The instinct when anxiety strikes is to fight it — to resist the thoughts, push back against the feelings, and try to force your way through. That instinct makes things worse. Here's what actually works.
For many people living with anxiety, the mind never quite stops. Thoughts race, worry loops endlessly, and the harder you try to slow it down, the faster it seems to spin. It can feel like being trapped — even during sleep.
But there is a way out, and it's not the one most people try first.
"What you resist, persists."
— Carl JungWhen anxiety rises, the natural response is resistance — pacing, hyperventilating, desperately trying to think your way out of it, or doing whatever habitual thing you do when panic sets in. Each of these responses has something in common: they treat the anxiety as a threat to be defeated. And that very act of fighting keeps it alive.
Think of it like a rope pulled taut between two people. The stress on the rope exists only because both sides are pulling. The moment one person lets go, the tension disappears. Anxiety works the same way. It is sustained by the struggle against it.
Shirley Swede, in The Panic Attack Recovery Book, described a deceptively simple technique: when you feel a panic attack coming on, stop whatever you are doing. Not to escape — but to stop feeding the cycle. Stop resisting the anxious thoughts. Instead of fighting them, simply let them be there.
This sounds paradoxical. If you stop fighting, won't the anxiety get worse? In practice, the opposite tends to happen. The symptoms — without the fuel of resistance — begin to dissipate on their own. They have to. The anxiety was never the primary problem; the fight against it was.
When you feel anxiety or panic rising, stop what you are doing — physically stop. Sit down if you can.
Notice the feelings and thoughts without trying to change them. Don't push them away, don't analyse them, don't argue with them. Just let them be present.
If a thought comes — "I'm going to lose control" — don't grab it and wrestle with it. Let it pass through like a cloud. You don't have to engage with every thought that arises.
Stay with this. The feelings will shift. They always do when you stop amplifying them with resistance.
This technique isn't always easy to apply in the heat of a panic attack, particularly at first. The urge to resist is powerful and deeply habitual. But it is a learnable skill — and the more you practise it in lower-stakes moments, the more readily it becomes available when you really need it.
It doesn't need to replace other techniques — CBT, relaxation practices, mindfulness — but it complements all of them. And for many people, the first time they genuinely let go of the fight with their anxiety and find it subsiding on its own, it is a genuinely transformative experience.