10 Ways to Cope with Anxiety and Overthinking

Do you often feel anxious or overthink things? In this episode, I share 10 practical ways to cope with anxiety and calm your mind. These tips include ideas from therapy, neuroscience, and everyday life.

You’ll learn how to: 

• Stop anxious thoughts from going in circles
• Calm your body with easy methods
• Be kinder to yourself to reduce the pressure of perfectionism
• Shift your focus from rumination to grounded action

This is a refreshed version of one of my most popular episodes, with new insights and updated guidance. Whether you’re facing racing thoughts at night, constant worry, or the stress of everyday life, these strategies can help you find more calm and a clear head.
 
If you’re looking for real tools to manage anxiety and overthinking, and to understand why you feel the way you do, this episode is for you.

Listen to this episode next: 'The Curse of Overthinking. How do I Stop Being an Overthinker?' 

https://www.bristolcounselling.co.uk/how-do-i-stop-being-an-overthinker/

Chapters

• 0:00 – Intro: Anxiety and Overthinking Welcome and introduction to the Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast.
• 0:32 Why I’m Re-Releasing This Episode Why this early episode on anxiety still matters.
• 0:53 Somatic Mastery: A Practice Update Personal reflections on daily self-regulation and nervous system practices.
• 1:43 Body Scan: A Simple Somatic Practice How a body scan helped during a difficult hike.
• 2:40 More Somatic Exercises for Anxiety Butterfly wings, TRE shaking, tapping, and how they support emotional release.
• 3:49 Somatics & Anxiety (New Video Audio Clip) Practical insights into anxiety, cold-water swimming, and three strategies: Regulate your breathing Name your triggers Bring in compassion
• 11:33 Back to the Original Recording (2021): What Anxiety Really Is Understanding worry, binge eating, and how anxiety affects the body.
• 16:20 10 Ways to Cope with Anxiety and Overthinking
• 27:58 Closing Reflections & Next Steps Companion video, key takeaways, and invitation to connect.

Transcript

Coping with Anxiety: 10 Somatic Ways to Calm Overthinking

Intro: Anxiety and Overthinking
This podcast is about anxiety, and how overthinking only makes it worse. 

Hi, I'm Shelley Treacher from the Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast. I am a therapist specialising in working with anxiety, but also with lesser understood compulsions like emotional eating and love addiction. 

I use somatic therapy to help people calm their nervous systems down and to feel more at home in themselves. 

Why I’m Re-Releasing This Anxiety Episode
Today I'm re-releasing a very early episode on coping with Anxiety. It's one of those episodes that people often return to, and I wanna share it again because the themes feel just as relevant as ever. 

And I've also created a little video on anxiety recently. 

Somatic Mastery: A Quick Practice Update
But before we go into the original recording, I also want to give you a little update from my own practice. 

As part of my current Somatic Mastery work, which really means I've been revisiting some of the things that I learned when I first started somatic psychotherapy. I've been practicing daily self-regulation exercises. 

Often they leave me feeling calmer and more in my body, and sometimes happier, but not always. Sometimes they stir things up and I feel more unsettled at first, and that's important to note because self-regulation isn't really about finding an instant fix. Sometimes things do give you a quick fix, but it's really about practicing ways of staying with whatever comes up, and gradually teaching the nervous system that it can cope. 

Body Scan: A Simple Somatic Practice That Helped
What turned out to be One of my favorites this time round is a simple body scan. 

I go hiking up mountains quite a lot and usually I feel quite brave and excited about it, but for whatever reason, probably due to the menopause. I was hiking recently and I felt nervous, and so I stopped on a beach to do this exercise because I just wasn't coping very well with it. 

I lay on the beach. Warm, thankfully, unlike today, and I scanned my body from toe to head, filling each area with relaxation, sometimes imagining air between my joints, sometimes imagining having massage, 

And I noticed that on the way back to my campsite going up and down the really steep rocks, I wasn't so scared. There are so many variations of these practices. 

More Somatic Exercises to Calm Anxiety (Butterfly Wings, TRE, Tapping)
Some of the exercises are really gentle, like something that's called butterfly wings. Often here you're crossing your arms in front of your chest with your hands on, your shoulders, the opposite shoulder, and then you open your arms slowly like wings. This can make you feel really free and relaxed and open. 

Others are more active like tapping or like TRE shaking, which can sometimes bring up emotion as well as release it. 

