Stuck in an Anxiety Spiral? Martha Beck Says Doing This One Thing Is Scientifically Proven to Help You Feel Instantly Calm

When it comes to the anxiety most of us are collectively feeling, Martha Beck, PhD, has good news and bad news.

The bad news is that if you’re super anxious about the election right now, you’re likely going to remain anxious—even if the candidate you voted for wins. “That’s because your anxiety isn’t directly connected to the election, it’s connected to the stories you’re telling about the election,” she says.

But this is where the good news comes in: You can change those stories you’re telling yourself with one simple move: Do something—anything—creative.

Maybe that means opening a box of crayons and coloring. It could mean cooking (without following a recipe!), knitting, or building something. Whatever you feel called to do, do it.

“Most people who are anxious don’t feel like being creative. But if you do something creative, anxiety can’t function,” says Beck. Even better, she says, this act of being creative helps us feel like we’re starting to create the world in which we want to live. 

“This is how humans move forward into a more just, a more loving, a more compassionate and evolved society,” says Beck. “We all have this work to do no matter who wins, so let’s start creating it now. And then let’s watch our anxiety disappear.”

A CONVERSATION WITH MARTHA BECK, PHD

Can you walk us through what anxiety does to our bodies and minds?

Well, we have different nervous system states, and rest and relax is the ideal state in which to be. It’s where your body heals. It’s where all of your organs work properly. It’s where you stay young.

We’re meant to be in that state of rest and relax almost all the time.

Then there’s fight or flight, which is actually five different things. There’s fight, where you feel angry and overcharged, aggressive, and in terrible mood. There’s flight, which is where you just want to run through the room screaming. Another one is freeze, where you just feel like you can’t do anything. There’s another called flop, where you just have no energy. And there’s faint. You can’t control these reactions.

When you come out of rest and relax into any of those states, your body is flooded with stress hormones and all the reactions that they create. But this fight-or-flight reaction is meant to last about 90 seconds. If there’s an angry predator in the room, or if there’s a bus coming at you, you’re meant to have this sharp, intense reaction that tells you to move out of the way or to freeze and not be seen. And then it goes away. In animals, one of these reactions comes on, they act, and then it leaves.

Human beings have the ability to continue to imagine that we’re in danger even if we’re in a comfortable room somewhere. We think, Oh my goodness, World War III could start, and that 90-second response can go on and on. And this leads to degenerative diseases, heart disease, and even infectious illness because your immune response goes down. All your energy is being used on a fight-or-flight response that isn’t real.

What’s your best advice for really feeling our anxiety and sitting with it (it’s so uncomfortable!) so we can start to move it?

Before you try to sit with it, I would say go with it. Move your body. Because all those hormones that flood your body in a fight-or-flight state are there to get you moving—except for the flop response. If you’re experiencing that one, you’re not going to want to get up. But if you feel like you’re a cat on a hot tin roof— your nerves are frayed—it’s really a good idea to pace around the room or go for a walk or a run if you’re up for it, because that will help you move the adrenaline and other stress hormones through you.

If you have a strong fight response, punch a pillow or a punching bag, let your body have the space to respond to those hormones because they’re ancient, and they’re meant to protect you, like a wild animal. So let them. But then—and here’s the key—realize that it’s like you have a wild animal inside you. And it’s important to think about what you would do to calm down an animal. For example, if it’s very aggressive, you give it space. You’d let it roar and stamp.

You will eventually get to the place where you feel the fear. Sometimes the aggression can drown out fear, but you get to the place where you feel scared. And the key here is not to say, “I am afraid,” but to say, “There’s an animal part of me that’s afraid.” 

When I ask people, “What do you do with yourself when you’re anxious?” they don’t know. But if I say, “What if you were rescuing a puppy from a storm drain and it was terrified, and it barked and snapped at you, but you can see it shaking in fear.” Everyone seems to instinctively know how to calm a small, terrified animal: You’d lower your voice, you’d slow everything down, you would say kind things, but you wouldn’t explain to a puppy why it needed to be calm, because it can’t understand you. 

The part of our brains that gets anxious doesn’t really understand language. It understands a soft tone of voice. It understands gentle touch. Slow movement. Reassuring sounds. And remembering the animal is not you.

If you can think of your anxiety as a little animal inside you that you need to be kind to, you move your sense of identity away from the animal and into a place that has more resources for calming. The way I like to think of it is that I used to be an insane, terrified monkey. Now, I’m a person who has an insane, terrified monkey as a pet.

Your new book, Beyond Anxiety, offers a surprising antidote for the common emotion: creativity. How does it work?

The reason, which we’ve known for many years, is that when you get anxious, your creativity shuts down. Another thing that’s not as well studied or intuitive is that when you make yourself do something creative, your anxiety shuts down. The two things seem to operate like a toggle switch; when one is on, the other goes off.

Most people who are anxious don’t feel like being creative. But if you can start to do something creative, anxiety can’t function. What I found in case after case—and I’ve talked to thousands of people about this—is that in the moment of creating something, anxiety goes away. And then we may pop out of that and come back into anxiety, but the anxious part of the brain doesn’t notice that it was calm for a while. Most people don’t really realize how powerful creativity is. But everybody knows that if you start taking constructive action, you’ll start to feel better.

Just make something creative and the brain has to let go of its anxiety.

What can those of us who are really feeling the angst this election week do to feel better?

The first thing is to remember to be here now. Don’t constantly live in catastrophic fantasies of what will happen if you don’t see the desired outcome. People on both sides are creating catastrophic fantasies—stories about what might happen in the worst-case scenario. And if you’re living in that, you are going to be anxious. Look around you now. Try to get creative about making your own environment feel the way you wish that the whole country felt.

So many of us are stuck in this fantasy that if the election goes the way I want it to, life will be wonderful. The fact is, no matter how it goes, we have to make our lives wonderful. So, start now. And if you get into something that’s really absorbing and creative—if you’re out of the garage building a new dining room chair, or if you are knitting something crazy complicated for your new grandchild, whatever it is—you will find that you’ve made the world you thought would come if your person wins. You’ll realize, I’ve already made that world in my own small way, and I’m going to keep creating, keep moving forward. Because whatever happens with the election, that’s what we’re all going to have to do to deal with our anxiety.

Martha Beck, PhD, is a Harvard-trained sociologist, New York Times bestselling author, world-renowned life coach, and speaker. She is the author of one novel and nine nonfiction books, including the Oprah's Book Club pick The Way of Integrity.