People stressed-the-fuck-out with anxiety and more stress have a describable problem that, upon understanding is going to make, like, so much sense to you once you comprehend, and better yet, put this new knowledge into use, it's gonna rock your higher brain.

Ready?

Anxiety is: your lizard brain feeling an existential threat and sending do-something hormones into your bloodstream. Some of it goes into your brain and does things that you are very familiar with, some of it goes into the rest of your body and it is recognized as a signal say "ok, shit's about to go down. Get ready motherfuckers." (the motherfuckers in question being muscle cells, gland activation mechanism, optimal blood use, arrangement... lots of stuff).

You, reasonably enough, look around you and see no threat but are clever and therefore start wondering "hmm. what's the threat?", and you find one; in your brain! It's that time you were humiliated in 8th grade. If you could plan a way to avoid that in the future, your longevity is assured!

Of course, you don't get to the part where you examine the reasoning because, after all, there's a threat looming. Chemicals said so.

This kind of thinking has been around long enough for it to have formed its own pathway to some of the glands and danger-zones your lizard brain has access to. In other words, if you hear a rustling in the brush nearby and the word around the village is that there's a cheetah in the area, you have identified a threat, and it's a good time to squeeze certain glands. "Red alert" and so on.

And that's a good adaption.

But when you run out of real physical threats, your higher brain says (sometimes) "Let's use some of this idle hardware to think about some more abstract threats." Which also seems like a good idea. After all, if you were a Paleolithic agriculturalist, you might want to think about rain patterns or insects.

But when the idle hardware is ever more idle and life gets ever more comfortable, it still keeps churning because "you never know".

And you will find something and therefore your glands are probably going to be going and going, because after all, you are a good story teller.

And all those hormones and whatever else prime you to feel even more threatened and look into the future or the far distance for the threat you keep feeling for some reason. It's self-amplifying.

So, at least one helpful trick is to stop. Fucking stop! Like, your instinct that you're wasting your time on this hippy-dippy bullshit is the on-ramp to more endless anxiety.

Instead, actually stop and inventory real physical threats that are present right now, keeping both of those two things in mind at all times, or at least remember to remind yourself occasionally "bzzt! wrongo! that's not a "now" threat and it's also hypothetical."

You will find of course that the list is empty every time.

And you will feel at least a drop of new calmness which is not very rewarding but you should also keep in mind: It's cumulative. There are actual real physical chemicals in your blood that are now also reduced ever so slightly, which is a way of dampening the self-reinforcing signal that is currently causing you unwarranted misery. That is your motivator. Doing this a bit more will get you out of your manic fuck.

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Up:

• And recognize when you are triggered. Do you snigger at trigger? Well, that is because the word has been co-opted and lots its meaning. A trigger is a thing that triggers things. It's not a very political word. Confusing, yes? In this case, your inner-lizard is "triggered" by stimulus and/or your sensory input "triggers" something in you to start being anxious. Far from dismissing them, you should be on the lookout for them and when you encounter one. Do the "physical threat?" thing and then maybe consider what it is about the input that affected you that way. Because some input elicits emotion before your brain has a chance to think. Sometimes you see the connection (tapping on window at night/branch on tree) and sometimes you do not, but that doesn't mean it's not there. It really could be a replay of some significant experience from the past. Figure it out, laugh at yourself. "Check in", move on with your day.
• If some of your ruminating includes "conversation" with other characters in your mind, far from being more fluent and expressive like you are in the conclusion of these conversations, you will sound weird, warped and stupid because you are practicing with yourself, maybe for years.