What all of them have in common is that they help your body process what your mind can't. That's something I really want to emphasise. Anxiety doesn't ease through overthinking. Trying to analyse your way out of it often keeps you stuck. The shift comes from letting the feeling move through your body with breath movement, sharing it with someone safe instead of trapping it in loops of thought. 

Somatics & Anxiety: New Video  Audio Clip
And because I've just released a new video on somatics and anxiety, I'm gonna bring you the audio to this now. It ties directly into what we'll cover in the original podcast. 

Anxiety can be so tough. It's kind of
 like your mind and your body are working
 against each other. It feels like it's
 working against you. If you've ever felt
 like anxiety came on really quickly and
 you didn't really understand why, maybe
 you were getting symptoms like heart
 palpitations, shortness of breath, and
 turning to things that make you feel
 better, like comfort food. You're not
 alone.

 The good news is that there are some
 really simple ways that you can get out
 of this spiral. And I'm going to show
 you some of them here today in this
 video. I'm a therapist working with
anxiety, lesser known addictions like
comfort eating and relationships.
I work specifically with somatic therapy
which helps you to calm your nervous
system down. 

What I've found is that when
 you work with your body and you
 understand what's going on there,
 anxiety becomes less of an enemy and you
 start treating it with more compassion,
 which really has the power to shift a
 lot. 

Anxiety isn't just about
 overthinking.
 Our bodies go into a certain state when
 we're anxious. It's a mixture of fear
 and protection.
 Our bodies might get tighter. Our
 breathing might get shallower. heart
 rate might get faster and jaw might get
 tight, voice might get tighter, and our
 face might go really blank.

 Anxiety tricks us into thinking that we
 can't cope with things and that things
 are worse than they actually are.

For example, when I go cold water swimming,
 I nearly talk myself out of it every
 single time. And sometimes I have. On
 the drive there, I'm thinking things
 like, "I'm going to hate this. What am I
 doing to myself? It's really cold
 outside.

 I'll tell you how I get over it and
 manage to get in in a minute. But
 sometimes when I'm swimming, I'm
 thinking, I'm not going to make it to
 the other side. I better swing back. And
 sometimes I do shorten my swim. But this
 is the anxiety talking.
 It's making me feel like the danger is
 bigger. You know what? Sometimes I'm
 even thinking that eels are going to eat
 me. There are eels in the lake, but
 they're tiny. In my mind, they're massive giant people eating eels.

 This is the anxiety making me feel like
 the danger is much bigger than it
 actually is and making me believe that
 I'm not going to cope.

 What I actually do when I get in the
 water, every step of the way, I'm
 remembering that I really get a huge
 amount out of cold water swimming. I'm
 trying to remember that. And then as I'm
 getting in, I'm taking my time. I'm not
 jumping in like like I've seen people do
 and I feel sorry for them. I look at
 them and think, "Oh, you feel like you
 have to jump in quickly. It's a bravado
 thing or an anxiety thing." I take my
 time and I give myself compassion and
 kindness for doing that. 

And I control
 my breathing. I'm breathing really
 slowly, especially on the outreath. And
 that gives me an enormous amount of
 satisfaction. And I can feel it calming
 my nervous system down to the point
 where I can get used to the water and
 enjoy my connection with nature, which I
 love.

 The lessons here are that I can cope
 with much more than my anxiety would
 lead me to believe and that anxiety can
 be overridden. That protection mechanism
 can be overridden when it's beneficial
 to do that.

 Here I'm going to give you three ways
 that you can start to cope with anxiety.

 1. The first we've already mentioned,
 regulate your breathing. If you can slow
 your breathing down, it indicates to
 your body that you are now safe and your
 nervous system will kick into a
 different state, more relaxed state.
 Anxiety’s voice - How fear and self-doubt take over
 So try breathing more slowly and maybe
 slowly on your outreath in particular
 because that's when your heart rate
 slows down.

 You can also try doing things like
 humming or singing or saying ah as you
 breathe out. 

2. The second thing is to name
 what's underneath your anxiety to name
 your anxiety triggers.
 Underneath anxiety are often deeper
 issues like being afraid of being
 rejected, fear of abandonment, or just
 not feeling good enough. Like when I
 went swimming, I didn't think I could
 make it to the other side. But I know
 that I can, and I know that I love to do
 that.
 This is the anxiety and the fear
 talking, you see. 

