What Is Anxiety?
Anxiety causes your heart to do this.
Beat faster / race
When you feel yourself spiraling, one of the fastest ways to calm down is to focus on this — something you do about 20,000 times a day without thinking.
Breathing
You walk into a room and something — a smell, a song, a face — instantly makes you feel uneasy. What do we call that thing that set it off?
A trigger.
This free, simple thing you do every night is one of the most powerful tools for managing anxiety.
Sleep
How many bones are in the human body?
206
True or false — only weak people get anxiety.
False
Instead of running from the thing that scares you, recovery often asks you to do this instead.
Face it / walk toward it / do it scared
When your brain jumps straight to the worst possible outcome, this type of thinking has a name. What is it?
Catastrophizing
In recovery people talk about having a "toolbox." What does that mean?
A collection of coping skills and strategies you can pull from when things get hard
True or false — a goldfish has a memory of only three seconds.
False — they can remember things for months
Some people feel anxious but have no idea why. What do we call that feeling of dread when you can't point to a specific reason?
Free-floating anxiety (accept: random anxiety, anxiety for no reason)
You're overwhelmed and your mind is racing. Someone tells you to look around and name five things you can see. What is this technique trying to do?
Bring you back to the present moment / get out of your head
A person keeps replaying a conversation over and over in their head wondering if they said the wrong thing. What is this called?
Overthinking / ruminating
True or false — recovery from anxiety is a perfectly straight line of constant improvement.
False
This country is said to be the happiest in the world almost every single year according to global surveys.
Finland
Anxiety often tricks your brain into thinking something dangerous is happening when it isn't. What is the brain actually trying to do when this happens?
Protect you / keep you safe
Writing your worries in one of these every day is a popular anxiety management tool.
A journal
True or false — caffeine can make anxiety symptoms worse.
True
Someone in recovery says "I just have to push through it." Why can pushing through without any support or skills sometimes backfire?
It leads to burnout, breakdown, or making things worse — you need actual tools not just willpower
How long can a person survive without water — 3 days, 7 days, or 2 weeks?
3 days
Anxiety that comes in sudden, intense waves lasting several minutes — with a racing heart, chest pain, and trouble breathing — is called this.
A panic attack
This technique involves tensing and then releasing each muscle group in your body one at a time to reduce physical tension from anxiety.
Progressive muscle relaxation
When anxiety causes someone to stop going places and doing things until they are barely leaving home, their world is doing this.
Getting smaller / shrinking
What's the difference between a setback and a relapse, and why does it matter how you look at it?
A setback is a temporary slip, a relapse is a full return to old patterns — seeing it as a setback keeps hope alive and helps you get back on track faster
Your brain uses this percentage of your body's total energy despite being only 2% of your body weight.
20%