Tag: Anxiety

3 Ways to Worry Less

On March 17, 2026

Mind-body strategies for stepping out of the worry loop and into ease.

Lately, I’ve found myself in these impossible situations. Here’s how it typically plays out: there’s some kind of uncertain situation that doesn’t have an immediate resolution (e.g., feeling anxious about how something in the future may unfold that I have no control over). My mind immediately goes into problem-solving mode — trying to think and think and think about the situation as if to find a way out, to find a resolution. Enter my good friend, worry.

As much as my problem-solving mind serves me very well in many circumstances, when it comes to uncertainty about the future, other people’s choices that I can’t do anything about, things that haven’t happened yet, and situations I can’t influence, that same thinking mind tends to get me in trouble. It can turn my thoughts into worry, rumination, and obsessive thinking. I know I’m not alone.

It’s like driving around and around a dead-end street, thinking maybe this time I’ll find a way out. Or like I’m trying to use a hammer from my toolbox to unscrew a screw. It’s the wrong tool in that situation, yet I keep picking up the hammer because it’s my go-to strategy that is so habitual.

In the face of life’s uncertainties and things we can’t control, where can we turn if not to our problem-solving mind? How can we interrupt the worry loop when habitual thinking only gets us more stuck?

Science, psychology and the wisdom traditions offer us some guidance.

1. Practice cultivating a wise heart.

Expansive, heartfelt qualities such as compassion, self-compassion, acceptance, and equanimity can step us out of our looping mental chatter, decrease stress, increase well-being and help quiet the worrying mind. They are a helpful antidote for the obsessive, thinking mind.

In my clinical and personal experience, these heartfelt qualities offer a kind of alchemy when they touch more painful parts of our human experience. When I can bring acceptance to what I am feeling in my body (e.g., this tension, this clenching) and self-compassion to my emotions (e.g., anxiety), this helps make space for greater ease.

Try this: The next time you find yourself in a worry loop, pause and place a hand on your heart. Instead of going into thinking mode, go into feeling mode. Acknowledge how you’re feeling, that this is a moment of difficulty, and say to yourself, “I see and accept all my feelings just as they are.” (Acceptance doesn’t mean you like what’s there, just that you allow it space to be.) Then sense a feeling of care surrounding you. You might imagine the caring presence from a friend or family member, a spiritual leader or being, or a sense of being held in a beautiful place in nature. Let this feeling of care sit side-by-side any difficult emotions, sinking in deeply into the body and heart.

2. Get some psychological distance from the worry part of you so you are no longer overtaken by it.

When we are gripped by worry, we can get lost in our thoughts. The field of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy offers tools to unhook from our thoughts so we are no longer caught in and “fused” with them. When we can get a bit of space, this helps loosen the grip they have over us.

Try this (part one):

First, say “I’m so worried, I’m so worried” and notice how this feels in your body. (For me, I notice tightness and constriction when I say these words). Then shift your words to: “I notice that a part of me is feeling very worried in this moment.” What do you notice when you change these words slightly? (When I do this, it feels like I’ve taken a half step back and can observe that there is a part of me feeling worried that is not the whole of me).

Internal Family Systems Therapy offers us further guidance. It is an evidence-based therapy that posits that our mind is made up of sub-personalities (e.g., this worry part of me might be one such sub-personality), and that there is a core “Self” that is by nature compassionate and wise and ultimately can be an inner leader that offers healing to our hurting parts. While this form of therapy can be quite helpful (and takes time), here is a quick “dip your toe in” experience to try:

Try this (part two):

Once you’ve named this worry part (as in the step above), you might be playful and curious and notice what shape, form, color, size, and/or age that it is. You might imagine it sitting across from you. What can you observe about it? If it could talk, what might it say? What does it need or want? How might it be trying its best to protect you? How might it want you to be with it? Reflecting on these questions can help to further provide some psychological distance between you and this worry part, to unhook from its tight grip.

3. Practice mindfulness and other mind-body strategies to activate different parts of your brain and nervous system.

Soothing your brain:

When we are stuck in worry, we tend to activate a part of our brain called the default mode network. This part of our brain is involved in thinking about the past, the future and self-referential thinking. When we engage in mindfulness meditation, activity in the default mode network region of the brain is reduced. Practicing mindfulness meditation is one way to strengthen pathways in the brain that can help us reduce worry looping.

Try this: Engage in mindfulness meditation. Set aside five or 10 minutes to practice observing thoughts as they arise. Instead of getting pulled into habitual thinking about thoughts, when you notice a thought arising just label it as “thinking” or “worrying” or “planning”. The thoughts will try to pull you in, but see if you can come back to just observing and labelling.

Notice the difference between being caught in a thought and observing a thought. For example, a thought might come up, “What if I give this talk and it’s not well received?” If you get pulled into the thought, it might go down a familiar rabbit hole (“Maybe I’ll make a fool of myself, maybe people will think I’m not smart, what if it really goes badly and then I’m let go at work and then how will I pay my bills?…”). Instead, you might practice noticing this thought, labeling it as “worrying”, and watching it go the way you would watch clouds pass in the sky.

Soothing your nervous system:

Besides learning to activate different parts of our brain to counteract worry, we can also learn to activate different parts of our nervous system. Worry can activate the branch of our nervous system called the “sympathetic nervous system”, involved in the fight-or-flight response. Learning mind-body practices to elicit the “relaxation response” (that activate the ventral vagal pathways of our parasympathetic nervous system) can act as a kind of antidote to this.