So, next time you have
 one of these anxious thoughts or
 feelings or experiences, ask yourself,
 "What am I really worried about? What's
 what's the worst that I think could
 happen?"
 And then you can learn to spot that
 that's probably underneath a lot of your
 anxieties
 and it might not be as scary as you
 think it is.

 3. The third thing is to bring yourself
 compassion.
 Anxiety wants you to feel bad about
 yourself. That's how it controls you
 into protecting you. But you don't need
 that all the time. Sometimes it's
 completely inappropriate.

 When I'm getting into the water, I'm
 remembering that I'm safe. There are
 lots of people around. The water's
 shallow. There's no current. There's
 definitely no big electric eels.
 And I've done this so many times before.
 I know I'm okay. I'm physically fit. I
 love it. So, I'm being kind to myself by
 taking my time and allowing myself to
 calm myself down first and embrace it
 gently and slowly. 

This is compassion.

 Being kind to yourself isn't weakness.
 It's what allows you to stay strong and
 move through the fear.

 So, you see, anxiety is not your enemy.
 It's a protective force that sometimes
 overreacts.
 With things like breathing, curiosity,
 and compassion, and maybe a touch of
 humor, you can start to calm your body
 down and move through your fears
 differently. 

The real shift often comes
 through letting feelings move through
 you through breath, movement, making a
 sound, or doing something with another
 person that you trust instead of looping
 it through your head over and over and
 over. 

So, let's just take 20 seconds to
 do something together. Start by placing
 a hand on your chest
 and breathing slowly.
 Breathe in through your nose
 and breathe out more slowly through your
 mouth.
 Keep going, making your breath just that
 little bit slower.
 If you'd like, you can breathe out with
 a hum sound or an aaah sound.
 Hummmmm
 aaaaaaaaah
 and notice how you feel afterwards. 

Back to the Original Recording: What Anxiety Really Is
So with that audio in mind, let's return to the original recording where I share what anxiety really is and 10 ways that you can begin to cope with it. 

We all have things to worry about. Like anger, which was the subject of my last podcast. Some worry is necessary for addressing what matters to us. Like anger, it helps to avert danger or discomfort. But also, like anger, we aren’t usually taught how to cope with worry. So worry can be another major reason why people might overeat or binge eat.

 Although the problem here is that the real subject of the worry never actually gets addressed. It just gets squashed and denied. For example, if you’re planning a social occasion, you might worry more about how you look and your weight than the actual occasion and things that really matter to you, like connecting or having a good time.

 You might worry so much about your body image that you don’t address intimacy in your love life, and so you end up feeling quite alone. There are different types of anxiety, like health anxiety, this is actually classed as a panic disorder, phobias, and social anxiety. Overeaters specifically worry about being seen and judged, so might avoid going out and being close to people.

 You may also worry about food and not being able to access it. But generally, anxiety is fear of the unknown. It’s a fear of doing something or needing something and being unable to meet that need. Worry is often about the future or the past. Worry assumes that something was or will be very wrong and it asks, what if?

 And the uncertainty of the answer invites much projection. Worry almost always involves giving yourself a hard time. I’ve had a previous podcast on that as well. And worrying what others think of you. The physical signs of anxiety are a flat face, breathing only in the upper chest, and in a monotone, high pitched voice.
 Anxiety is a heightened state of fear and defense. What is happening in the body is that it’s getting ready to defend and to protect you. For the binge eater, as with much of Western society, anxiety is so uncomfortable that our instinct is to avoid it or to plow through. This is too harsh. It means we never get to address what we’re worried about.

 This whole attitude also inspires shame for feeling or being vulnerable. So you may be eating because you’re worried about something, and also because you feel ashamed for worrying. The belief underneath worry and anxiety is that we can’t cope. We fear what we would feel, not what would actually happen.
 With anxiety, we overestimate risk and we underestimate our ability to cope. Our belief systems play a huge part in this. Here are some questions to help you explore how anxiety shows up for you. How do you behave when something worries you? What do you usually worry about? And can you see that you respond to anxiety or worry with food?

 The physiological state of anxiety actually increases anxiety. As the breath gets higher and higher in the body, we may start to panic. A panic attack can occur with the combination of this chest breathing and worried thoughts, especially if there is a belief that there will be a panic attack. As a binge eater or comfort eater, your body is in a state of fight, flight, or freeze much of the time.

