Understanding and coping with anxiety

Most people will have experienced feeling anxious in a range of everyday situations – before an exam or interview, when visiting a doctor, or trying something new for the first time. But if you are feeling anxious a lot, and struggling to control your thoughts and worries, it can affect your daily life.

Complete these activities and exercises to understand more about how to identify anxiety, develop coping skills, and make a self-care plan.

On this page you can learn about:

• What is anxiety?

• Making a self-care action plan

• Grounding yourself to manage anxiety

• Connecting with others

• Supporting young people and children

Recognising anxiety

We experiences anxiety or nervousness in different ways. Being able to identify and recognise that we are anxious is important to helping deal with it. You may experience anxiety in any of the following ways:

• a pounding heart or churning stomach
• breathlessness
• worries whirring round in your head and racing thoughts
• difficulty sleeping or waking up often at night
• shaking
• panic attacks
• diarrhoea

For more advice about symptoms of anxiety and anxiety disorders, please visit the website for Mind.

Activity

Answer the following questions so you can make your own plan:

• what activities make you feel good?
• what activities help you when feeling overwhelmed?
• what are the signs you're becoming anxious?
• who could you contact for support?

Alternatively, you can use the ‘stress patterns’ activity to help you identify how anxiety or stress may be affecting your body.

1. Pick your self-care activities

Activities you may want to include could be spending time outdoors, listening to music, limiting electrical screen time, setting time aside for a good night's sleep or trying a new hobby.

2. Plan time for self-care

Include time for self-care in your routine and add to your calendars. It could be a time each week or each day where you take a break and do something relaxing.

3. Ask yourself how you feel

The act of ‘checking in’ with yourself regularly can help us to identify our feelings and manage anxiety. You could do this by just asking yourself once a day or once a week, “how do I feel?” or you could spend some time writing down your thoughts and feelings. This could become part of your self-care plan.

Think about

How could using an action plan help you cope with anxiety or burnout, and to look after your body and mind better? Could a self-care action plan help you cope with other feelings like stress?

You can use this plan whenever you feel anxious or burnt out, and to help recognise signs of anxiety so you can be ready to act.

For more support on creating a plan and incorporating this into your schedule, see our advice on creating a healthy routine.

Spring Wellbeing Calendar

Designed to help you develop coping skills and increase your confidence, our Spring wellbeing calendar will allow you to gain ideas, activities, and tips to boost wellbeing and connections. You can also learn how routine and structure can help you.

You can download the calendar now, or order a printed copy.

Try the steps below when feeling overwhelmed:

1. Find somewhere quiet and comfortable to sit down at home.

2. Try to relax your entire body.

3. Take slow, deep breaths, until you are breathing at a steady rhythm.

4. As you relax, try to become aware of your surroundings.

5. What can you see? What furniture is there in the room? Is there light coming in through the windows? Are there any patterns on the carpet or wallpaper? Are there any details that you have not noticed before?

6. What can you hear? Is there noise from outside, or elsewhere in the house?

7. Bring your attention back to your breath. Try to simply notice your breathing, and the feeling of your body relaxing.

8. Check in with yourself. How do you feel now?

We can experience anxiety at any stage of life. These educational resources will help young people learn skills to manage feelings of worry and anxiety and can be used in the classroom and at home. 

• Five activities of kindness and resilience (age 7 to 18)
• Activities to manage stress (age 7 to 18)
• Activities to build coping skill and resilience (age 7 to 18)
• Tackling exam stress (age 11 to 16)

Ways to cope with anxiety and worry

Everyone encounters moments of anxiety in their lives. As well as the resources on this page, you can use our coping strategy activities when feeling anxious or worried. Managing your wellbeing and mental health can help you build resilience and make it easier to deal with these harder moments.

For more help and advice, explore all our wellbeing activities and information, or try these resources.

• Building relationships and making meaningful connections
• Understanding and dealing with stress
• Useful resources to support your wellbeing
• Supporting yourself and others

You can find further ideas to help with feeling anxious with our Self-kindness toolkit. It's filled with activities to help you manage stress, cope with change and skills to build your resilience.

You can download the pack to read online.