Mindfulness can ease anxiety by helping someone turn inward to become quiet and still, and to focus attention on what is happening in the present moment rather than past regrets or future fears. Mindfulness is about living fully in your tangible world rather than remaining stuck in anxious thoughts, worries, and what-ifs.
What Is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a way of living your life fully and showing up for each moment, no matter what that moment brings. It involves paying attention to whatever you’re doing, noticing things fully, and being present in your life.1 Mindfulness is focused awareness of what’s happening right now, who you are with, and your own thoughts, feelings, and actions.1, 2
Unlike therapies such as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for anxiety or other therapeutic approaches to mental health, mindfulness is not a distinct methodology or framework with a structured process. Mindfulness involves awareness, paying attention on purpose to something in your present moment, returning your attention to your moment whenever your mind wanders, and observing your experiences without judging them or getting stuck in them.4
How Does Mindfulness for Anxiety Work?
In essence, mindfulness is the polar opposite of anxiety. Anxiety has people trapped in their own mind—in their thoughts and emotions—whereas mindfulness frees people, allowing them to experience and accept life as it is without worrying about what bad things might happen or reading into what something might mean.
As anyone who lives with anxiety knows, it’s not enough to simply stop worrying. Being told to relax or get rid of anxious thoughts is both frustrating and ineffective. What’s needed instead is something to replace worry and anxiety. In its focus on tangible things in the present moment, mindfulness serves as a great way to reduce anxiety without medication, especially if you’re concerned with how anxiety meds may make you feel. When you focus on concrete things that you can experience with your senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste), you switch your attention away from worries and reclaim what anxiety has stolen from you—your joy and ease of being with yourself and in your life.5
Mindfulness isn’t a quick-fix or a magic wand that eliminates anxiety, stress, and other problems. Instead, it’s a new relationship with your life and all its ups and downs. You notice and accept your anxiety rather than tangling with it and struggling against it, because when you fight with anxiety, you remain stuck in it rather than freely living in each moment of your life.2
What Anxiety Symptoms Can Mindfulness Help With?
Mindfulness can reduce all types of anxiety symptoms, including:
- Physical (symptoms felt anywhere in your body)
- Cognitive (like difficulty concentrating and anxious, racing, worried thoughts)
- Emotional (including fear, irritability, restlessness, heightened sensitivity)
- Behavioral (such as avoidance, talking too much or too little, overworking)
Practicing mindfulness on a regular basis, whether formally or informally, retrains your brain and shifts your mindset.16 Techniques such as deep breathing and using your senses to shift your focus away from anxious thoughts and feelings and onto something concrete in the present moment change how your brain and body respond to stress, replacing the fight-or-flight reaction with the calmer rest-and-digest response.8
Mindfulness Exercises for Anxiety
Mindfulness can be practiced formally as a seated meditation and informally, involving focusing your attention on what you are doing in your daily life.1, 14
Here are 10 mindfulness techniques that can help calm anxiety and refocus your attention:
1. Mindfulness Meditation for Anxiety
Meditation involves sitting quietly for a certain amount of time (anywhere from a minute or so to hours) and focusing your attention. Often, mindfulness meditation begins by focusing on the breath, noticing your full inhale and exhale. Attention can remain on the breath throughout the meditation or can shift to a sight such as a flickering candle flame, a sound such as gently bubbling water in a fountain, or any other sensation.
Frequently, mindfulness meditators repeat a simple word or phrase as they inhale and exhale to focus their attention. When you meditate, your mind will inevitably wander, and that’s okay. Mindfulness meditation isn’t about silencing the mind (that isn’t possible); instead, it’s about calming the racing thoughts and gently returning your attention to your breath, sensation, or word over and over again.
The mind isn’t naturally still—it’s made to process information and think and analyze and be continually active. And anxiety takes this natural mental activity and throws it into overdrive. Therefore, as you begin to intentionally focus your attention, know that it will quite likely feel challenging and awkward. This is normal and perfectly okay. It can also be helpful to use a meditation app like Headspace or Calm.
2. Set Mindful Intentions
It is important to set mindful intentions when you are struggling with anxiety– you could say something like, “I intend to treat myself with compassion,” or, “I allow myself to rest today.” Setting mindful intentions helps you to be clear, concise and realistic about your goals and desires. Intention-setting is an important practice because it helps you deal with your anxiety in a way that lets you be in control of how you handle negative situations and emotions.
3. Observe Anxious, Negative Thoughts Drifting Away
This can be done during formal meditation or as you go about your day and catch yourself thinking anxious thoughts. Notice your worries or fears, but rather than getting caught up in them, picture them drifting away from you. You might visualize your thoughts on clouds floating past you on a gentle breeze or on leaves floating away from you down a bubbling brook.
4. Grounding Exercises
Grounding exercises are a really great way to help you cope with your anxiety and in a mindful way. Grounding exercises stimulate all of your five senses to help you remember and connect with where you are, giving you a better sense of control when you are feeling out of control.
5. Mindful Breathwork
Breathing exercises and mindful breathwork are also important in helping to regulate your symptoms of anxiety. Anxiety manifests its way in a lot of ways in our physical body, and breathwork can help you to calm those systems in your body down to help reduce heart rate, blood pressure, and feelings of anxiety.
