Three Creative Ways to Be Calm When You Have Anxiety

When you have anxiety, it can be hard to be calm or to feel calm. The anxious brain behaves like a pinball machine: areas, systems, structures, hormones, and neurotransmitters zing anxiety and accompanying thoughts and feelings around and send them ricocheting around our very being. The result is that it seems impossible to be calm with anxiety. You don't have to let anxiety control you. Here are three creative ways to be calm when you have anxiety.

3 Creative Ways to Be Calm When You have Anxiety

1. Be the writer, director, and star of your own script.

Rather than feeling as if events are happening to you or people are exacerbating your anxiety, take the pen into your own hands. How do you want to be? To feel?

Write a movie or a book with yourself as the main character. Create yourself and direct yourself, making a you that is calm even when you have anxiety. Take it a step further and prepare sample dialogue choices so when you're in situations where you don't feel calm, you can fall back on a sample script for ideas rather than feeling like you're in the spotlight with no support from yourself.

Writing, directing, and starring in your own script is a powerful way to take charge of your anxiety. Don't forget to act it out.

2. Be a photographer.

Two ways to be calm when you have anxiety are through visualization and by putting a little space between yourself and your anxiety/the things that are making you anxious. You can accomplish both of these with the creative technique of being a photographer.

To harness the calming power of visualization, be a photographer by creating a photo essay of things that make you calm: places, objects, ideas, hopes and dreams, people--the list is seemingly endless. You can develop these and put them into a scrapbook, or if you prefer to keep it digital, you can keep a collection on your computer or phone. Looking at the calm images you captured as a photographer is a tangible reminder of calming people, places, and things and is a way to be calm when you have anxiety.

Being a photographer is also a way to be calm when you have social anxiety disorder. Some situations lend themselves well to this technique, such as parties or gatherings, club meetings, or group activities. These situations can be very unnerving when you have social anxiety. A way to be calm is to become the photographer. Take pictures of the event so people can enjoy them afterward. This allows you to be part of the fun while having some space in the form of a camera between you and others.

3. Be a reporter.

In being a reporter, you're not actually going around interviewing people, because that would probably increase anxiety. Instead, like a reporter, you're doing your research ahead of time. If you're going to an anxiety-provoking situation and you're afraid it's going to hard to be calm, prepare yourself before hand. What will the physical environment be like? Where can you position yourself so your anxiety is better? What conversation topic ideas can you prepare ahead of time so you feel calmer in the moment?

In These Creative Ways to be Calm Despite Anxiety, You're Playing a Role

These techniques are creative ways to feel calm when you have anxiety. They all have a common theme: you're playing a role. You're playing the part of someone who is calm, so the pressure of trying to be in the world with anxiety is reduced.

Whether you're writing, directing, and acting in your own script, being a photographer, or acting as a reporter, these roles let you participate in life while having a buffer that lets you be calm despite anxiety.

Over time, you'll notice that you've stopped playing a role and have begun to truly be calm because your anxiety has decreased.

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