Anxiety feels like a natural fight or flight reaction displaced to everyday situations.

It doesn’t feel good for sure—that instant visceral panic response as if you turn a corner and come face to face with a wild animal, catch something flying toward you out of the corner of your eye, or hear the screeching of tires close by. It’s like a bucket of cold water is thrown onto your brain, accelerating normally rational thoughts into overdrive so everything is simultaneously in slow motion and fast forward.

It can happen in the everyday when we least expect it—a flurry of emails, a delay in a pickup line, remembering something you forgot, hearing specific words (or lack of words) from someone. The trigger can be tied to a memory, or it can be a feeling that is overwhelming. It might be more temporary than chronic anxiety, but it can be a glimpse of the debilitating feeling. It can make you get defensive or angry. It can make you sad and dismissive. Fight or flight.

Yet it’s not truly a fight or flight situation. While it’s easier said than done, if you can pause just long enough to consider the weight of the situation and response, you might be able to employ a coping strategy that adjusts your focus and settles your heart like a chiropractic alignment. The circumstance or trigger doesn’t disappear, but it’s secured in place.

I want to save my fight or flights for when it counts. I can develop some approaches to dealing with overwhelming emails; I’m not going to be able to practice my response to turning the corner and nearly running into a wild animal. I can find ways to appreciate time when delayed in a pickup line; I can’t prepare to identify and avoid the rare flying objects potentially catapulted toward my head like a bird, football, or snowball. I can slow down and problem-solve when I forget something important; I can’t press the pause button to assess the screeching tires sound.

I know. Easier said than done.