Being a human means that you’ll get a little stressed out and angry now and then. After all, stress evolved with us to help us survive in the wild and dangerous environments. This is called the flight or fight response. But we’re no longer living in the jungle, so what can we do when worry and stress take control over our bodies? How can I calm my nerves fast when I can’t find a way to relax?
Fight or Flight Response
The fight or flight response is a natural reaction in our autonomous nervous system in which our bodies get a burst of adrenaline to give us the energy to escape perceived danger. This response can be triggered by physical dangers or psychologically perceived dangers. Perceived dangers are dangers that are not physically present for example stress triggered by your thoughts or even anticipation of a stressful situation. In this state, your heart beats faster and your breaths become shallower and shorter. You start to breathe faster and this fills your muscles with oxygen and adrenaline, getting your body ready to respond to danger. Psychological triggers to your fight or flight systems can increase in frequency, affecting your ability to cope with normal activities, if not addressed by finding ways to calm the response down.
Well, you’re not alone in your struggle. In fact, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) [https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/facts-statistics] , anxiety disorders affect around 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.
So, it’s essential to know ways to calm yourself fast. Here are some easy and quick tips to help you relax and reduce your worries.
First Things First: Take a Deep Breath
It’s as easy as it sounds.
A 2018 study [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30245619/] found that slow breathing techniques can increase comfort, relaxation, pleasantness, vigor, and alertness while reducing symptoms of arousal, anxiety, depression, anger, and confusion.
Anger and anxiety make you take short breaths, which continues to feed the fight or flight response. So, taking long and deep breaths will disrupt that cycle, help you reduce stress, and make you feel more in control.
Here Are Some Breathing Techniques, You Can Try:
Belly Breathing
* BELLY BREATHING: One straightforward and calming method that anyone can do is this one. Lie flat or sit, then put a hand on your belly and another hand on your chest. Inhale deeply through your nose and feel your belly pushing your hand (your chest shouldn’t move). Exhale with your lips pursed (as if you were whistling), and notice how your belly hand moves when you push the air out. Repeat until you feel better.
Timed Breathing
* 4-7-8 BREATHING: This method is easy to do and very popular. First, close your mouth and breath in through your nose as you count to four. Next, hold your breath and count to seven. Finally, breathe out through your mouth as you count to eight and repeat until you feel relaxed.
Recognize Your Emotions
Developing your emotional intelligence is essential and can help you reduce negative emotions.
Recognizing negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and stress is critical and can help overcome those states. The first step to solving anything is to recognize the problem first.
Tell yourself what you’re feeling and think about your emotions for a moment and describe them. You don’t need to be strong and indestructible. YOU’RE ALLOWED TO BE SCARED, ANGRY, SAD, STRESSED, AND ANXIOUS.
Stay in the Present
Anxiety and stress have a way of leading us to think of the absolute worst possible outcome.
It is all about what could happen or the consequences that something may have on our lives. But trying to remain in the present is a solution for all of that. GOOD WAYS TO REMAIN IN THE PRESENT ARE MEDITATION TECHNIQUES AND ASKING YOURSELF QUESTIONS TO CHALLENGE YOUR THOUGHTS.
You do what you have to do to remain in the present and not in your imagined situation.
Question Yourself
Breaking news, your worries, and anxieties might not even exist in the real world. Yes, they might feel pretty real and pretty threatening, but you need to face them and challenge your thoughts.
Anxiety tends to make us imagine the worst-case scenarios of a given situation. Here are some questions you can ask yourself:
- ARE THESE THOUGHTS RATIONAL?
- HOW LIKELY IS THIS TO HAPPEN?
- WILL ANYONE REMEMBER THIS IN TEN YEARS?
- HAVE I BEEN THROUGH WORSE SITUATIONS THAN THIS ONE?
This an excellent trick to remember next time you’re battling with internal worries.
Feeling Nervous? Reflect on Your Thoughts
There is access to online tools to help you question your thoughts. such as the Thought Record Sheet. You will be surprised at how differently you feel about anxiety-provoking events when you look back to reflect on them. Looking back will help you to understand where you started to feel nervous, it will increase your understanding of yourself and also help you to identify what to do about this in the future. Repeated reflection and planning can help you develop new habits of questioning yourself that will increase your ability to manage in the future, should a similar situation arise.
Find a Way to Drain Those Emotions
Once you recognize your emotions, you need to find ways to drain them and express them in healthy ways.