6. Body Scan & Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Progressive muscle relaxation is helpful for noticing tension or other symptoms of anxiety in your body as your anxiety builds. You can do this sitting or lying down, or you can scan your body while waiting at a red light, standing in a long line at the store, or sitting in a meeting at work. Start at your feet, and notice how they feel. Are they sore and tense? Relaxed? Wiggle your toes, roll your ankles, and point and flex your feet to release tension. Notice how it feels to let the muscles of your feet relax. Then, move to your calves, noting how they feel, tensing and releasing them.
Progress this way up your body until you reach the top of your head. As you go, concentrate on each muscle group. If your mind begins to wander, just return your attention to the body scan.
7. Take a Mindful Walk
Movement is helpful in reducing anxiety.15 Do it mindfully for added benefit. You can engage in a mindful walk indoors by removing your shoes and concentrating on the feel of your feet on the floor. Note textures and temperature. Tune in to the sensation of movement throughout your body. See how it feels to move very slowly for several minutes.
You can also take a mindful walk outdoors, turning your attention to the world around you. What do you see, hear, smell, and feel? What does the air feel like against your skin? Can you feel the warmth of the sun? When anxious thoughts intrude, notice them and then return to being mindful of your activity.
8. Focus on One Thing at a Time
As you go about the tasks of your day, give your undivided attention to what you are doing. Use your senses to immerse yourself in the moment. Inhale the clean scent of the soap and feel the tickling sensation of the bubbles as you do the dishes. When you catch your mind wandering, simply return your attention to what you are doing.
9. Journal
Journaling is a really great way to help you get out your thoughts and feelings onto paper and out of your head. This helps to reduce feelings of anxiety as you are able to see all of your thoughts on paper and read them back to decide how you feel about them. It’s a great way of helping you to help yourself reframe things that are going on in your life. You can get started with some anxiety journaling prompts.
10. Spend Intentional Time Without Your Phone
Our electronics are a big part of our life and often contribute to our feelings of anxiety. Spending time away from your phone, computer, and television is a great way to help you restore your mind back to baseline. It reduces anxiety because you are not allowing yourself to consume content that may or may not be affecting you in ways you don’t understand.
How to Get the Most Out of Mindfulness for Anxiety
In its emphasis on focusing on the present moment rather than on your thoughts and worries about the past or future, mindfulness is deceptively simple. It isn’t complex with procedures and rules, but it does involve key elements that help you approach your life calmly so you can respond positively to problems.
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your mindfulness practice and lower your anxiety levels:
Focus on Your Breath
Breathing in and out slowly and deeply, and paying attention to the sound and feel of your breath as it enters and leaves your body, helps you anchor your attention in the moment.6 ,7
When you notice anxious thoughts, you can turn your concentration to your breath to refocus on the here-and-now. Deep breathing also calms your body’s stress response by deactivating the sympathetic nervous system (the one responsible for the fight-or-flight response) and activating the parasympathetic nervous system (the one dubbed rest-and-digest).8
Pay Attention to the Present Moment
The main goal of mindfulness is to take attention away from our anxious thoughts and emotions not by avoiding them but by acknowledging them and choosing to pay attention to something else that is real and right in front of us: the present moment. Anxiety involves automatic negative thoughts about ourselves, others, and situations in our lives. In focusing on the concrete, tangible moment that you can notice with your senses, mindfulness offers a break from the worries and fears of anxiety.14
Awareness Is Essential
Anxiety often involves avoidance.3 While it’s natural to want to avoid things that cause discomfort like worry and fear, avoiding them only serves to prevent people from living their lives fully. In mindfulness, you are completely aware of yourself and your surroundings as they are in this moment.4 Honing your awareness of has been shown to decrease stress and anxiety as well as improve mood and general well-being.9
Accept Yourself for Who You Are
Non-judgment and acceptance are key in mindfulness. When you are experiencing your moment mindfully, you accept it for what it is rather than trying to decide how you feel about it.10 This does not mean that you accept undesirable or dangerous situations. In mindfulness, non judgment and acceptance mean that you are aware of your experiences without getting caught up in labeling them. Then, you can remain calm and decide how you want to respond.
Let Go of What You Can’t Control
Mindfulness allows us to be aware of ourselves and situations, avoid judging, and then defuse and let go by purposefully shifting our attention to what is happening right here, right now. When you practice mindfulness and keep these key concepts in mind, you begin to release the hold anxiety has on you and slip calmly into your present moment.
Who Can Help Me Practice Meditation for Anxiety?
Mindfulness can help with everyday stress and anxiety, and it can also help with anxiety disorders. You can use mindfulness on your own, and you can also work with a therapist who is trained in therapeutic approaches that use mindfulness, such as acceptance and commitment therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. Also, there are educational group therapy programs that help with anxiety, such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction.
Is Mindfulness Effective for Anxiety?
