5-Minute Trick to Calm Anxious Thoughts

Do you ever find yourself caught in a whirlwind of worst case scenario thoughts that seem to spiral out of control, especially when you’re trying to focus or relax? It’s like your mind is speeding on a track of worries, doubts, and what ifs, making it hard to catch your breath or find peace. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone and today’s episode is just for you.

We’re going to explore a simple yet powerful technique that can bring a sense of calm to your mind in just five minutes. Whether you’re at work, at home, or anywhere in between, this trick is your secret weapon against the chaos of anxiety.

Welcome to Calmly Coping. My name is Tati Garcia and I’m a licensed therapist and coach specializing in high functioning anxiety. I help high achievers stop putting themselves last so they can feel calm, balanced, and confident from within. If this topic interests you, then please like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so you’ll be notified every time I release a new episode.

Thank you so much for tuning in. So regardless of what the content of your anxious thoughts are, I’ll This can be a simple trick that you can utilize to help you to calm that chaos that comes with going to the worst case scenario and going into that downward spiral of always focusing on the negative consequences or negative outcomes of what could happen or what could go wrong, or just overthinking something that happened in the past.

Now this works best you And I specified that this is for anxious thoughts because sometimes we can have anxious feelings. It’s maybe just a sense of dread or those physical symptoms that go along with anxiety, like a quick heart rate or sweating or tension somewhere in your body or any other physical symptoms that go along with anxiety.

If there are no thoughts or you’re not sure what’s making you feel anxious, then what can help in that situation is to do something to calm your body and mind physically. So that could be taking deep breaths, meditation, doing something physical, like going for a walk or some form of exercise, something that’s going to get you out of your head and into your body and help you to tune into how you’re feeling.

Now, If you’re able to explore, okay, what’s going on here, what’s at the root of this anxious feeling, or if you have a lot of thoughts that are going along with this anxiety, then this is when this trick is going to be most helpful. I was listening to a song right before I started recording this episode called The King of Wishful Thinking by the artist Go West.

So if you have heard this song before, apparently it is It was in the movie Pretty Woman, which I didn’t realize. It just started playing automatically for me after I was listening to some other songs. The lyrics in this song, he talks about being the king of wishful thinking and saying it’s somebody who’s heartbroken and he’s gonna pretend that my ship’s not sinking and I’ll tell myself I’m over you.

So it’s kind of fake it till you make it and pretend that he’s not heartbroken and just tell himself I’m gonna be okay and everything’s gonna be fine. Now what we want to do when it comes to comes to anxiety is straddle that middle ground of being the king or queen of wishful thinking and just pretending that everything’s okay.

And the other end, which is fixating and steeping in the anxiety and the negative thoughts. We want to not go all the way to the extreme where we’re just pretending everything’s fine and everything’s going to be okay. And it’s all rainbows and butterflies. So that middle ground is where you’re acknowledging, okay, I’m not feeling okay.

I’m feeling anxious. What’s going on here? Being curious about it, exploring it, but not completely staying stuck in that. And what can help is intentionally exploring those thoughts with these three questions that I’m going to share with you. These are three questions that I have shared in my membership community and that I Potentially may have shared before in this podcast.

I’m not sure, but I wanted to focus this episode on this technique because it’s something that I have personally found very helpful and that has been very helpful for my clients and students. So first you want to identify what is the negative situation that you are catastrophizing. So catastrophizing is when you are.

Seeing it as a catastrophe, thinking of the worst case scenario, going through all the what ifs, so what is that worst case scenario? So maybe an example could be, my schedule is out of control, it’s super busy, and I’m never going to have control over my life. Or maybe it is, I said something awkward in this conversation yesterday, what if this person thinks that I’m a weirdo and they’re never going to want to talk to me again.

Or maybe it is I have this presentation coming up and I am feeling super nervous about it. What if I make a mistake and everybody thinks that I’m an imposter and I have no idea what I’m doing. Whatever the situation is, whether it is related to your career, your personal life, your relationships, Sometimes it can be related to your health and wellness or that of your loved ones.

It can be helpful to identify what’s going on here. What is triggering this anxiety for you right now? First question then is what is the worst that could happen? So I want you to go straight to the worst case scenario because oftentimes we’re so afraid of that that we don’t necessarily consciously think of that.