One good way to drain your emotions is to write them down. According to Harvard University [https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/writing-about-emotions-may-ease-stress-and-trauma] , writing and journaling your emotions may help you ease stress and trauma. And after some time, you can revisit your thoughts and see your emotions on the subject and see if they’ve changed.
Getting some fresh air is another way to drain emotions. Going out for a walk and get fresh air can release serotonin. Exercise is another excellent way to get those feel-good hormones. As long as you don’t engage in aggressive physical activity like screaming or punching walls, you’ll be fine.
Try some Visualization, Meditation or Combine Them
If you thought breathing was easy, try the next step and see how meditation and visualization go for you.
The health benefits of mediation [https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/meditation/in-depth/meditation/art-20045858] are documented, well-known, and backed up by science. Visualization is a technique that people use to visualize mental images of any desired situation that hasn’t happened and experience the feelings. Visualization meditation combines visualization with meditation.
When you meditate, you shift your mind’s focus, and that can help you relax more.
Combine those methods, and you get visualization meditation, which is the method of imagining positive mental images to calm the mind. SO NEXT TIME YOU TRY MEDITATION, TRY VISUALIZING YOURSELF CALM AND RELAXED WHILE HAVING POSITIVE THOUGHTS.
Create a Personal Mantra
Creating a mantra that you can use in these situations can be incredibly helpful.
Try to think of something that can calm you down. Some mantra ideas are:
- THIS TOO SHALL PASS.
- YOU ARE A LOVABLE AND LOVE-DESERVING PERSON.
- CALM DOWN.
- WILL THIS MATTER IN A YEAR?
Believe it or not, repeating these phrases can help you relax faster and better.
You can create your mantras and use them when you feel that you need them. It’s great if you can use these mantras as you do your breathing exercises or your meditation.
Let the music wrap your nerves
HOW CAN I CALM MY NERVES FAST? EASY, TURN ON THE MUSIC.
As you probably already know, music has a tremendous effect on our emotions.
A 2006 study from Stanford University [https://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/may31/brainwave-053106.html] claims that “music seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as mediation.”
Another study [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3734071/] found that listening to music before a standardized stressor help reduce the psychological stress response
So the next time you’re feeling down, or you’re feeling stressed, angry, or confused, turn on your favorite playlist and let the music flow through your veins. Listening to white noise [https://www.sleepfoundation.org/bedroom-environment/white-noise] while you sleep also helps to reduce stress levels. It helps you relax and sleep better.
Focus on Something Else
Focus on something else, really, anything else.
As long as your mind isn’t thinking of the situation causing you negative emotions, you’ll be okay. Leave the room, go for a walk, sleep a little, listen to music, or try any of the previously recommended methods.
Watching funny videos can help. So maybe you could try watching a funny YouTuber or funny animal videos. LAUGHING CAN BRIGHTEN YOUR MOOD.
To help you out, HERE’S THE 3-3-3 RULE THAT’LL RELAX YOU A LITTLE:
- Name three objects that you can see in your surroundings.
- After that, name three sounds that you can hear at the moment.
- And lastly, feel and move three parts of your body, like your shoulders, feet, and arms.
This will force you to focus on the present and not on your feelings.
Satisfy your Basic Needs
Sometimes, if our basic needs aren’t adequately addressed, this can add up to negative emotions.
Take a small snack, drink a little bit of water, or take a nap. Believe it or not, sometimes that’s all we need. You can’t correctly tackle an issue or problem if you’re sleepy or hungry, so first, take care of that, and then you can deal adequately with your emotions.
Quick note, if you get a snack, try to get away from sugar. SUGAR CAN WORSEN YOUR STRESS, SO TRY TO AVOID THAT AT ALL COSTS.
Tell a Friend
Call a friend. After all, that’s what they’re for.
Telling a friend about your worries can help you in so many different ways. On the one hand, you are releasing your emotions with this person and draining your feelings. On the other hand, you’ll be getting a different perspective on the same issue.
Maybe they’ll point out a solution that you haven’t thought of, or maybe they tell you something that calms you down completely.
Conclusion
Feeling angry, stressed, confused, or anxious is a normal human thing. So that’s why we need to be prepared when those emotions arrive. Because sadly, they will arrive at some point.
It may be hard to concentrate correctly while having these negative emotions, but you’ll be fine if you remember the basics.
In this article, you have everything you need to understand if you asked yourself, “How can I calm my nerves fast?”
Learning how to calm your nerves fast is an art that takes a lot of time and energy to master. But after a while, you can become an expert at calming yourself down. SO STAKE SOME TIME TO MAKE THESE TECHNIQUES A HABIT AND BECOME YOUR MOST RELAXED SELF.
