Manage Stress & Anxiety
Stress and Anxiety Regulation
The purpose of this section is to help you regulate stress and anxiety more effectively, support your well-being, and cultivate a calmer and more constructive state of mind.
Stress and anxiety are related but distinct experiences. Both involve responses to perceived challenges or threats, but they can differ in their triggers, duration, and effects.
Stress commonly arises in response to an identifiable situation, demand, or stressor, such as an approaching deadline, financial pressure, interpersonal conflict, or an important presentation. Stress can be helpful when it provides the energy and focus needed to respond to a challenge. This is sometimes called eustress. However, stress can become distressing when it is too intense, lasts too long, or exceeds our available coping resources.
Once a stressor has passed or been resolved, the stress response will often decrease. However, stress may persist when the situation is ongoing, when its consequences remain uncertain, or when the nervous system continues to anticipate danger.
Anxiety involves unease, apprehension, worry, or fear. It may be connected to a particular situation, but it can also persist without an immediate or clearly identifiable external threat. Anxiety often involves anticipating what might happen in the future.
A person experiencing anxiety may feel restless or on edge, have difficulty concentrating, experience repetitive worry, or notice physical symptoms such as muscular tension, a rapid heartbeat, stomach discomfort, chest tightness, or changes in breathing. Some anxiety is a normal part of life. However, frequent or intense anxiety that interferes with daily functioning may benefit from professional assessment and treatment.
Stress and anxiety are not always easy to separate. External stressors can produce anxiety, and anxious expectations can increase stress. For this reason, many of the same regulation strategies can be helpful for both experiences.
These strategies commonly focus on:
Supporting physiological regulation
Increasing awareness of thoughts, emotions, and bodily responses
Developing healthy coping strategies
Creating space before responding
Strengthening access to supportive relationships and environments
Improving the capacity to tolerate and work through manageable discomfort
Stress Regulation and Psychological Change
Some degree of activation is necessary for attention, learning, and change. When we are completely disengaged or underactivated, it can be difficult to focus or participate meaningfully. However, when stress becomes too intense, our ability to reflect, remember, think flexibly, and make intentional choices may decrease.
The most helpful level of activation varies from person to person and from one situation to another. The goal is not to eliminate all stress. Rather, it is to develop the ability to recognize and return to a manageable range of emotional and physiological activation.
Within this range, you may be better able to:
Notice subtle thoughts, emotions, sensations, and beliefs
Consider context and alternative perspectives
Remain engaged without becoming overwhelmed
Practise new responses
Integrate corrective or adaptive experiences
Before exploring difficult memories or maladaptive beliefs, it is often helpful to develop sufficient emotional regulation and psychological resources. This does not mean that you must feel completely calm or positive before addressing deeper issues. Instead, you need enough stability to remain present, recover from distress, and work with difficult material without becoming overwhelmed.
Beginning With Brief Practices
You may sometimes feel too stressed, anxious, frustrated, or restless to use a regulation exercise. Stress can narrow attention and create an urge to continue thinking about or trying to solve the perceived problem. Attempting a lengthy relaxation exercise in this state may feel irritating, impossible, or like additional work.
When this happens, begin with very brief practices. Think of this as gently “tapping the brakes” rather than trying to stop the stress response immediately.
For example, you might take a five-second pause to:
Exhale slowly
Release a small amount of muscular tension
Feel your feet against the floor
Look at a neutral object in the room
Create a little physical distance from the stressor
Practising briefly but frequently may be more manageable than attempting to become completely calm all at once. The duration can be increased gradually as the exercise becomes easier and more familiar.
Responsive and Reactive States
Effective regulation can help you shift from a predominantly reactive state toward a more responsive state.
In a reactive state, behaviour may be driven primarily by immediate alarm, anger, urgency, avoidance, or automatic interpretations. In a responsive state, there is more room to notice what is happening, consider the context, and choose an action that reflects your needs, goals, and values.
Being responsive does not mean suppressing emotions or becoming passive. It means creating enough psychological space to express emotions and protect yourself in a deliberate and constructive manner.
