How to Overcome Daily Anxiety, According to Experts

Overcoming anxiety is not a one-step process. A complete treatment plan might involve some combination of working with a qualified therapist, identifying triggers, building daily prevention habits, practicing coping skills, or even medication. While fully overcoming an anxiety disorder often takes months or years of hard work, there are coping skills you can use to get through daily anxiety that affects you at work, while driving, or when you’re trying to fall asleep.

What Does “Overcoming Anxiety” Mean?

While many people attempt to overcome anxiety with the goal of eliminating it completely, most mental health professionals advise a different approach. Overcoming anxiety doesn’t necessarily mean never feeling anxious again; it means learning how to navigate anxious feelings without being controlled by them.

In a clinical setting, the key goals of overcoming anxiety are to recognize anxious thoughts for what they are, understand their triggers, and develop strategies to respond in a way that keeps life moving forward. The process of overcoming anxiety involves building resilience and learning to face uncertainty with a plan rather than avoiding it.

Tip sheet:

How to Overcome Everyday Anxiety and Stress

Visualize Anxiety as a Faulty Alarm System

Anxiety has a tendency to convince you that danger exists when there is none. It often sends false alarms, similar to a smoke detector that gets triggered by burning toast. Thinking of anxiety as a fire drill your body is using to practice in case you ever find yourself in real danger can help you gain perspective and feel more in control.

Avoid Blaming Yourself

It’s normal to try anxiety treatments that don’t end up working. While it can feel incredibly frustrating for anxiety symptoms to linger or worsen while you’re actively seeking relief, it’s important not to blame yourself. You are strong enough, brave enough, and smart enough to overcome anxiety. You simply haven’t found the right path to get there yet.

Lean Into Your Anxiety

Most people’s gut instinct is to treat anxiety as the enemy and try to fight or run away from it. But anxiety is counterintuitive by nature, and trying to address it with intuitive solutions can often make the problem worse rather than better. It’s like driving down an icy road and skidding towards a telephone pole; steering away from the pole is likely to cause you to crash into it, while steering toward it will help you regain control of the car.

How to Get Through a Panic Attack

The counterintuitive solution method to dealing with anxiety is perfect to exercise during panic attacks. When a panic attack makes you feel like you can’t breathe, your body’s natural response is to suck in big gulps of air. Instead of inhaling, try a long, gentle exhale. This will relax your diaphragm and allow you to breathe from your belly instead of your chest.

How to Overcome Anxiety at Work

Battling anxiety at work can feel even more overwhelming when it seems like all eyes are on you. Creating a job survival plan to have on hand is a great way to feel prepared and in control when the symptoms of anxiety hit. For example, you might get up from your desk and take a walk around the block or designate a trusted coworker to talk to.

If your anxiety disorder has been diagnosed by a doctor, you may want to talk to your employer’s human resource department about what accommodations are available to you under your local laws.

How to Overcome Anxiety When Driving

When you feel a panic attack coming on while driving, your first instinct might be to clutch the wheel in a death grip as a way to feel more in control of the car. But tensing your body is likely to further fuel your brain’s anxiety response. One by one, try to softly uncurl each of your fingers from the wheel and drive with a lighter grip.

If the anxiety attack continues or is impeding your ability to drive safely, you should always pull over and wait until it subsides.

How to Overcome Anxiety at Night

Sleep and anxiety have a habit of feeding into each other in a maddening cycle: an anxious mind can easily keep you awake all night, and the resulting lack of sleep only serves to make the next day’s anxiety worse. Finding the right tools to overcome anxiety at night is the key to sleeping better and breaking the cycle. Mindfulness meditation exercises are great for this. A licensed therapist can help you come up with a practice tailored to your specific anxiety.