One Simple Trick To Help with Anxiety

For those of you really short on time, the answer is ….. labelling anxiety! But hopefully, you’ll hang tough for the next minute or so and read on!

A study in the journal, Psychological Science (Kircanski et. al., 2012) found that simply putting anxious feelings into words can help to reduce anxiety.

And what was particularly clever (and compelling) about this study was the skin conductance testing used to measure people’s level of anxiety, as opposed to simply using a self-report rating (i.e., rating how anxious you feel on a scale).

Another surprising finding from this study was that labelling anxiety worked better than distraction and reappraisal (using neutral words to describe anxiety) in reducing the psychological response to anxiety.

Take Home Message

It is simply better to face anxiety and label it as a starting point on your path to feeling less anxious, as opposed to falling prey to the commonly used strategies of avoidance or distraction.