How to Handle Anxiety


  • What is Anxiety
  • Causes of Anxiety
  • Types of Anxiety
  • Upsides of Anxiety 
  • Downsides of Too Much Anxiety
  • How to Address Anxiety
  • Practical Tools 


What is Anxiety

  • Anxiety is an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure.
  • Anxiety is not the same as fear, but they are often used interchangeably. Anxiety is considered a future-oriented, long-acting response broadly focused on a diffuse threat, whereas fear is an appropriate, present-oriented, and short-lived response to a clearly identifiable and specific threat.https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety
  • Anxiety can be a coping mechanism.
  • Anxiety is unexpressed negative emotions.


Causes of Anxiety

  • Physical factors, including neurological and biochemical imbalance.
  • Worries about the future.
  • Anxiety can arise from our desire to have control over our lives and our future.
  • Reaction to our senses of powerlessness, hopelessness, helplessness, worthlessness and dread.


Types of Anxiety

  • Present stressors: In-the-moment worries and fears.
  • Anticipatory: Worries of what’s to come.
  • Clinical anxieties include Panic Disorder, Social Phobia or Social Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, PTSD, Separation Anxiety Disorder.


Upsides of Anxiety 

  • It can alert us that something is wrong, even when we don’t see its physical evidence, as our unconscious can pick up what might be going on before we become consciously aware of it.
  • It can motivate us to try harder.
  • It can help us become better leaders, as a person with anxiety in a leadership role is highly aware of what can go wrong and is a more cautious thinker, careful decision-maker, and good problem solver.


Downsides of Too Much Anxiety

  • Too much anxiety can cause one to avoid people, situations, activities of daily living, and can cause one to become immobilized.
  • It can cause us to have elevated blood pressure and other physical and mental ill-effects.
  • Undealt prolonged anxiety can lead to physical maladies and illness.


How to Address Anxiety

  • Our emotional lives are composed of moments: Every moment starts and eventually ends.
  • Acknowledge/identify (put our feelings into words: Making conscious what’s unconscious) our feelings of anxiety, worry and all negative emotions.
  • Allow ourselves to feel our negative emotions.
  • Embrace our negative emotions in the moment without avoiding or suppressing them.
  • Thomas De Selle:
    • Ask/Invite the Holy Spirit into our moment.
    • Offer the present moment to God, by living this present (albeit bad/terrible moment) onto God – not living for ourself, but living for God in this moment.
    • Accept the result of this moment (https://hallow.app.link/BbpfPCMeETb).
  • Do not marinate or perseverate in our anxiety.
  • Discern what practical things we can change and take steps to change the source of our anxiety.
  • Realize what things we cannot change and accept this reality.
  • Acknowledge that God is in control as He is sovereign.
  • Acknowledge God’s goodness, love and faithfulness toward us.
  • Go to God and focus on His love for us and His power to control every aspect of our lives.
  • Distract our minds with other thoughts; thoughts that can comfort us.
  • Being “mind-full”: Filling our mind with God’s truth so that there’s less space/bandwidth for us to perseverate in our anxieties: Philippians 4:8 is a good verse to focus on: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”


Practical Tools (Blog post on "Practical Ways of Coping With Emotions)

  • Whenever we’re stressed, adrenaline is locked in our muscles.
  • Set a time allotment for how many minutes a day we allow ourselves to feel our negative emotions. Once we have met our “quota” for the day, we shut them off, telling ourselves that we will have our allotted time the next day to feel them. For example, Let’s say that we decided to give ourselves 20 minutes a day to feel our negative emotions: Set a timer for 20 minutes. When we recognize that we’re feeling our negative emotions, we start the timer. Let’s say that after 7 minutes we no longer feel these negative emotions, we PAUSE the timer. We now still have 13 minutes allotted for the rest of the day. Later on in the day we start to feel our negative feelings again, we resume the timer, and pause it again once the feelings pass. Once we reach our allotted 20 minutes, we STOP ruminating on these negative emotions, knowing that we have our fresh 20 minutes the next day. 
  • Box Breathing (using our forefinger to draw a square on our thigh, counting to four by: Breathing in, pausing, breathe out and pause as we draw each side of the square).
  • Clenching and releasing of muscles.  https://youtu.be/kdLTOurs2lA?si=gRkGYR_KzYqPY-oW
  • Laughing until our stomach hurts.
  • Crying/sobbing.
  • Exercise/do physical activities until our limbs feel wobbly.
  • Discharge our pent-up emotions through SURREAL imaginations.
  • Vent with God our negative emotions.
  • Journal our thoughts and feelings.
  • Verbally share our feelings with trustworthy friends who can empathize with us, hold our feelings in confidence and accept us. When we ask for advice, they can help point us back to God.
  • Share our negative emotions with our therapist.



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