I have occasional anxiety, so I’ve had to learn a few anxiety management methods. Today, I employed three of them, and my resultant day felt a lot less difficult.

I woke up this morning with the prickle in my brain that told me anxiety was making itself at home. Thoughts and plans and ideas whirred around as I got ready for the day, all of them connected to a sense of worry, unease or even fear. In contrast, I usually feel optimistic and purposeful in the mornings. I decided to employ anxiety management strategy #1 as I drove to work.

Anxiety Management Strategy #1: The Brain Dump

When thoughts are whirring around your brain and getting caught up in negative emotions, it’s important to give those thoughts a place to go. My favorite method is the brain dump. I turned on my voice recorder and started talking through everything that was worrying me. I tried to focus on one area of my life at a time: work, family, writing. I ended up feeling better about a few things instantly, because saying them aloud either dissolved the fear or gave me the solution to a problem. Listing everything else was helpful in a very practical way because I was able to write them down as soon as I got to work and thereby assure myself that they wouldn’t be forgotten.

The brain dump worked well, and I seemed to have eradicated the anxiety from my brain. But I still felt as though I was carrying stress in my body (something I’ve learned to look for since reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle). I addressed this with strategy #2.

Anxiety Management Strategy #2: High-Intensity Exercise

I took some of my lunch time to exercise. It was only for ten minutes, but I tried to get my heart rate up high: jumping jacks, kicks and punches, and running in place were in the mix. It felt good to get aggressive, and I could feel my stress resolving itself.

As I drove home, preparing to launch into a second shift at home that included one of my highest-anxiety activities (packing the luggage for a family trip) I decided to be proactive and calm myself as much as I could before the chaos started.

Anxiety Management Strategy #3: Alternate-Nostril Breathing

This is a real thing! Hillary Clinton even described it in her book, What Happened, as a method she used to calm herself after the election. Use your thumb to block off your right nostril and inhale deeply through your left. Then release your right nostril and close off the left with the side of your index finger. Exhale deeply through your right nostril. Hold for a beat. Inhale again. Switch nostrils and exhale. Repeat several times. (Reverse left/right direction if you’re left-handed.)

These three strategies made my anxious day a lot better. But here’s one that I didn’t plan. When I got home, my kids had made chalk drawings on the driveway with my husband’s help. My daughter had directed my husband to draw this:

And what better remedy for any health issue– whether it be mental or physical– than to have your family spontaneously show their love?