People differ in how much soothing, rest, movement, reassurance, social support, or distance they require. Allow for these differences in yourself and others. Regulation strategies should support your ability to engage with life, not become a way of indefinitely avoiding situations that need to be addressed.
Once your level of activation becomes more manageable, you can gradually return to problem-solving, emotional processing, meaningful action, and personal development.
Adjusting to Lower Levels of Stress
Reducing stress can sometimes make life feel temporarily flat, quiet, or unstimulating. Stress can produce alertness, urgency, focus, and momentum. A person who has lived with prolonged stress may therefore become accustomed to a high level of activation.
When that activation decreases, calmness may initially feel unfamiliar, boring, empty, or even unsafe.
Approach this transition gradually. Think of it as allowing your body and mind to acclimatize to a different internal environment. You do not need to force yourself to relax. Instead, foster the conditions that allow regulation to develop.
This reflects an important shift in perspective: psychological change is often cultivated indirectly rather than produced mechanically. You cannot simply command the nervous system to change, but you can repeatedly provide experiences that support safety, flexibility, connection, and learning.
Using the Exercises
Move through the exercises at a pace that works for you. You may stop at any time, return to your usual breathing, open your eyes, move your body, or orient yourself to the room.
Do not force relaxation or attempt to breathe as deeply as possible. Stop or adjust an exercise if you become dizzy, short of breath, physically uncomfortable, emotionally overwhelmed, or increasingly distressed.
After each exercise, you may pause, take a break, continue with your day, or move to the next practice.
Foundational Regulation Tools
Breathe
Slow, comfortable, and rhythmic breathing can support physiological regulation. The goal is not to take unusually large breaths but to allow the breath to become slightly slower, smoother, and less effortful.
A somewhat longer exhalation may be calming for some people, although the most helpful breathing rhythm varies. Breath-holding is optional and should not be used if it feels uncomfortable.
Exercise
Sit, stand, lie down, or move in a way that feels reasonably comfortable.
Slowly breathe in at a pace that feels manageable.
Allow the breath to flow without forcing it.
If counting is helpful, try breathing in for a count of four and breathing out for a count of six.
Adjust the count to suit your body. You may use a shorter or longer rhythm.
Notice any pleasant, relieving, calming, or neutral sensations.
Stay with these sensations for several seconds without trying to intensify them.
Begin with a few breathing cycles and gradually increase the duration if the exercise remains comfortable.
Return to your usual breathing if you feel dizzy, uncomfortable, anxious, or short of breath.
Slow
This tool involves slowing your breathing, movement, attention, or thinking slightly to provide an anchor for your mind.
During periods of unhelpful stress, experiment with slowing down rather than reacting at the pace created by the stress response. You do not need to move extremely slowly. Look for a pace that feels deliberate, comfortable, and sustainable.
Exercise
Allow your breathing to become slightly slower than usual.
Notice how this feels in your body.
Adjust the pace so that it remains comfortable.
Stay with any pleasant or relieving sensation for approximately 10 seconds.
Slowly move or shift part of your body.
Remain aware of the movement while it is happening.
Notice whether the slower movement produces any comfort, relief, or ease.
Stay with this experience for approximately 10 seconds.
Gradually return to your normal pace while maintaining some awareness of your body.
Relax
Relaxation practices can support mental and physical well-being. There are many ways to approach relaxation, and no single method works equally well for everyone.
The aim is not to remove all tension. Even a small reduction in unnecessary tension can be helpful.
Exercise
Make yourself as comfortable as reasonably possible while sitting, standing, moving, or lying down.
Gently become aware of your body.
Move or adjust your position if doing so feels helpful.
Allow your breathing to slow slightly.
Breathe in a little more deeply than usual, provided that it remains comfortable.
Allow your exhalation to be slightly longer and softer.
Scan your body and notice where you are holding tension.
Choose one tense area and slowly move, stretch, or adjust it.
As you exhale, gently allow a small amount of tension to release.
Notice any sensation of warmth, softness, relief, space, or ease.
Remain with the sensation for approximately 10 seconds.
If you do not notice a change, gently imagine what a small amount of relaxation might feel like in that area.
Do not force a muscle to relax. Curiosity and gentle experimentation are more useful than pressure.
