Five Ways To Reduce Stress & Anxiety

By Wyatt A.

Edited and approved by Stephen C. Rose, Ph.D. 

No matter who you are, you are not immune to stress. Anxiety is a part of the human condition, though it serves a useful purpose from an evolutionary standpoint; it is all too common that anxiety consumes an individual’s life. Not everyone wears it on their sleeve, and many remain functional for a time until the effects of chronic stress begin to wreak havoc through poor sleep, irritability, rumination, and more of that lovely sensation that your brain has twelve browser tabs open and one of them is playing music you cannot find. How do you manage this state of affairs? There’s no magic pill - essentially stick to the basics: good sleep, plenty of exercise, good eating patterns, and staying connected socially.

None of that is fake wisdom. But many people also need smaller, more immediate tools to help them interrupt spirals in real time. That is where this article lives. Not in the land of miracle cures, but in the much more believable territory of habits that may help you settle your nervous system, get some distance from your thoughts, and stop acting as if every stressful feeling is a five-alarm prophecy.

Here are five ways to reduce and manage stress and anxiety, with one important caveat at the outset: none of them is a substitute for professional care when symptoms are severe, persistent, or disabling. But each may be useful, and together they can give you a sturdier foundation than simply hoping tomorrow will feel less chaotic for mysterious reasons.

Reading

Reading is one of those habits that people often classify as wholesome in a faintly judgmental way, as if novels were kale. But there is a real reason reading keeps showing up in conversations about well-being. A 2025 realist review of reading for well-being found that reading for pleasure can support relaxation, escapism, self-understanding, connection, and a temporary sense of space away from daily stressors [1]. In other words, a good book can do something your phone often cannot: capture attention without pelting you with alerts, outrage, and seventeen unrelated reasons to feel inadequate before lunch.

That does not mean every act of reading is inherently calming. Reading your inbox is technically reading, and it is not exactly a scented candle for the soul. Recreational reading is distinctly different. It focuses your attention sufficiently to take you out of your compromised mental state. The genre is negotiable. The psychological mechanism is more important: focused attention, mental immersion, and temporary distance from repetitive stress.

This is part of why so many people describe reading as a way to come back to themselves. When attention is no longer yanked in six directions, the body often follows suit. Shoulders drop. Breathing slows. The inner monologue becomes less like a committee meeting and more like a single person thinking one thought at a time.

If you want to squeeze a little more from the habit, there is also evidence that reading aloud can improve memory for what is read, although not necessarily comprehension [2]. That makes reading aloud less a universal stress prescription than a useful option. For some people, especially when the mind is racing, hearing words spoken can slow the pace of thought and make the act of reading feel more embodied. It turns the experience from silent skimming into something you actually inhabit.

So yes, put the phone down sometimes and pick up a real book if you can. Not because reading makes you morally superior, but because giving your attention to one thing at a time is often a relief in itself.

Talking To Yourself Out Loud

This sounds eccentric until you notice that nearly everyone does some version of it. It’s not that you talk to yourself - it’s what you say.  For many people, that amounts to a lot of negative self-talk, which leaves them feeling exhausted and agitated. What’s worse, we are only dimly aware that we are even doing it. Saying some of those thoughts out loud can change their texture.

There is a useful distinction here between immersed self-talk and distanced self-talk. Research suggests that when people step back and refer to themselves with more distance, rather than marinating in first-person distress, emotion regulation can improve [3,4]. Nothing magical here and the effect is not gigantic, but vocalizing a stressful situation in a more self-observational way with a bit of compassion (imagine you are advocating for someone you care about) may make thoughts easier to process rather than simply running on autopilot.

Therapists commonly encourage people to call out their feelings in everyday language because externalizing thought can slow things down enough to allow us to ask if it is distorted or catastrophizing. Experience the difference first hand. 'I am a disaster' lands one way. 'Wyatt, you are overwhelmed and talking to yourself like a prosecutor' lands another. Still uncomfortable, maybe. But more workable and more specific.

