SOS: 10 Videos to Help With Intense Anxiety

Why Having Reliable Practices for Anxiety Matters

There’s the kind of transitory anxiety which is easily dismissed through reframes and other cognitive approaches. And there is the kind of primal, visceral anxiety that oftentimes needs a combination of “top down” and “bottom up” approaches to settle. Below, I’ve included some basic somatic practices that can help reduce anxiety levels to the point where your adult brain is more online.

As humans, we will do just about anything to avoid feeling helpless. It is deeply reassuring to know that there are tools out there that can work when you are feeling especially anxious. Hope one of these practices helps.

Free Practices to Try When You Feel Really Anxious

The vagus nerve eye exercise is a helpful way of downshifting anxiety. It is easy and discrete to practice if you do the exercise sitting up.

Work with the vagus nerve through an ear massage.

A mix of techniques from Somatic Experiencing.

A great walk through of how to handle a panic attack.

Ways to work with intense anxiety.

A somatic practice for panic and anxiety.

A guided somatic practice for OCD and panic.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping practice for anxiety.

Another Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) resource on befriending anxiety.

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) founder Alan Gordon demos how to use somatic tracking to work with anxiety.

Additional Support

When people suffer from anxiety, they try so hard to feel better, oftentimes changing their diet, caffeine consumption, thoughts, habits, and ways of engaging in the world. Paradoxically, trying too hard to make anxiety go away, with the underlying belief that anxiety itself is the problem, can further entrench nervous system activation. If you have tried valiantly to make your anxiety go away and it keeps coming back stronger, it may be a good idea to consider therapy. In my therapy practice, I use an integrative approach, blending “top-down” cognitive approaches and “bottom-up” somatic ways of metabolizing anxiety. You don’t have to suffer through anxiety alone.