The Anchoring Technique for Anxiety

By Lynn Roberts

Over the last few issues I’ve been sharing some amazing psycho-sensory techniques to help you get out of anxious states quickly and bring more positivity and calm to your life. If you’ve been practicing them, you should be feeling a lot calmer now. However, wouldn’t it be great if we could just switch on positivity and calm at any moment? I’d like to share with you a powerful technique from the world of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) called anchoring.

Anchoring is something we already do every day. We create anchors all the time. A song on the radio that makes you happy or sad. That’s an anchor. That song is anchored due to a memory of a past experience and you have feelings associated that you link to that. Maybe you smell some perfume or aftershave and you’re thinking of a friend, a past romance, or your current partner who wore that fragrance. Perhaps you smell floor polish and get an overwhelming feeling of dread because it reminds you of being back at school. All these things are external stimuli, you hear something, you smell something, you taste something, and that taste, smell or sound instantly makes you feel happy, sad, scared, and confident. So what if we create anchors that serve us?

We’ve used visualisation and imagination before and that’s how we can create anchors. Here are the steps to creating a positive anchor that you can use in any situation to help you feel great.

1. Decide on what your anchor will be. It may be squeezing your thumb and forefinger together, or squeezing your earlobe or holding an object. Something discrete is best.
2. Start to remember or imagine something really wonderful that brings up really nice feelings. Notice how it feels, what you can see, hear, smell, taste.
3. As the good feeling starts to build and become stronger, reaching a peak, squeeze your fingers, earlobe, or object. This installs your anchor to those feelings. You can only hold the positive feelings for so long so stop squeezing before the great feeling starts to subside. Then do something else for a few minutes.
4. Repeat this several times, building in more great sights, smells and sounds. Remember to release before the great feelings start to fade. What we’re doing is building a mind body connection to the good feelings.
5. Test your anchor by squeezing or holding etc.
6. Add in more great experiences if you like, either imagined or real, building on your positive anchor. The more you put in the more powerful the anchor.

Anchors are a great substitute for positive thinking. Whenever you want to feel those great feelings just fire your anchor and feel amazing.