Beginner Anxiety Toolkit: Simple Skills That Work

Affiliate disclosure: This article contains light affiliate recommendations. As an Amazon Associate, we may earn from qualifying purchases.

Beginner Anxiety Toolkit: Coping with News and Recent Events

With all the news and recent events related to loss of life and dangerous situations, your anxiety, thoughts, and emotions might be very loud lately.  In fact, it might feel like your body cannot contain your emotions.  You might be experiencing anxiety-related physical symptoms, overwhelming fear, sadness, anger, or foreboding. You’re not broken, you’re human. Anxiety is your internal alarm system trying (and during these days, over-trying) to keep you safe. This is when the Beginner Anxiety Toolkit can come in handy.

The goal of this toolkit isn’t to bottle your thoughts or emotions with a tight cork lid. It's to give you skills to release your cork lid slowly for a more manageable release. It provides a few repeatable, friendly, 90-second skills you can use anywhere—in your morning commute, lunch break, school pickup, grocery lines, and/or office meetings. This toolkit includes a simple way to track what matters to you so you can see real progress.

This guide pairs well with our Building Resilience Workbook and Building Resilience Journal Volume 1: Basic Anxiety Management Skills on Etsy, but everything here stands independently.

We’ll cover:

• What anxiety is (short + kind)

• Your personal symptom map (physical + rumination/worry)

• Attention balance: time spent on internal thoughts vs. external surroundings

• Three daily skills: Breath, Grounding, Values-based micro-actions

• How to track wins (without obsessing)

• When to seek extra help

What anxiety is

Mayo Clinic defines anxiety as a normal biological response to stress that becomes problematic when it's frequent and excessive. It interferes with daily life, causing physical symptoms like rapid heart rate and shortness of breath, as well as mental distress, including uncontrolled worry and feelings of impending doom.

How has your concentration and focus been this last week? Everyone's alarm system is different but credible based on their experience.

Your anxiety scans for threats daily, then pulls your body and attention toward “fixing” whatever might be wrong. That can look like:

• Mind: racing thoughts, future state “what-if” thoughts, catastrophizing, constant internet surfing or scrolling, rumination (looping on the same topic/worry)

• Body: tight chest, fluttery stomach, clenched jaw, “wired and tired” feeling, restlessness

• Behavior: over-prepping, avoiding, reassurance seeking, doom-scrolling, snapping at people you love

  
  

Our bodies have learned to protect us when faced with uncertainty and/or danger. While this makes us human and a little uncomfortable, it doesn't limit our abilities to manage anxiety in the least.

What anxiety is like...for you.

Physical Symptoms

Since everyone is different, this toolkit will provide helpful ways to identify if anxiety is increasing body noise within you. Obviously, if you feel your body can't contain your emotions, it will also help you piece apart and identify components of anxiety, so it's not so overwhelming. Components might be managed differently.

Possible Anxiety Physical Symptoms

Review this image and check each item below that applies to you in the last two weeks:

___ Chest Tightness

___ Shallow Breathing

___ Stomach Flips/Nausea

___ Headaches / Jaw Clenching

___ Hands Shaking

___ Sweaty Palms

___ Restless Legs

___ Muscle Tension

___ Heart Racing / Palps

You might have also experienced these general items:

___ Lightheadedness / Dizziness

___ Can't seem to sit still / itchy

___ Generally irritated with bright lights and extra sounds

Where do you feel anxiety/body map?

Body Map of Possible Anxiety or Tension

We typically can feel anxiety accumulating in our bodies. Everyone is different, so it's nice to be able to identify where it accumulates within your own body, so you can apply anxiety management skills in the moment wherever you are. The image (left) showcases the most typical or common area you might identify within yourself. For example, your forehead, jaw, chest, and/or gut might feel "tight" or "pressure" throughout the day. Knowing anxiety accumulation sets help you to monitor and gently massage or relax tight muscles more routinely.

Our Building Resilience Journal Volume 1: Basic Anxiety Management Skills has several pages related to Progressive Muscle Relaxation exercises that you can learn to practice privately wherever you are.

Anxiety - It's not all in your head.

