Quick quiz: Would you rather…
- …be interviewed about your life on live national television?
- …hold a public meeting with a roomful of your angry constituents?
- …compete as an elite athlete for the ultimate prize in your sport?
- …represent your company during an IRS audit?
If your answer is a solid “none of the above,” that’s okay: most of us don’t have to worry about performing in such high-stakes situations. Still, the way people who face these situations on a regular basis handle stress and anxiety might teach something to the rest of us.
Enter Rachael Isaac, a pastoral counselor and mental performance coach at CatholicCounselors.com. Isaac directs the faith-based success and performance coaching program, where she works with Catholic athletes, performers, executives, and others who have to be at their best under pressure. She explained a simple three-step process for handling anxiety that she regularly uses with her clients.
When the Future Arrives Early
“Anxiety has a way of making a future problem feel like a present emergency,” Isaac told the Popcaks. “You’re imagining what could go wrong, what the other person might say, what happens if you fail or make a wrong choice.”
The result: We experience the stress of an event over and over again before anything has actually happened, putting our nervous system into overdrive and leaving us exhausted.
The key to breaking that cycle isn’t trying to make the anxiety disappear. Instead, Isaac advises her clients to “recenter” their feelings of anxiety so that instead of living in the stress of hypothetical future outcomes, they can ground themselves in the present, allowing them to respond more effectively.
She outlined three steps for doing that.
Three Steps for Recentering When You’re Stressed
1. Regulate the body first
Anxiety isn’t just a “mind thing”; it’s a body thing, too. When you experience anxiety, your heart rate and breathing speed up, your muscles tense up, and your body floods with stress hormones designed to help you deal with danger.
The problem is, that stress response is geared toward immediate physical danger, not some hypothetical future threat. It prepares your body to either flee, freeze, or fight—responses that don’t work well in most modern contexts.
“So before you try to reason your way out of anxiety, give your body some evidence that you’re safe enough to think,” Isaac said.
Slow your breathing, drop your shoulders, put your feet on the ground, and look around to notice where you actually are right now.
Your goal is to lower the intensity of your body’s stress response enough so that your rational “thinking brain” can come back online, taking control back from the fight-or-flight “reactionary” part of your brain.
2. Name what’s true, and move from “what if” to “even if”
“Anxiety really loves hypothetical situations,” Isaac told the Popcaks: What if I mess up? What if I fail? What if they’re upset with me? Left alone, those questions only escalate.
The most powerful shift we can make here is from “what if” to “even if,” Isaac said: Even if I mess up, I can take a deep breath and get back on track. Even if they’re upset with me, I can remain calm and present and work through the situation. Even if I fail, “I have X, Y, and Z ways to respond.”
Try this the next time your mind starts spinning. Write down your top “what ifs,” then finish each one with an “even if.” Those sentences should sound different from the catastrophic “what if” versions, giving the thinking part of your brain something solid to go on.
3. Identify what’s yours to do
Next, ask what you can actually do right now. You might prepare, pray, or rest, for instance.
Or you may conclude there is nothing more to do. That can be a useful insight, too, since anxiety often convinces us that worry is a useful form of preparation.
“It feels productive because our brain is working so hard,” Isaac explained. “But repeatedly imagining that worst case scenario doesn’t actually make us more prepared.”
Grace for the Moment You’re In
Jesus taught his disciples to let each day’s worries be enough for that day (Matthew 6:34). Instead of worrying about what might happen tomorrow, he told them to trust in God’s providential care.
“Trust doesn’t mean convincing ourselves that everything is going to turn out exactly the way that we want,” Isaac explained. “It means recognizing I’m responsible for my response; I’m not responsible for controlling the entire outcome. So I can prepare, I can discern, I can show up, I can make that next healthy choice.”
But there comes a point where we have to let go of what is beyond our control. Often, we want God to assure us that all of our doomsday scenarios are under control.
“But grace meets us in the moment when we actually need it,” she said. “Calm doesn’t always mean that the nerves disappear. Calm sometimes simply means, even if I’m feeling nervous, I can take that next faithful, healthy step and know that God is walking with me.”
For more help overcoming anxiety, check out Dr. Greg Popcak’s book Unworried: A Life Without Anxiety. And for one-on-one support, or to learn more about faith-based performance coaching, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.