Our mind could be kind of Swirling around it and having these thoughts coming up and bringing them to mind, but when you can consciously identify this, this is you acknowledging, okay, this is the worst thing that I’m really afraid of. This is the root fear that is happening here. I’ll share with you a resource that I provide to my community members where you can go through this exercise on your own and have a spreadsheet to help you to work through it.

So, what is the worst that could happen? Let’s say with the example of your schedule is out of control, it could be, I’ll never have time for myself. I’ll fall behind on work and assignments. And I’ll lose all of my clients because I’ll never be able to get a handle over my life. So that’s the worst case scenario.

So think of for yourself, what is the worst thing realistically, because we don’t necessarily want to go to what’s the worst in an unrealistic world, but what’s the worst that could happen that’s helping you to touch base with and tap into that fear. Next, we want to ask how likely is it that this worst case scenario will happen?

And of course you may not always be able to have specific figures or statistics. This is kind of your best guess of with this worst case that you’re hyper fixating on and anxious about. How likely is it that this will happen? Looking at all of the evidence in the situation here, so we want to be objective when we’re looking at this.

With anxiety, your mind will tend to over emphasize and exaggerate the likelihood of something negative happening. So you’re going to be fixating on that worst case scenario when in reality, it is probably not that likely. So when we can look at things objectively and maybe look at past evidence or experiences that we’ve had, look at people that we know around us, if they’ve experienced or gone through this situation before and what their outcomes have been, or just looking at the general, overview of society, if they’ve had an experience with this, what is the likelihood of that worst case scenario happening?

So in this example that I’ve given, I identified, okay, it’s unlikely that I’ll never have time for myself. Even when things get busy, I can take time on the weekend, or I can plan time off in advance. I’ve never lost clients for falling behind on my work. And even if I do fall behind, I’ve always been able to catch up.

So this is a way of you working through what is that worst, how likely is it to happen, and just looking at the evidence in the situation. The reality is that there is a possibility that the worst case can happen, no matter how small. So the next question is going to address that, and that next question is, could I cope with it and how?

And unless this is something that is killing you, you can cope with it. As uncomfortable or difficult as it might be, is something that you can cope with and you can recover from. I’m sure that you have coped with and recovered from similar or challenging things in the past. And you are more resilient than you give yourself credit for a lot of the fear when it comes to anxiety is believing that this is something that I won’t be able to handle.

It’s going to be too much. It’s going to overwhelm me. And when you can. Recognize and reassure yourself that wait, I can handle more than I’m giving myself credit for. Then that can give you the confidence to deal with these situations and whatever comes your way. So in the example that I’ve given you, yes, you can cope with feeling like your schedule is out of control.

It will feel overwhelming and I’ll feel stressed out, but I’m always able to bounce back after a stressful time. I can speak to my friend to get support. plan days off right now and create time for at least 20 minutes of self care daily. So this is going through, what would you do to cope with this worst case scenario?

And what would that look like? So going through these three questions is a simple trick that can only take is a simple trick that only has to take five minutes that can help you walk through and build your confidence in managing difficult situations and also really address the root fear. When we have anxious thoughts swirling through our mind, oftentimes it It feels like they’re out of control and your fear and anxiety is fueling those thoughts.

When you can be intentional and write this down and identify this and get it out of your head and onto paper and work through it. That helps you to feel more of a sense of control of a situation. Even if you don’t have control over a situation, it helps you to work through and problem solve, which is what your mind’s all about.

probably trying to do just in an ineffective way. And this isn’t going to be a cure all for anxiety. The reality is that when we experience anxiety, it’s oftentimes a fear of uncertainty and about things that we have no control over. So a big part of coping with anxiety is learning to manage that uncertainty that comes with day to day life.

So I hope that this five minute trick was helpful for you. If you’re interested in grabbing that spreadsheet, I will leave a link for that in the description. And if you’re interested in exploring more tools and tricks for managing anxiety, for embracing uncertainty, I have an entire training on how to embrace uncertainty to reduce anxiety in my membership community, the Calm and Ambitious community, along with so many other trainings on how to reduce anxious thoughts and feelings, how to think more positively every day and resources to help you get support in working through these challenges. You can learn more by going to calmandambitious.com or clicking on the link in the description.

And I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode. What do you think of this five minute trick? Is this something that you plan on using in your day to day when you’re struggling with anxiety while you wait for next week’s episode, I have other episodes coming up.