Try this: Choose a word or phrase that is soothing for you (for example, “calm” or “peaceful” or “safe in this moment”). Let that become the focus of your attention as you repeat that word as a kind of mantra. When your mind wanders (as it will), gently redirect it again and again to your chosen word or phrase. You might also pair this with slow exhalations, focusing on softening and releasing tension as your breath out.

The next time you’re faced with worry, instead of trying to think your way out of it, try one of these strategies. While not a magic pill, over time you might just loosen its grip a bit and discover a more effective way to cope.

Originally published on Psychology Today.

4 Ways to Feel Steady When Life Gets Hard

By Beth Kurland

On February 16, 2026

In Mindfulness, Resilience, Self Help

How to use the wisdom of the mind and body to help you cope.

It’s been a week.

My friend’s father died, another friend was in a serious accident (he’s recovering), and my son had emergency surgery (he’s doing fine, thankfully).

Life throws curveballs, challenges, and sometimes enormous situations that we need to find our way through.

And through it all, there are waves of emotions that we somehow need to manage—sadness, anxiety, worry, fear, grief, despair, and other unpleasant “visitors.”

Denying or suppressing these emotions may at times temporarily help us through, but in the long term, it can have negative consequences for our mental and physical health. On the other hand, becoming overwhelmed and overtaken by these emotions makes it hard to move forward. Both are human reactions to stressful events. Our nervous system can naturally go into fight, flight, or freeze mode in the service of trying to protect us.

In the face of such difficulties, we may not be able to choose our circumstances or our initial reactions, but we can choose where we place our attention. When we focus on things that bring “cues of safety” to our nervous system (to help offset the threat response), we help create the conditions for self-compassion, clarity, perspective, acceptance, problem-solving, and other inner resources to emerge, to sit side-by-side with our more difficult emotions.

Here are four ways you can direct your attention to help manage challenging situations:

1. Personal agency

Personal agency (identifying what is in your sphere of influence, even if very small) can help lower anxiety and stress. While lack of control can be a perceived threat for the nervous system, a sense of personal agency can help us shift to a more regulated state.

When my son was in pain after his surgery, I channeled my otherwise helpless feelings into doing some meditation with him to help him relax his body. It was a little thing, but it gave me something to focus on and a sense of doing something (that helped both of us).

Other examples of personal agency in the face of difficulties could be getting more information about a medical condition, advocating for yourself, offering support to someone suffering, seeking the help of a professional for emotional or other support, doing something to take care of yourself like going for a walk or eating a nourishing meal (and reminding yourself that small acts of self-care will help give you the energy to meet whatever is here).

2. Social connection

When our nervous system is dysregulated in the face of challenge, we often can feel alone in handling the enormity of what is at hand. Importantly, though, when in the presence of a caring other, this not only feels good emotionally but also can help to bring our nervous system back into physiological balance and connection through a process called co-regulation.

You might think about different people in your life and how each person offers different kinds of support to you. For instance, certain people may tend to make you laugh; others may be good at comforting you; others may provide a listening, non-judgmental space; and so on. Decide what you most need in this moment and reach out. (This step can be difficult, but it is usually well worth it.) For some people, being in small groups or feeling part of community activities can make a big difference in difficult moments. Connection can come in many forms, so be open to what feels most supportive for you.

3. EFT tapping

When our nervous system is revved up, using mind-body modalities to help bring more balance and dial down our stress response can be immensely helpful both physiologically and emotionally. When our nervous system comes down from high alert, we are able to see more possibilities, take more skillful actions, and make space for more acceptance and well-being.

One modality I’ve been using lately is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping. The research on this for helping to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and more is quite compelling. EFT involves gently tapping with your fingers on various acupressure points in the body while saying certain phrases. For the first few rounds of tapping, it is common to acknowledge and name what you are feeling (difficult emotions, tension in the body, anxious thoughts, etc.). As the body comes back into balance, one can then verbalize positive coping statements that help to strengthen inner resources (e.g., I choose to slow down and quiet my mind; with each breath I am teaching my body it’s safe to relax; I can observe this anxiety and allow it to move through me).

Here’s a quick video with Nick Ortner, founder of the Tapping Solution, that you can try and see for yourself how it works.

4. Noticing what’s nourishing

We can go through our days with hundreds or more things in our visual/attentional field at any moment, and yet we can only take in a minuscule bit of that information. Ten people might look out at the same scene or situation and see very different things. Additionally, because it is easy to fall into autopilot mode, we can often look past things without really seeing them (think about driving down the road, lost in thought and not having any idea of your surroundings).

In the midst of life’s challenges, these little things can become the big things that help us through hard moments. We can practice noticing what is nourishing, supportive, and comforting. These become cues of safety for our nervous system to take in, and they can help to offset our stress response.

Rick Hanson’s research on “taking in the good” suggests that repeatedly taking in positive experiences in embodied ways can help offset the negativity bias of our brain (the tendency to notice and remember the negative things and overlook the positive ones). Additionally, this study suggests that short practices of taking in the good can help us build inner resources (such as savoring, self-compassion, improved mood, and emotional reappraisal).

At my dad’s funeral many months ago, when I was able to notice the room filled with caring faces, it brought ease in the face of grief. During my son’s surgery, holding onto the calm, confident voice of the surgeon helped me ride through my waves of anxiety.

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As we use these strategies to invite in what is nourishing and supportive, and help our nervous system take in cues of safety, it’s not that our difficult feelings disappear, but they become just a bit easier to bear. From there, we can move forward with clarity, courage, acceptance, and other inner resources to meet our challenges.

Originally published on Psychology Today.