How do you calm anxiety fast?

When anxiety spikes, arguing with the anxious thought rarely wins. The body is the faster way in: the breath, cold water, your feet on the floor, what your eyes take in. A few minutes later, the mind tends to follow.

It helps to know what “calm” means here. Lisa Damour is the clinical psychologist who advised the makers of Inside Out 2, and she told The New York Times that mental health is about “having feelings that fit what’s happening” and handling them well. So a fast technique has a modest job. It brings the alarm back down to the size of the situation. Some of the anxiety may stay, because in her view it is there to keep you safe.

The first two minutes

Take these in order, and skip any that don’t fit where you are.

1. Start with the exhale. Breathe in through your nose for a count of four, then out through your mouth for six or eight, for five or so rounds. The long out-breath is the part that works, and the page on how deep breathing reduces anxiety explains why. If you need something quicker, take a full breath in through the nose, then a second short sniff on top to fill your lungs all the way, and let it all out slowly through the mouth until you’re empty. This double inhale is often called the physiological sigh. It takes about ten seconds, and one to three rounds is often enough to feel a change.
2. Splash cold water on your cheeks, your forehead and around your eyes. It is the other fast lever. Anxiety guides credit the diving reflex, which slows the heart, and temperature shifts also appear on the Washington Post’s list of fast techniques that therapists recommend.
3. Bring your attention out of your head and into the room. Press your feet into the floor and feel your weight go down through them. Let your eyes relax and your gaze widen until you take in the edges of what’s in front of you.
4. If the thoughts keep pulling, count down through the senses: five things you can see, four you can feel against your skin, then three sounds, two smells and one taste. Go slowly. The more specific each thing is, the better it holds you.

When the wave keeps coming

Some surges are bigger. AnxietyCentre is a site run by people who have lived with anxiety disorder. It notes that once the stress hormones are out, a strong surge can take twenty minutes or more to wear off, and that fighting the sensations tends to make them last longer.

These help you ride it out.

• Release the muscles from the bottom up. Tighten your feet for about five seconds, then let go and notice the difference. Work up from there through the legs, belly, arms and face.
• Name it. Tell yourself in plain words that this is anxiety, and that your body is bracing for something. Kelsey Mann, who directed Inside Out 2, said in the same Times piece that a feeling loses a little of its intensity once it is recognized.
• Change the scene. Get up, step outside, go for a brisk walk. Staying put and turning the worry over is the slower road. Rumination is linked to anxiety as well as depression, and in dozens of experiments a pleasant distraction lifted low mood (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). Those experiments measured depressed mood, not anxiety, so treat them as a pointer.

If turning inward makes it worse

Breath and body techniques ask you to watch what’s happening inside, and that doesn’t suit everyone at every moment. Van Dam and colleagues (2017) argue that meditation research has been oversold, and that its possible adverse effects need more attention than they’ve had. So if following your breath or heartbeat makes the fear sharper, stop and turn outward: sounds, the room, the walk.

The breathing also works better once it’s familiar. Practice the long exhale on an ordinary calm day, so it’s there when you need it. Slow breathing practiced with heart rate feedback has substantial research support for conditions as different as asthma and depression. The best-supported explanation is that it strengthens the baroreceptor reflex, part of how the body regulates heart rate and blood pressure (Lehrer and Gevirtz, 2014).

How solid is this?

Most of the quick techniques here come from clinical practice and anxiety guides. The Mental Health Commission of Canada, for one, recommends breathing, a quieter place and grounding yourself in the present. None of the studies cited on this page tested cold water, the five-senses count or the double inhale directly. Slow breathing has the firmest base. The rest carries little risk, but it leans on experience more than on trials.

For the longer view of anxiety and stress, start at the Anxiety & Stress Relief guide. If anxiety is significantly affecting your daily life, or the spikes keep coming however well you handle each one, talk to a doctor or a therapist. These techniques get you through a moment, but they are no substitute for treatment.