The Single Easiest Way To Relieve Anxiety or Stress… Right Now

I went through nearly two years of therapy to deal with anxiety and, whilst there is no real cure, it did give me a valuable understanding of why my mind works the way it does.

Therapy helped me immeasurably. Once a week (sometimes twice) I had the room to express myself and put words to the stresses and tensions of life.

Everyday Anxiety

But unfortunately anxiety doesn’t conform to a schedule of our choosing — quite the opposite. It rears its ugly head usually at the worst times.

A knot in the stomach, comparable to the nerves you feel before a big presentation.

The mind expanding, quicker and quicker, until its racing to its limits in every direction simultaneously.

Restlessness that compels your legs and arms to move as if controlled by someone else — pacing, clenching, rubbing, twitching.

A weight increasingly pushing and pulling on your chest, convincing you this is actually more serious than you first thought.

A need for help. Someone to talk you down. Someone to understand. Someone to grab you and hold you until it goes away.

It’s awful. And I hope you don’t have to deal with it.

But if you do, I would like to let you know about a technique that has helped me, and continues to help me, a lot.

It’s called a Catastrophe Scale.

Using The Scale

I encourage you to read more but, in short, it requires you to place the source of your stress on a scale — it can be from 1 to 10, but I find it more helpful to use 1 to 100, as it puts more distance between the things you place on the scale.

Usually your reaction to stress, your anxiety, pushes you very quickly towards the top of that scale. Your body and mind reacts in ways that it would if you were in real physical danger.

Yet rarely we are. And it helps to know that. So you place other things on the scale to add perspective to the current situation. If it helps to actually write it down on paper, do it.

100 is the worse thing imaginable — put an actual scenario to it. For me it would be the death of my son, Arlo. Confronting, yes, but let’s keep going…

1 might be stubbing your toe or being late for a meeting. We don’t like those things, but they have very little long term bearing on how we feel.

50 might be losing my job. It matters, it means something, there are real consequences. But next to the death of my son… it pales in comparison.

Now place the trigger of your current anxiety on the scale.

Usually that means you’re not now operating at the top of scale but are swimming around somewhere at the bottom. Probably lower than you first thought. Definitely lower than your reaction warrants.

Combined with controlled breathing this usually has a positive effect on me and my anxiety subsides (even if only slightly). It allows me a small window of clarity that I can use, that I can work with.

Using context and perspective is nothing new or revolutionary, you probably do it more than you think — how many times have you said, ‘Relax! Nobody died!’.

But giving this process a name, making it a clearly defined strategy and working through the points on the scale in your head, gives it weight. It slows you down. It provides respite from the other thoughts drowning your mind. And sometimes that’s all you need to pull yourself out of the mire.

It is important to note at this point that the Catastrophe Scale is in no way a replacement for professional, long term therapy. There are also other more robust techniques to deal with the stress yourself.

But what I like about the Catastrophe Scale is, it’s quick and easy. And when anxiety strikes us at an inopportune moment, it can make a huge difference.

Have you ever used the catastrophe scale? Or do you have another, more effective way to deal with stress? I would genuinely like to read what you do when anxiety appears and threatens to consume you — leave a comment below.