Most articles about anxiety are written for the version that feels manageable: the pre-exam nerves, the mild flutter before a big meeting, or the moment of uncertainty before something important.
The usual advice is familiar: breathe deeply, go for a walk, light a candle.
But when we talk about how to overcome anxiety, we need to recognise that not every experience of anxiety looks the same. The kind I want to discuss is not the occasional worry or everyday stress.
I mean the kind that has a countdown attached to it. The kind where you can feel the seconds moving toward the moment when anxiety stops feeling like anxiety and becomes something else: panic. A full system shutdown.
If you know that feeling, you already know a candle is not going to touch it.
There is rarely a clear thought in that moment. Everything happens too quickly.
It begins as a feeling that drops through you — cold, immediate, and overwhelming — before your mind has caught up enough to explain what is happening.
If you could freeze that moment and examine it, the thought underneath might sound something like:
Is this it? Is this the moment I lose control?
But during the experience itself, you do not get to analyse it. You simply feel it arrive.
That feeling is the real crisis.
Not the trigger.
Not even the fear itself.
It is your body deciding, faster than thought, whether you can trust yourself to survive the next few minutes.
And once your body has made that decision, much of the usual advice falls away because it was written for a calmer version of you.
I learned this properly in 2006.
I was still recovering from Myoclonus, a muscle and nerve condition my body had developed after years of intense anxiety.
I had reached a point where the worst of the anxiety had mostly stopped.
Then, within the same few months, I was arrested for something I did not do, charged with racially aggravated criminal damage, and told my case was being escalated to Crown Court.
There is no greater test for someone who has spent years learning not to panic than being locked in a police cell alone, waiting to discover whether all the work you had done to recover was real.
I want to be honest about what actually helped me through that moment.
It was not a candle.
The first thing was changing the language I used with myself.
Not traditional affirmations.
Not:
“I am safe and loved.”
Something much simpler.
Something closer to an instruction.
Short.
Flat.
Almost boring.
And that was the point.
Panic feeds on drama and frightening thoughts. A calm, repetitive sentence gives panic nothing to hold onto.
The second strategy was learning to slow my breathing before I actually needed to.
There is a difference between:
By the time I was sitting in that police cell, I was not waiting to see whether panic would arrive.
I was already slowing everything down because I knew I might need to.
The third strategy came from Cognitive Behavioural Techniques I had practised years earlier.
The skill was learning to separate what happened from the story my mind created about what happened.
For example:
Fact:
My neighbour smashed her own window and blamed me.
Story:
This will destroy my life and prove I never really recovered.
The first statement is information.
The second statement is a fear-driven prediction.
The ability to separate the two is not something you suddenly learn during panic.
It needs to be practised beforehand, so it is available when pressure arrives.
The fourth strategy was quieter.
It was the physical work I had already done.
Regular Alexander Technique sessions were not a cure, but they were training.
They taught my body what it felt like to be:
So when everything around me became chaotic, my body already had a memory of calm to return to.
None of these strategies made fear disappear.
I still felt fear.
The difference was that fear no longer automatically meant losing control.
Those became two separate things.
And separating them was the real skill.
There is another layer to anxiety that is rarely discussed.
Black women are often expected to be:
So when panic arrives, another fear can appear:
“I am not supposed to be like this.”
“I am not allowed to fall apart.”
That expectation does not make anxiety smaller.
It simply makes it harder to admit.
Building real strategies begins with accepting that needing support is not a failure of character.
I am not going to tell you these four things will stop anxiety from ever becoming overwhelming again.
I do not believe that is true for anyone.
What I do believe is that you can discover what works for you on ordinary days, before you are facing an overwhelming moment.
Being prepared does not mean never feeling afraid.
It means already knowing what you can reach for when fear arrives.
For me, it was:
Your tools may look completely different.
The goal is not to find a universal solution.
The goal is to discover your own.
The version of me who once could not choose a sandwich at lunchtime without anxiety spiralling is the same woman who later sat in a police cell facing a criminal record for something she did not do — and did not panic.
That difference is real.
It is not magic.
It is practice.
Practice done long before you need it, so it is already there when life becomes difficult.
Writing things down may not feel powerful at first.
My grounding phrases did not feel powerful the first hundred times I repeated them either.
But something changes when you return to the same page again and again.
The same thing happens when you return to the same steadying words in your mind.
Eventually, they stop feeling unfamiliar.
They become yours.
Whenever you are ready, begin here:
The first sign my body gives me, before my mind has caught up, is…
The story I usually tell myself in that moment, versus what is actually true, sounds like…
What my body would need to feel steady, on a day when nothing is wrong, is…
The expectation to always be the strong one has shown up for me when…
If these questions opened something up, the How Did I Get Here? journal offers more guided reflection prompts organised into sections that build on each other.
It is designed for anxiety that has roots deeper than the immediate moment.
It does not ask you to explain yourself to anyone.
It simply gives you somewhere to place your thoughts, recognise patterns, and understand your journey.
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