Here to is where self-talk and self-compassion meet.  This should not be confused with absolving yourself of any and all responsibility, but rather responding your problem with integrity, decency, and an evolved outlook.

Meta-analytic evidence suggests interventions designed to increase self-compassion can reduce anxiety, stress, and self-criticism [5,6]. That does not mean you need to become the world's most affirming motivational speaker in your bathroom mirror. It means you may benefit from sounding less like your harshest critic and more like a competent ally.

Reducing Negative Thoughts

This section is really about what happens after you notice the running commentary in your head. Negative thoughts are not unusual. They become a problem when they harden into a default style of interpretation: I always fail, people are judging me, this feeling will never end, I should have handled that better, I am behind, I am broken, I am somehow both lazy and under impossible pressure at the same time.

A lot of stress and anxiety are intensified by that style of self-interpretation. Not created from nothing, but amplified. Meta-analytic work on self-criticism and self-compassion suggests this matters more than many people assume [5,6]. If every setback you experience results in hostile self-prosecution you are essentially doubling your stress from the outside world. 

Not doing this doesn’t mean everything is hunky-dory; It means getting more precise. If the mind says, 'I cannot do this,' ask what 'this' is. The whole week? The whole project? The next ten minutes? Precision shrinks panic. Thinking “I can’t resolve this” is too non-specific and too melodramatic to be accurate or useful.  Replacing thought like this with something more akin to “I don’t know how I’m going to handle this yet, but I thoughtfully sort this out.” is a better more pragmatic approach.

Searching for repeating pattern of thought can also contribute to better mental hygiene. Are you ruminating about the past? Predicting the future as if your anxiety were a prophet? Rehearsing humiliation before it happens? Interpreting uncertainty as danger? Those patterns are common. Identifying these patterns is not synonymous with eradicating them, but its a step in the right direction.

Time of day makes a difference. People are often worse at perspective when they are tired, alone with their thoughts, and trying to evaluate their entire life at 11:47 p.m. There is no law requiring you to trust every conclusion your brain reaches at the end of an exhausting day. Some thoughts should be handled, some should be challenged, and some should simply be postponed until you are less depleted and less likely to conduct a full moral inquest over one awkward email.

Being In The Moment

Mindfulness has been marketed so aggressively that some people hear the word and immediately picture expensive retreats, serene influencers, or a man named Owen explaining breath work on a cliff at sunrise. Unfortunate. Because underneath the branding is a straightforward idea: paying attention to what is actually happening right now can reduce the amount of distress generated by replaying the past or pre-living the future.

Mindfulness-based interventions are supported by a substantial evidence base for anxiety and stress-related symptoms [7]. That does not mean every mindfulness exercise works for every person, and it does not mean present-moment awareness is always easy when you are deeply activated. But it does mean there is good reason to take the practice seriously.

One simple way in is to ask: what does this present moment require of me? The answer is typically less dramatic than your dialed-up response to stress indicates. Depending on where you are at in your day the answer can reasonably vary. Right before bed versus the middle of the day for instance. Stress loves abstraction. Presence prefers specifics.

This is also where sensory grounding can help. Take not of how your body is registering the environment its in. Note the sensation of you feet on the floor, the texture of your wool sweater, smells in the air and so forth. These are ways of re-entering your environment when your mind is sprinting ahead without you. The goal is not to become spiritually luminous. The goal is to stop feeding panic with endless mental time travel.

Nasal Issue Obstructing Your Breathing?

Breathing advice is everywhere for a reason: slow, controlled breathing can help calm the body. But there is another, more practical question hidden inside all that guidance. What if breathing through your nose feels chronically difficult in the first place?