Wondering if mindfulness is truly effective for anxiety, researchers have been conducting numerous studies to investigate if and how mindfulness reduces anxiety. Results have been positive, indicating that mindfulness is indeed a useful way to help anxiety. This sampling of studies highlights some important findings:
- An analysis of 78 randomized controlled trials involving nearly 6,000 participants showed that mindfulness improves attention, memory, and processing speed, helps manage moods, and relieves symptoms of anxiety and depression.17
- A study reported in a 2010 edition of the journal Psychiatric Research: Neuroimaging revealed that mindfulness directly changes the brain by increasing gray matter (the tissues in the brain that contain nerve cells, the brain’s power areas). One area of gray matter strengthened by mindfulness is the hippocampus, an area responsible for learning, memory, emotional control, stress responsiveness, and anxiety. In boosting gray matter in the hippocampus, mindfulness helps reduce anxiety and improves our response to stress.18
- A study review conducted at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) indicated that mindfulness reduces anxiety by directly benefiting the brain. Mindfulness, these reviewers found, serves as a protection against stress and improves our decision-making ability, something that is negatively affected by anxiety.19
- A 2010 study conducted at UCLA found that people who have a tendency to be mindful, focusing on their present moment and approaching life with acceptance, non judgment, and openness are less emotionally reactive to stressors and experience low levels of anxiety.20
The Limitations of Mindfulness for Anxiety
While mindfulness itself poses no risks or side effects, it’s important to note that mindfulness isn’t an automatic replacement for medication. Sometimes, medication is needed to help anxiety symptoms. It’s important to consult with your doctor to see if medication is a necessary part of your treatment. Also, if you are currently taking anxiety medication and would like to stop and replace it with mindfulness or any other treatment approach, it’s imperative to do so with your doctor’s supervision because stopping medication abruptly or incorrectly can be dangerous.
Examples of Mindfulness for Anxiety
Sometimes, it can be difficult to imagine how making a small shift like implementing mindfulness practices can actually help you feel less anxious.
Here are some examples of how mindfulness can improve anxiety in real-life for a few different types of anxiety:
Mindfulness for Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) involves excessive worry about many different areas of life. This worry interferes in functioning and can disrupt relationships, work, and school. It can also rob people of joy because, rather than fully experiencing time with loved ones or engaging in activities, people are lost in worries and imagined worst-case scenarios about what has already happened or might happen later.
Mindfulness offers a shift away from these excessive worries. The first step is to increase awareness of your anxiety. Often, it runs constantly in the background, unchecked because you’re used to it. Tune in to your thoughts, emotions, actions, and bodily sensations to catch yourself in the act of being anxious. Don’t judge yourself harshly or berate yourself for worrying; instead, just name your experience and then shift your attention to something in the present moment.
Engage your senses and home in on what you are doing: What do you see, hear, feel, smell and, if applicable, taste? Begin to breathe slowly and deeply, and tune in to the sound and feel of your breath. It takes practice and patience to develop this new habit and way of being, so be gentle with yourself when you catch yourself ruminating—again. Simply redirect your attention whenever you need to.
Mindfulness for Social Anxiety
When people experience social anxiety, they have worries and fears about being judged by others or embarrassing themselves in front of people. This anxiety can range from mildly annoying to debilitating. Whatever the degree of severity, social anxiety disorder can lead to avoidance and withdrawal and cause people to miss out on much-needed human interaction.
Mindfulness can change your relationship with your fears of being judged or making a fool out of yourself because it takes power away from those fears and gives it back to you. Whether in a real interaction with others or an imagined one, keep anxiety from taking over by breathing slowly and deeply. This regulates your nervous system and prevents the fight-or-flight response from kicking in.8 Then, choose a focal point that you’ll return to again and again for the duration of your interaction.
It can be very helpful to carry a focus object with you, a small object that you can concentrate on when you notice anxiety building. Study its appearance and texture to keep your attention away from your anxiety.
Mindfulness for Panic Disorder/Panic Attacks
Anxiety and panic attacks, whether they occur in reaction to stress or in the context of panic disorder (a disorder involving seemingly random occurrences of panic), are gripping and all-encompassing. When in the throes of a panic attack, people naturally focus on the physical sensations of the attack (panic attacks can feel like heart attacks, make people sweat and tremble, cause waves of nausea and dizziness, and generally make people think they’re dying). During a panic attack, fear takes over. Mindfulness lets you take yourself back.
Despite how it feels, you aren’t powerless, and you’re not at the mercy of your panic symptoms. The mindfulness concepts of awareness and visualization can help. Catch physical symptoms before they explode into a full-blown panic with frequent body scans to become aware of increasing physical tension or other anxiety symptoms. Use mindful visualization to help reduce the strength and duration of a panic attack.
Either focus on one object in the distance or imagine a peaceful scene and picture yourself there, experiencing it with all your senses (what do you see, hear, smell, and feel there?). This shifts your focus is a way to calm your anxiety. Of course, don’t forget to breathe slowly and deeply to reset your nervous system.
Final Thoughts
Mindfulness is a relationship and an attitude toward life, a way of being with yourself and others across situations. Living mindfully, fully anchored in each present moment of your life, can help you achieve overall wellbeing, and this approach to yourself, others, and situations helps reduce mental health challenges like anxiety.
Mindfulness for Anxiety Infographics