Eye Movement
Eye movements are involved in attention, visual orientation, memory, and information processing. Some people find slow and comfortable eye movements relaxing or helpful for loosening rigid attention. Responses vary, and the exercise should not be treated as a substitute for professionally delivered trauma therapy or EMDR.
Avoid this practice if eye movement causes pain, dizziness, nausea, headaches, disorientation, or visual discomfort.
Exercise
Gently become aware of your body.
Breathe slowly and comfortably.
Close your eyes if doing so feels safe and comfortable. You may also keep them open.
Notice any tension in or around your eyes.
Allow your eyes to move slowly in a direction that feels comfortable.
You may experiment with moving them gently from side to side, up and down, diagonally, or in small circles.
Keep the movements within an easy and comfortable range.
Allow the pace and direction to change naturally.
Notice any thoughts, feelings, images, or sensations that arise.
Do not deliberately intensify or dwell on distressing material. Allow it to pass while you remain aware of your body and surroundings.
If your attention wanders, pause and gradually return to your breathing, body, and gentle eye movements.
Stop if the exercise becomes uncomfortable or emotionally activating.
Directed Associations
Thoughts and perceptions are connected through networks of associations. A word, image, sensation, object, or event can bring related memories, feelings, and ideas to mind.
Directed association involves gently using these connections to shift attention without denying or arguing with the original experience. The purpose is not to force positive thinking. It is to help the mind move from a narrow, repetitive focus toward a broader range of meanings and possibilities.
Method One: Identify a Constructive Contrast
Begin by identifying a distressing feature of a thought or situation. Then consider a contrasting quality or experience.
For example, suppose you are thinking about someone you experienced as inconsiderate. Rather than remaining focused only on that quality, consider what consideration means to you. You might remember someone who treated you thoughtfully or imagine how you would prefer to respond.
This does not erase or excuse the original behaviour. It broadens the range of associations available to you.
Method Two: Connect With Values and Goals
You can also allow one association to lead gently toward something connected with your interests, values, or goals.
For example, imagine that you dislike cauliflower. Cauliflower may remind you of cheese, cheese may remind you of cows, cows may remind you of farms, and farms may remind you of the countryside. The countryside may then connect with a meaningful goal, memory, or preference.
The particular associations are not important. The purpose is to experiment with moving from an unpleasant or rigid mental state toward a broader and more personally meaningful network of ideas.
Exercise
Identify one feature of the stressful thought, feeling, or situation.
Notice the first association that comes to mind.
Allow another association to arise without analyzing it excessively.
Continue lightly until you reach an image, quality, memory, value, or goal that feels more constructive.
Remain aware of your body while doing this.
Notice whether your emotional state or perspective shifts, even slightly.
Keep the process light. Trying too hard may make associations feel forced or create additional tension.
Mini-Breaks
When stress or anger is high, attempting to relax for a long period may feel unrealistic. A mini-break provides a brief interruption in the stress cycle.
The goal is not to become completely calm within five seconds. It is simply to reduce activation slightly and create a small amount of space before continuing.
Exercise
Notice any tension in your body. Common areas include the jaw, eyes, shoulders, upper back, hands, and stomach.
Slowly breathe in at a comfortable pace.
As you exhale, gently release a small amount of muscular tension.
For approximately five seconds, focus on the sensation of pausing, releasing, or resting.
Repeat for another breathing cycle if helpful.
Return to your activity with slightly greater awareness of your body and state of mind.
Brief relief may last only a few moments before automatic thoughts and emotions return. This is normal. Frequent brief pauses can still be useful.
Self-Massage
Gentle self-massage can provide soothing tactile stimulation, increase bodily awareness, and reduce muscular tension. It may be particularly helpful for areas such as the hands, face, jaw, neck, and shoulders.
Use light or moderate pressure. Avoid massaging an injured, painful, inflamed, numb, or medically affected area unless a qualified healthcare professional has advised that it is safe.
Exercise
Scan your body from head to toe and notice any areas of tension.
Take a slow, comfortable breath and exhale gradually.
Begin gently massaging an accessible area, such as your hands, forearms, shoulders, face, or jaw.