 As I’ve mentioned before, the state of binge eating is a dissociative or an angry state, where physiologically you may be in a heightened defense state when you eat. So you may be susceptible to worry. Given that this is a natural physiological state that can’t be stopped, and you can’t just be okay if someone says, Hey, calm down, forget about it. 

10 Ways to Cope with Anxiety and Overthinking

So here are 10 ideas that you can try. The focus of coping with anxiety is about addressing what the anxiety is and trying different ways to calm your system down. Here, I’ll start with the latter, because sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes you just need a simple technique. But be aware that if these techniques don’t help you with any worry or anxiety that you notice, it’s probably because you need to understand what’s going on underneath a little bit more.

 1. Breathe. Just paying attention to the breath exactly how it actually is can calm you down. It’s impossible to rationalise through being in a state of heightened anxiety. The brain just won’t let you do it. So the idea here is to change your physiological state first. Breath manipulation is one of the easiest ways to do it.
 So there are lots of different breathing exercises that you can find on YouTube and Headspace and all the different apps you can get, but try this for example. Just breathe in naturally and then exhale a little bit more slowly than you would, or the other way around. Inhale slowly and breathe out naturally.

2.  You can hum or make an ah sound. Send the sound outwards with your exhalation. You can try this by breathing out with some low sound next time you go to the fridge.

 3. The Third on my list is trying polyvagal exercises. I showed you one of these last time. This is where you turn your head to one side and you look as far in that direction as you possibly can and you just wait until you get a big breath, a sigh or a yawn. And then you repeat the same on the other side.

4. Number Four, someone else’s voice can be very soothing. This is the last of the techniques that you can try.

 5. In Number Five, I’m going to move on to exploring more deeply. So number five, sometimes you have to explore the reason why the anxiety is there so that you can address it. Be understanding and gentle with yourself for feeling this anxiety. Often we feel frustrated with ourselves when we have a strong emotion, but it’s there for a reason. This may involve understanding the root of the anxiety. This will make sense of the emotion and the experience. So ask, what is the anxiety about?
 Explore what the anxiety is saying. Name the threat. Just as a mother would investigate the room for monsters if a child had a nightmare about monsters, This can often help you to see that it’s not as scary as you thought. Investigate what’s important underneath this worry. Ask what it means that you care about.
 If you’re worried about being seen, is the root fear about not being able to connect? Not being able to be authentically you and acceptable? Are you afraid of rejection on a deeper level? Anxiety is often about abandonment terror. A fear of being ultimately alone. Your nervous system may be revved up from a previous trauma, so that anxiety and a feeling of not being safe is always in the background, ready to come out.
 Often, this is about a feeling of not deserving love. This is something that needs such a great amount of compassion. An example of this is a fear of public speaking. This often goes back to being taught that what you had to say wasn’t important, and this might have been taught subliminally, so your parents or your caregivers might just have not been interested in what you had to say or been wrapped up in their own thing and you might have interpreted that as well I’m pretty boring then I don’t have anything interesting to contribute and now this might come out socially or when you have to give a talk.

6. Observe how you behave when you’re anxious. How do you respond when something makes you anxious? Engage in reflective activities like written or audio journaling. To be aware of your anxiety triggers, and your response, get to know what thoughts or images you see and have in your mind when you’re anxious.
 What do you do to look after yourself when you’re anxious? They say that what you focus on is who you are, so instead of feeding rumination and worry, focus on kindness, love, gratitude, and self-compassion, because that will grow. Change your habitual response to one of caring. This applies to food compulsion, but it also applies to the way that you think, especially about yourself.

