Your heart feels like it’s pounding through your chest. Your stomach fills with acid. Your brain fixates on worst case scenarios. If you’ve ever experienced anxiety symptoms like these, you know you’d do almost anything to end them, even if it’s not effective in any way, shape, or form. Here are 6 things you can try to reduce anxiety that won’t work.
1. Take a deep breath
Here’s a classic anxiety reduction technique you might as well give the ol’ college try even though it won’t work. Odds are you were probably already breathing when you began experiencing anxiety, so it’s unclear exactly how even more air (the thing which, if you really think about it, gives your brain the ability to create your anxiety in the first place) is going to help. And it won’t. But that shouldn’t stop you from closing your eyes, taking a nice deep breath, and feeling exactly the same as you did before.
2. Limit your caffeine intake
Finding yourself hiding in the bathroom at work due to panic attacks? Consider limiting your caffeine intake. Yes, you’ll have to endure weeks of miserable withdrawal symptoms, and, yes, one of those symptoms is persistent, unbearable anxiety, but the good news is that the anxiety will be overshadowed by the incredible exhaustion and crippling migraines you experience while pitifully struggling to break free from your years of caffeine dependency. Be sure to give it a try if you’d like to feel more awful than you ever have in your life and incredibly anxious to boot.
3. Slowly count to 10
Feeling like you have control over your anxiety is critical to managing it. One grounding exercise that clearly isn’t going to do shit to help you feel like you have control is slowly counting from 1 to 10. You’ll look stupid doing it, and you won’t feel any less anxious afterwards, but, hey, it’s a thing you can try. And at least it’s free.
4. Exercise
Exercise. Now there’s an idea for a thing you could try to reduce anxiety that won’t work. Dragging yourself up off the relative comfort of your couch and heading out into the chaotic, crowded world of angry people and blaring sirens and moving around until you’re physically uncomfortable might sound like the opposite of what you need to feel less anxious, and it definitely is. But go ahead and give it a whirl.
5. Improve the quality of your sleep
Make a point to improve the quality of your sleep by abstaining from caffeine late in the day, keeping your phone out of your bedroom, and avoiding naps. That way, you’ll be fully refreshed and ready to take on the ripping panic attack that hits you the second you open your eyes in the morning, with enough energy and mental clarity to experience your anxiety more vividly than ever before. You’ll be surprised at just how terrible you can feel with a good night’s rest.
6. Try meditation
People who meditate swear by it as a method to help end anxiety and panic, and this is because they are liars. But don’t let their dishonesty stop you from buying a full year’s subscription to the most expensive guided meditation app you can, trying it out for a few minutes, and then giving up on it due to not experiencing immediate results. Be sure you keep paying for the app, though, because you never know when you might need to give it another futile try during bad turbulence on a flight or after feeling a weird lump in your throat you don’t remember being there. It still won’t work, but at least you’ll be $75 poorer.
