding-7494652
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Raman, R. (2023, April 4). How to safely get vitamin D from the sun. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-d-from-sun#amount-of-skin 

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