Ways To Calm Yourself Down During Stress

Hyperarousal, panic or any form of sudden and extreme onset of stress can cause debilitating symptoms. Anxiousness can take people’s minds for an emotional ride, forcing them to feel so much stress that even the most basic of tasks become difficult and finding peace may seem like an unlikely prospect.

Thankfully, there are ways people can calm down in any form of panic-inducing situation. Often, mental health disorders such as trauma, anxiety or similar conditions cause hyperarousal or panic. Sometimes people may just find themselves in a difficult situation and they are feeling panicked.

The fight, flight or freeze response is not shockingly effective at preparing the mind to do one of these things. But it’s also important to be able to control this reaction when there is no impending danger.

How to stay calm during stress

Here are some ways to quickly calm yourself down if you are experiencing a flood of stress or negative emotions.

1. Envision your ideal emotional response

Envisioning a calm response to a stressful situation can help by setting a great example to follow. When overwhelmed with emotion, stop and think for a moment how the ideal or emotionally regulated version of you would respond. Emulate that reaction and use it as a guide to help direct your own behavior. Just by envisioning yourself in a state of calmness you might actually help yourself achieve that state.

2. Relax your eyes & soften your gaze

The eyes can start tensing up in response to stress which can end up making people feel more stressed. Sometimes tension in the eyes is the source of stress in itself. Relaxing the eyes during times of extreme stress can have a profound effect on the stress response. Doing this could actually help relax you.

Something else you can try to do is softening your gaze. This is a useful technique for calming anxiety and negative emotions. You basically start by looking one place and then widen your peripheral vision to see what is on the left and right of your line of sight at the same time. You shouldn’t strain yourself to do this. You can simply let yourself be aware of what is on the sides of your line of vision.

3. Relax your muscles

Just like how tension in the eyes can make people feel more stressed, so too can tension in the muscles. Muscle tension can cause stress and stress can cause muscle tension which could keep you feeling stressed. Relaxing the muscles can be a great way to achieve calmness in the moment.

Start off by paying attention to what muscles in your body may be tensed. Then, relax those first. Follow by allowing your whole body to relax. Try to be cognizant of what you’re feeling here because it’s easy to be oblivious to muscle tension.

4. Say “calm down” in your head

It might sound like stating the obvious to yourself but this can actually be helpful. Your brain may very well just listen to you when you firmly but calmly tell yourself to calm down. Just the act of stating an end goal (calming down) as an order to yourself could alleviate some of the emotional chaos in the mind.

5. Feel your emotions

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try listening to your mind. Take a step back and allow yourself to be a passive observer of the emotions you are feeling. For a few moments, don’t fight them or try to make sense of them, just allow them to run their course. Allow the mind to process what it feels so it can initiate the process of moving on.

6. Release emotions calmly

Emotions are forms of internal mental energy and if they are stuck in the mind they could wreak havoc in there. Releasing your emotions entails giving them a pathway by which to exit your mind and body. This doesn’t have to mean acting on what you feel. In fact one of the benefits of doing this is it can be relieving without the need for rash action.

To do emotional release, try giving your mind the chance to just reach the limit. Don’t make yourself angry, sad, whatever, but let your mind push out emotions. Tell your body to feel them. You can do this with a stress ball. Feel the emotions dispersing in your body and let them leave through the hands and feet. If you’re alone, make noises. An occasional “ah” sound might help. Not too loud, just say ah at a normal volume. All of this can be done calmly but in a manner that helps let out pent up fervor.

7. Analyze what you feel

Give careful thought to the way you feel in order to understand it. Understanding eliminates the mystery behind emotions, which can make processing them more difficult. Eliminate this barrier by examining the big and small details about what and how you feel.

What are you feeling? Where are you feeling it? Why are you feeling this way? What about your situation induces this emotion(s)? Remember, you probably have a reason for feeling a certain way that stems from a core issue. Perhaps this core issue is something flawed in the way you think. Someone cutting you off in traffic, for example, is not polite but getting excessively angry at this may stem from emotional sensitivity on your part. Keep asking questions until you get to the root of a feeling and examine it.

8. Ask yourself if your feelings are helping

Are any emotions you may be feeling truly helping the situation you’re in or that you’re getting emotional about? Frequently, even most often, the answer a lot of people have for this is no. Emotions are great when it comes to alerting us and pushing as to act. In moderation, emotions should always be a part of who people are because they can be useful. The problem arises when they’re allowed to become excessive and out of control.

Ask yourself if your emotions are helping you. If the answers comes back a no, that should act as a reminder to you to calm down. It’s a very useful technique because ultimately emotions try to help people accomplish something and if the emotions don’t help or (worse yet) are counterproductive this is ample reasoning to snap out of them.

9. Talk to yourself (in your head)

When going through an emotional overload, try just talking. When emotions are put into words they are analyzed more logically rather than illogically. Narrate what is going on, talk to yourself about the situation, try to brainstorm ways to calm down using words, etc. Just talk about whatever may come to mind that’s related to your emotional state.

If you’re stuck in the past, repeat what you may have experienced by talking it out and describing it in your head. If you’re in a difficult situation, use words to discuss it in your mind. Even illogical emotional reactions can be quelled with logical verbal discussion.