7. Develop the ability to know that you can cope. Find ways to increase your confidence. As I mentioned, worry asks, what if? So answer that question. What is the worst that could happen? What are you imagining? And then be realistic about what the actual danger is. Do some fact-checking. And list all the criticisms that you have in your head.
 Then list a possible compassionate response. I have another example from my life about this this week. I’ve been learning a dance choreography to be submitted for video, but then later to be performed in person. I went through a period of being hard on myself for not getting it perfect, which would be difficult, actually, at this point in learning it, because it hasn’t been that long.
 It took a while, but once I’d focused on my anxiety and the fact that I was worried about other people judging me, I realised that I don’t deserve that judgement, and I’m trying hard here, and I’m doing pretty well. I worked out that the thing I was most afraid of was looking stupid, and so I turned to face this and just thought, well I’m not stupid, so that’s ridiculous.
 Somehow, through facing the anxiety, I allowed myself to contribute a video which wasn’t perfect, and I was happy with that. It was a lot of fun. So the idea here is to replace your negativity with something more positive assertive and meaningful. So, for example, if you’re worried about going out because of the way you look, you deserve to be valued for so much more than that.
 So your answer to yourself might be, Yeah, I’m not happy with the way I look, but actually, I’m a really lovely person and I’m kind to most people and I’m funny and I say clever things sometimes and I have a really good time with my mates, so that is more important. Most of us value how somebody is and who they are over how they look by far.
 But I know this is a tricky one for you, so please do offer up your criticism to me and I’d be happy to give a compassionate, assertive response if you’re struggling.

8. Explore how your anxiety is trying to protect you. Be curious about what it’s wanting from you and what it believes.
 You may find that it has held onto a belief that you don’t believe anymore. You can also ask if there’s a part of you that wants to remain anxious. How does it serve you to be anxious? In the case of binge eating, you get to eat as well as to avoid it. I’ve often heard people say that it’s easier to dissociate than to think about not eating.
 Just as in the case of anger, you get to not cope. You get to remain dependent on something other than yourself. Maybe we all want that, maybe that’s human. on some level, but particularly if we fear embracing what we would be left with if we engage, which is namely we fear how we might feel. But is that what you want?
 Do you want to be dependent on something outside of you when anything goes wrong? Or would some part of you really like to learn inner resourcing so that you can rely on yourself?

9. Tolerate the discomfort or anxiety that you would be left with if you decided not to eat. Get through this momentary discomfort.
 Be okay with not knowing how something will go or what response you might have. Do this instead of projecting an anxious belief. I know this sounds hard, but people do enjoy the process of it eventually, of going out of their comfort zone after a while, because it comes with the relief of self-acceptance, self-reliance and resources.

10. To finish with (Number 10), I’m going to talk about anxiety in relationships, because this is a big one for all of us. With anxiety, contrary to what might be your instinct, the solution is often to focus on yourself. Rather than somebody else’s opinion of you, of yourself and what you need and what you feel. It may also be helpful and more pertinent to focus on a real connection with others.
 For example, being anxious about whether you’re liked may blind you to whether you like the other person. Also, with anxiety about being hurt, you may be so focused on your fear that you don’t evaluate the individual date or the partner. You may not consider your boundaries. You may not consider saying yes or no appropriately for you or opening up appropriately.
 You might just be so focused on maybe what you look like or whether you’re going to get rejected that you’re not yourself at all. With anxiety in a relationship, the idea is to work towards a collaborative relationship, where needs are met and fears are soothed by communication with each other. So much healing comes from creating positive attachment experiences.
 You can do this in a supportive friendship, relationship, group, or therapy. Here you get the opportunity to see in other people’s eyes that they don’t think what you think that they think. 

Closing Reflections & Next Steps
Listening back, I'm reminded how important it is that anxiety isn't something to push away or to try and outthink. It shifts when we allow it to move through the body. That's why I created the companion video on somatics and anxiety to show you a few simple self-regulation practices that you can try straight away, you'll find the link in the show notes. 

And remember, the aim isn't a quick fix, but building trust with your nervous system, one practice at a time. 

Today I've talked about what anxiety really is, how it shows up in the body, and at least 10 different ways that you can begin to cope with it. 

I also shared a couple of the simple practices that I use myself from the body scan to placing a hand on your chest, slowing your breath, even adding a gentle hum. 

These small things really do tell the nervous system that it's safe. 

If you'd like more of these, the companion playlist on regulating anxiety in the nervous system will guide you through more practices that you can try. 

And if you are recognising yourself as an overthinker, which most of my clients do, my podcast on overthinking is probably a great next step for you. 

You can also find lots more resources on my website. The link is in the description, and as I seem to be back podcasting for a while, I would love to hear your questions or what you'd like me to talk about next. It often helps other people when you keep it real like this because so many people are going through the same things and they just don't wanna say it out loud. If you've ever heard me say something that resonated with you, I got that from real people. 

So please do share that with me. You can send me a message through the link in the show notes. 

Thank you for listening, and I will see you next time, which will probably be in about three weeks. This is the Stress and Anxiety Recovery Podcast with Shelley Treacher.