Using your body to come down after something stressful — a straightforward guide, if you are doing this instead of scrolling

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Here is what tends to work, in the order that helps most.

Choosing this over scrolling counts as a good decision, even a small one.

If you only do one thing from this page, do the first point below. It is first because it removes the most friction for the least effort.

Eat something if it has been a long time. Low blood sugar feels almost exactly like anxiety.

Tell someone what happened, briefly. Saying it out loud closes the loop in a way that thinking it does not.

Do not go straight into problem-solving while your heart is still going. Your judgement is genuinely worse in the first twenty minutes.

Move first, think later. A brisk ten-minute walk uses up some of what the stress response prepared your body to do.

Shake out your hands and shoulders. Animals do this after a fright, and it works on the same system in people.

Give yourself a fixed amount of time to be angry or upset about it. Then move to the next thing. The time limit matters more than the amount.

Once, to one person, yes. Repeatedly to everyone, no — it tends to keep the feeling active rather than discharge it.

Then slow breathing with a long exhale, cold water on the wrists, and a change of room do a smaller version of the same job.

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