But it is challenging to identify the "anxiety equation" occurring (and recurring) when you are in the midst of a fight-flight-freeze situation. Our minds are incredibly gifted and brilliant, so our defensive nature can spiral into iterative behavior before we even realize it. Welcome to excessive worry and rumination!

When our fight-flight-freeze is engaged, our minds automatically increase worry AND rumination. This is sort of a "false-positive" defense mechanism that really only does one thing: flood our bodies with cortisol and adrenaline.

1. Worry can be related to excessively thinking about the future state / potential future problems.

2. Rumination can be related to excessively thinking about past adverse events, feelings about events, and/or their causes and consequences, and trying to imagine other outcomes or alternatives.

Interested in the "anxiety equation?" Let's piece it together:

1. Something negative or perceived as dangerous happens to us, our community, and the world.

2. Our bodies flood with cortisol & adrenaline.

   1. This chemical dump usually lasts for two minutes.

3. If #1 has a 1% chance of recurring, our minds implement a false-positive loop:

   1. Worry Loop (Future) and/or

   2. Rumination Loop (Past)

4. Our bodies again release cortisol & adrenaline.

   
   

It's essential to monitor what your triggers are, what themes are included in the false-positive loop, and if themes are tied to excessive future state or past events, and how long the loop lasts:

• Triggers (news, emails, meetings, social media, crowded stores)

• Themes (adverse events, health, work performance, money, relationships)

• Loop length (Does it last minutes? Hours? Comes and goes?)

• Behaviors (opting out of social engagements, having unusual urges, avoiding everyday routines)

If you experience cognitive loops, you might also experience a feeling of being in a fog, having a hard time focusing on daily tasks and/or work assignments, feeling like you are walking around in a dream state, or—our favorite—experiencing days of insomnia. This could be a clue that your "anxiety bucket" is filling up, and it's time for self-care!

How to Balance Your Anxiety Bucket

Now that you know anxiety can manifest not only in physical symptoms but also cognitive loops, what can you do to reduce and manage your anxiety? Each of us has an "anxiety bucket" that we carry around. And 30% of adults worldwide will experience an anxiety disorder within their lifetimes, which means their "anxiety buckets" might be fuller than others on a routine basis. How can we balance our anxiety bucket?

What to notice: Anxiety tries to glue your attention inside: thoughts, sensations, what-ifs.

Good news! Your sense of calm grows when you shift your attention outside: sights, sounds, tasks, people.

At the end of the day, try to estimate and be aware of:

• Internal attention: % of your day spent inside your head/body (thinking, monitoring, worrying)

• External attention: % spent in your surroundings (noticing colors, sounds, tasks, people)

There’s no “perfect” ratio, but many people feel better when they move toward a more even split over time (e.g., from 80/20 internal→external to 60/40, then 50/50 on average).

Skill #1 — Breathing on Purpose

Here are several 90-second reset skills you can use anywhere!

You don’t have to “calm down.” You only have to breathe on purpose for a minute or two. Try one of these:

Anxiety Management Skill - Breathing On Purpose

Skill #2 — grounding on Purpose

Here are several 90-second reset skills you can use anywhere!

You don’t have to “calm down.” You only have to ground on purpose for a minute or two. Try one of these:

Anxiety Management Skill - Grounding On Purpose

Skill #3 — Reconnecting with yourself

Here are several simple yet meaningful ways to reconnect with yourself, especially during times of crisis, high anxiety, and emotional dysregulation.

You don’t have to “calm down.” You only have to identify and document your purpose and values purposefully as a helpful reminder to continue walking authentically towards who you are and who you want to be in this world.

How to Reconnect with Yourself

Additional Tools

Gentle tools that pair well

Hands-free listening and quick reads make balancing or reducing your anxiety bucket easier, especially during commutes, work breaks, chores, and/or bedtime!

View on Amazon

• Audible Gift Membership: Queue beginner-friendly mindfulness and anxiety-skills titles for the next few months. Great for walks and car time.

• Kindle / Kindle Unlimited: Low-glare reading before bed; sample short chapters on breathwork, grounding, and values-based living.

  
  

You’ll see the same skills—breath, grounding, values—reinforced in different voices, which provides you or your loved one with compassionate, kind, and resilient resources 24/7.