Use slow and rhythmic movements.
Continue breathing comfortably.
Notice the sensations created by the pressure and movement.
Adjust the pace and pressure so that the massage remains pleasant.
Remain present with the movement as it occurs.
Continue for as long as it feels comfortable and useful.
Emotional Boundaries
Emotional boundaries involve recognizing what feels manageable, uncomfortable, intrusive, or overwhelming and deciding how to respond.
Boundaries may involve creating distance, asking for time, limiting a conversation, declining a request, changing the subject, leaving a situation, or seeking support. A boundary is not necessarily a rejection of another person. It is a way of protecting your ability to remain present, safe, and constructive.
Exercise
Take a slow and comfortable breath.
Notice any tension, sensations, or impulses within your body.
As you interact with your environment, pay attention to what feels manageable and what begins to feel overwhelming.
Allow automatic thoughts, feelings, and impressions to arise without immediately acting on them.
Ask yourself:
What feels uncomfortable?
What feels unsafe or overwhelming?
What do I need right now?
Do I need time, distance, information, reassurance, support, or a clearer limit?
What is within my control?
Identify one respectful action that could create a healthier level of challenge.
Express or act on the boundary as calmly and clearly as the situation permits.
Physical Distance From a Stressor
Creating physical distance from a stressor can be a simple but effective regulation strategy. There are situations in which distance is not possible or appropriate, but when it is available, even a brief pause can reduce the likelihood of reacting impulsively.
Regulation is not always immediate. The nervous system may require time, space, movement, breathing, reflection, or support before activation begins to decrease.
Exercise
Take a slow and comfortable breath.
Identify a stressor that currently feels overwhelming or difficult to manage.
Consider whether you can create some safe physical distance from it.
This might involve:
Stepping into another room
Taking a brief walk
Sitting farther away
Pausing a conversation
Putting down a device
Waiting two minutes before responding
Use the distance to notice your body, slow your breathing, and clarify what you need.
Return to the situation when you are better able to respond constructively, provided that returning is safe and appropriate.
Constructive Exploration of Action Tendencies
Emotions often include an impulse or action tendency. Fear may produce an urge to escape, anger may create an urge to push back, and sadness may create an urge to withdraw or seek comfort.
Exploring these tendencies can sometimes help you understand the need beneath an emotion. However, this should be done safely and constructively.
Do not physically enact an impulse that could frighten, threaten, injure, or violate the boundaries of another person. Do not damage property or place yourself at risk. Intense, destructive, or frightening impulses should be explored with a qualified mental health professional rather than acted out alone.
Exercise
Become aware of your body.
Notice the impulse or action tendency connected with the emotion.
Ask yourself what the impulse appears to be trying to accomplish.
Consider whether it relates to a need for:
Safety
Satisfaction
Connection
Recognition
Autonomy
Fairness
Meaning or purpose
Distinguish the underlying need from the first action that came to mind.
Imagine or rehearse a safe and constructive action that expresses the need.
For example, anger toward a partner might be translated into:
Standing with a grounded posture
Imagining yourself speaking firmly
Naming the boundary that was crossed
Expressing disappointment
Asking clearly for what you need
Taking temporary space before continuing the conversation
Remain aware of the emotion, bodily experience, and need as you imagine the constructive response.
The purpose is not to suppress the energy of the emotion. It is to channel it into an action that is safe, proportionate, and consistent with your values.
Positive Influences
Directing attention toward calming, enjoyable, or meaningful experiences can provide a useful break from excessive stress.
This does not mean ignoring genuine problems or attempting to remain positive at all times. There is a time to examine fears, worries, losses, and difficult realities. There is also a time to rest, recover, and reconnect with experiences that support well-being.
Prolonged or excessive stress can affect sleep, mood, concentration, immune functioning, cardiovascular health, digestion, and other aspects of physical and psychological health. Brief positive experiences can help provide moments of recovery and broaden attention beyond the stressor.
A positive-influence practice may last only a few seconds or may continue for a longer period. When a longer exercise feels demanding, begin briefly and notice any pleasant or relieving sensations that arise.
Exercise
Create a list of experiences, people, qualities, and sensory cues that you find calming, enjoyable, reassuring, inspiring, or meaningful.