This is where the original article had an instinct worth keeping, with some tightening. Nasal obstruction does not cause all stress and anxiety, and it would be silly to imply that a deviated septum explains every troubled thought you have ever had. But nasal obstruction can affect comfort, sleep, and quality of life, and research has found associations between nasal obstruction symptoms and anxiety [8]. A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis reported higher anxiety and depression burden among patients with nasal septal deviation compared with controls as well [9].

Just because two things are linked does not logically implicate causation. If you have an ongoing breathing problem it may impact your quality of sleep, make you tense, or prompt you to get caught up in your own symptoms; things like that can be muddled with anxiety in difficult to sort ways. But the take-home message is: if your breathing is difficult, discuss it with you doctor rather than drawing the conclusion your just not good at getting settled down.

Stress management can be psychological or behavioral. And sometimes there is a physical issue in the background, making everything harder than it needs to be.

Recap

Let us quickly review the five approaches.

1. Reading: Reading for pleasure can create a pocket of absorption, distance from routine stressors, and a calmer attentional state [1].
2. Talking to yourself out loud: Externalizing thoughts, especially with some emotional distance, can make them easier to regulate and evaluate [3,4].
3. Reducing negative thoughts: Self-criticism is not a harmless personality quirk. More self-compassionate ways of responding to difficulty are associated with lower stress, anxiety, and self-criticism [5,6].
4. Being in the moment: Present-moment attention and mindfulness-based approaches can help interrupt rumination and reduce anxiety-related distress [7].
5. Nasal issue obstructing your breathing: Chronic nasal obstruction may coexist with anxiety and poorer quality of life, so persistent breathing difficulty warrants evaluation rather than dismissal [8,9].

Stress and anxiety are not usually cured overnight, and for many people, they do not vanish completely. They are part of being human. You can adjust your responses to situations to make stress and anxiety more manageable. Building new habits can be deliverance - a little more mindfulness, a little more letting go can go a long way.

References

1. Sirisena, M.; Redgate, S.; Kaner, E.; Wearn, A.; Hackett, S.; Wojciechowska, A.; Lhussier, M. Reading for wellbeing: A realist review of evidence. Perspect. Public Health 2025. 

2. MacLeod, C.M.; Bodner, G.E. The production effect in memory. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2017, 26, 390-395. 

3. Murdoch, E.M.; Chapman, M.T.; Crane, M.; Gucciardi, D.F. The effectiveness of self-distanced versus self-immersed reflections among adults: Systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental studies. Stress Health 2023, 39, 255-271. 

4. Orvell, A.; Vickers, B.D.; Drake, B.; Verduyn, P.; Ayduk, O.; Moser, J.; Jonides, J.; Kross, E. Does distanced self-talk facilitate emotion regulation across a range of emotionally intense experiences?Clin. Psychol. Sci. 2021, 9, 68-78. 

5. Wakelin, K.E.; Perman, G.; Simonds, L.M.Effectiveness of self-compassion-related interventions for reducing self-criticism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clin. Psychol. Psychother. 2022, 29, 1-25. 

6. Han, A.; Kim, T.H. Effects of self-compassion interventions on reducing depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress: A meta-analysis. Mindfulness 2023, 14, 1824-1852. 

7. Fumero, A.; Penate, W.; Oyanadel, C.; Porter, B. The effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on anxiety disorders: A systematic meta-review.Eur. J. Investig. Health Psychol. Educ. 2020, 10, 704-719. 

8. Akkoca, O.; Oguz, H.; Ersoz Unlu, C.; Aydin, E.; Ozdel, K.; Kavuzlu, A. Association between nasal obstruction symptoms and anxiety. Ear Nose Throat J. 2020, 99, 448-452. 

9. Alessandri-Bonetti, M.; Costantino, A.; Gallo Afflitto, G.; Carbonaro, R.; Amendola, F.; Catapano, S.; Cottone, G.; Borelli, F.; Vaienti, L. Anxiety and depression mood disorder in patients with nasal septal deviation: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Am. J. Otolaryngol. 2022, 43, 103517.