5 Powerful Practices to Overcome Fear and Anxiety

Whether it’s chasing your goals or just getting through daily tasks, fear and anxiety can really throw a wrench in your plans. Sometimes, these feelings can be so overwhelming, they leave us stuck–unsure of how to move forward.

Mindfulness offers a practical way to tackle these challenges. In this article, we’ll explore five mindfulness tips to overcome fear and anxiety, helping you navigate life on a more even keel.

But first, let’s take a look at the science behind mindfulness, and how it helps us deal with difficult emotions.

Why use mindfulness for fear and anxiety?

Mindfulness helps us get out of the past or future and into the present moment. It encourages us to observe our experiences without judgment, creating a sense of calm and clarity in a few key ways:

Enhancing coping skills. Research shows that mindfulness can make us more resilient to stress, improve our decision-making capabilities, and reduce our emotional reactivity. By practicing mindfulness, we can learn to approach fear and anxiety with a more balanced perspective, allowing us to take action from a more grounded place.
Creating distance from worries. A key benefit of mindfulness is its ability to help us create a mental “buffer” between us and our worries. This buffer prevents our concerns from overwhelming us, giving us a more objective view of our fears, anxieties, and experiences, which decreases the intensity of challenging emotions.
Offering gentle exposure. Research indicates that, in some ways, mindfulness parallels exposure therapy. It allows us to face our fears in a safe, controlled environment, gradually diminishing the fear response through repeated, mindful exposure.

Mindfulness not only helps us navigate fear and anxiety but also cultivates a more centered, resilient approach to life’s stressors.

So, the effects are both immediate and long-term. Studies show that a regular mindfulness practice can actually rewire the brain, decreasing activity in the amygdala–a key area of the brain involved in processing fear.

By practicing mindfulness, you’re not just easing fear and anxiety momentarily, but also making lasting changes that can help you manage these emotions more effectively down the line.

5 Mindfulness tips to overcome fear and anxiety

Remember that fear is universal.

When fear and anxiety strike, it’s common to feel isolated. But it’s important to remember that fear is a universal experience; we’re not alone in this. Feeling fear can be considered your mind and body’s way of alerting you to a situation that needs attention.

Recognizing that everyone experiences fear and anxiety at some point in their lives can help shift our perspective and help us feel less alone.

Recognize what’s happening biologically.

The brain often perceives life’s challenges as threats–even if not physically dangerous. This triggers our fear and defense mechanisms, or “fight or flight” mode.

This response is part of the body’s sympathetic nervous system. When activated, it prepares the body to either confront (fight) or escape (flight) the perceived threat.

With mindful awareness around what’s happening on a biological level, we can objectively recognize when this “alert system” has kicked in. Just acknowledging that it’s been activated without reacting to it can start the process of calming these responses.

Greet fear with acceptance.

When our sympathetic nervous system is triggered, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. Beyond acknowledging this biological process, another simple yet profound step towards managing it is objectively naming what we’re experiencing.

Related: 5 Ways To Feel Less Stress

By saying something like, “I’m noticing fear,” we activate our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with higher-order thinking. This brings rationality and calmness to managing our instinctive fear responses.

Drop into any sensations.

Noticing your direct experiences and accepting your emotions as they are–without trying to fight or suppress them–can make challenging feelings more manageable.

Take a moment to really focus on the physical sensations in your body. Do you notice a racing heart, tightness in your chest, or restlessness?

Also notice what thoughts arise. Are they repetitive, self-critical, or rooted in painful past experiences?

By observing your physical sensations and thoughts with a non-judgmental mindset, you create a space around your experience of fear and anxiety. This not only allows for a deeper understanding of these emotions but also helps reduce their intensity.

Practice self-compassion.

Think about how children often fear imaginary monsters in the closet or under their beds. Your instinct is to comfort and reassure them.

As adults, we also need comfort in times of fear. We can provide this to ourselves through self-compassion, treating ourselves with gentleness and kindness.

Recent research shows that self-compassion has significant benefits for our well-being. People who practice self-compassion typically experience:

Higher levels of happiness
Greater life satisfaction
Increased motivation
Healthier relationships
Improved physical health
Lower levels of anxiety and depression

Just as you would console a child, offer yourself compassion in fearful moments. It can be profoundly soothing.

Our fears and anxieties are typically rooted in anticipating negative events that haven’t happened yet, or remembering painful experiences from the past. Our minds can become entangled in these imagined events–often far removed from our current reality.

Mindfulness is a powerful anchor, pulling us back to the present moment, where we’re most likely safe and unharmed. By using these mindfulness tips for anxiety, we can learn to live more in the here and now, reducing the hold that unfounded–or, at least, unproven–fears have on us. In doing so, we may just watch our lives transform.