Consider the following categories:
People
Places
Activities
Entertainment
Movies
Books
Sports
Personal strengths
Foods
Scents
Sounds
Music
Images
Animals
Nature and weather
Memories
Daily routines
Values
Hopes and goals
Choose one item from the list and bring it to mind for approximately 10 to 20 seconds.
Notice:
What you see
What you hear
What you feel emotionally
What you notice in your body
Why the experience matters to you
Stay with any pleasant, calming, or meaningful aspect of the experience.
Core Daily Regulation Practices
The following exercises may be used as regular practices. Begin with one exercise at a time and gradually develop a routine that is realistic and sustainable.
Frequent practice can make regulation skills more familiar and easier to access. However, the goal is not to build a specific “stress-regulation circuit” through perfect repetition. The goal is to develop greater familiarity, flexibility, and confidence in responding to stress.
Breathing and Embodied Awareness
This exercise may be completed while stationary or moving.
Make yourself comfortable while sitting, standing, walking, or lying down.
If you feel restless, add slow and rhythmic movement, such as walking, gentle stretching, tai chi, yoga, or comfortable freestyle movement.
Gently become aware of your body.
Move or adjust your position if needed.
Allow your breathing to become slightly slower.
Breathe in a little more deeply than usual, provided that it remains comfortable.
Allow your exhalation to be slightly longer and softer.
Develop a smooth and manageable rhythm.
Notice whether exhaling brings any sense of release or relief.
Notice whether inhaling brings any sense of replenishment or expansion.
Continue for as long as the exercise remains comfortable and useful.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Traditional progressive muscle relaxation often involves intentionally tensing and then releasing different muscle groups. This gentler variation focuses primarily on awareness, movement, and gradual release.
Scan your body and identify an area of tension.
Slowly move or adjust the tense area while remaining aware of the movement.
As you exhale, gently allow a small amount of tension to release.
Notice any sensation of relief, warmth, softness, heaviness, or increased space.
Remain with the sensation as it occurs.
If you do not notice any change, imagine what a small amount of relaxation might feel like.
Move gradually to another area of your body.
At the end, become aware of your body as a whole.
Stay with any comfortable or relieving sensations for approximately 10 seconds.
Calm Place
A calm-place exercise involves imagining or remembering a setting associated with safety, protection, calmness, clarity, or contentment.
For some people, imagining a completely safe place is difficult. You may instead choose somewhere that feels safer, neutral, peaceful, private, or manageable.
Think of or imagine a place where you feel calm, protected, content, or reasonably at ease.
Notice what you see there.
Notice any colours, shapes, light, objects, or movement.
Notice what you hear.
Notice any scents.
Notice tactile sensations, such as temperature, air, ground, clothing, furniture, or water.
Remain lightly aware of your body.
Stay with each sensory quality for approximately 10 to 20 seconds.
Notice any amount of calm, comfort, or relaxation, even if it is subtle.
Allow the experience to change naturally without trying to make it perfect.
If the image becomes distressing, open your eyes and orient yourself to the present room.
Sensory Mindfulness
Sensory mindfulness involves attending to immediate sensory experience without needing to analyze or change it.
Pleasure may or may not arise. Neutral sensory awareness is also useful.
Choose something neutral or pleasant to look at.
Observe it for approximately 10 seconds.
Notice its shape, colour, texture, distance, light, or movement.
Remain lightly aware of your body.
Notice any pleasant, interesting, or neutral quality.
Become aware of the sounds around you.
Choose one sound and listen to it for approximately 10 seconds.
Notice its volume, rhythm, distance, pitch, or movement.
Become aware of any scents in the environment.
If you notice one, attend to it briefly. If no scent is present, you may remember a familiar and pleasant scent.
Notice a tactile sensation, such as your feet against the floor, your clothing against your skin, or your hands touching an object.
Attend to the sensation for approximately 10 seconds.
Gently become aware of your body as a whole.
Move or adjust your body to become comfortable.
Take a slow, comfortable breath and exhale gradually.
Notice whether you feel even slightly more grounded, present, or connected with your immediate surroundings.
