Stop White Knuckling Your Anxiety (Do This Instead) | Ep. 460
In this episode, we share how to stop “white-knuckling” your anxiety and instead use compassion, mindfulness, and gentle allowing to find lasting calm and confidence.
What You’ll Learn:
- The hidden ways your body and mind “white-knuckle” anxiety without you even realizing it
- Why trying to control or suppress anxiety actually makes it stronger
- The simple three-step framework—Acknowledge, Allow, Redirect—to break the exhaustion cycle
- How to use small, 1% improvements to soften tension and build long-term resilience
- Practical tools like body scans, breathwork, and “and statements” to help you let go gently
- The key difference between resisting anxiety and truly allowing it to pass like a wave
Content
Why Fighting Anxiety Isn’t Working
If you’ve ever caught yourself clenching your jaw, holding your breath, or powering through panic, you’ve experienced what we call white-knuckling your anxiety. It’s that tight, braced-for-impact feeling that seems to protect you, but actually keeps anxiety stronger and recovery harder.
In this episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit, Kimberley explains what white-knuckling looks like, why it feels like the only option, and, most importantly, what to do instead. Her tools will help you shift from gripping to allowing, from tension to softening, and from fear to self-compassion.
What Is “White-Knuckling” Anxiety?
White-knuckling is the act of trying to manage anxiety through control, tension, and resistance. It shows up in three main ways:
1. Physical Bracing
You might notice yourself clenching your jaw, holding your breath, tightening your stomach or shoulders, or even gripping your fists. These are signs your body is preparing to fight something, even though the “danger” is just a feeling or thought.
2. Mental Suppression
Trying to force positive thoughts, push away negative ones, or constantly monitor your anxiety are all forms of mental white-knuckling. They create pressure instead of peace.
3. Powering Through
Society often praises “pushing through,” but powering through anxiety is exhausting. It gives short-term relief but long-term fatigue, and reinforces your brain’s false belief that control keeps you safe.
Why We White-Knuckle in the First Place
White-knuckling is a natural survival response. If a car were speeding toward you, you’d tense up to protect yourself. The same reflex happens when your brain perceives anxiety as danger.
Unfortunately, when you treat anxiety like a threat, your body stays stuck in fight-or-flight mode, keeping the alarm system on high alert. Over time, this creates a cycle of exhaustion, increased anxiety, and reduced confidence.
“What you resist, persists.”
The harder you fight anxiety, the stronger it grows.
The White-Knuckling Exhaustion Cycle
- Anxiety arises. You feel discomfort or intrusive thoughts.
- You tense and resist. Physical and mental white-knuckling kick in.
- Temporary relief. You feel safer for a moment.
- Fatigue sets in. Muscles ache, energy drains, focus slips.
- Anxiety increases again. Your body believes danger is still present.
The more you resist, the more your brain sends “danger” signals, fueling the anxiety you were trying to control.
The Shift: From Control to Allowing
The opposite of white-knuckling isn’t giving up; it’s allowing.
Allowing means creating space for anxiety, panic, or intrusive thoughts without trying to push them away. You acknowledge what’s happening, let it move through you like a wave, and stay grounded in your values.
“Nothing that goes up stays up. Feelings rise and fall on their own.”
Allowing builds confidence, restores energy, and teaches your brain that anxiety doesn’t equal danger, it’s simply discomfort you can handle.
The Three-Pillar Framework: Acknowledge, Allow, Redirect
Kimberley teaches a simple three-step framework to break the white-knuckling habit:
1. Acknowledge
Name what you’re feeling without judgment.
- “I notice I’m holding my breath.”
- “This tension is anxiety, not danger.”
- “I’m having the thought that something bad might happen.”
2. Allow
Soften your resistance and create space for discomfort.
- “I can feel this and still be okay.”
- “This is just a wave—it will pass.”
- “I don’t need to fix this feeling; I can let it move through me.”
3. Redirect
Gently turn your attention back to value-based actions.
- Keep moving toward what matters to you.
- Use compassion instead of force.
- Slow down instead of rushing or freezing.
This framework isn’t about perfection—it’s about building willingness.
Practicing Willingness Instead of Resistance
Instead of asking “How high is my anxiety?” try asking:
“How willing am I to feel this feeling right now?”
Even small shifts, from a willingness of 5/10 to 6/10, create huge progress. Each time you drop your shoulders, breathe out, or allow a thought to come and go, you teach your brain that it’s safe to feel.
Homework: Four Exercises to Stop White-Knuckling
Kimberley offers four practical ways to soften white-knuckling in daily life.
1. The Body-Scan Check-In
Pause and notice where you’re clenching—jaw, shoulders, stomach, hands. Breathe and soften that area by 1%. Then repeat throughout the day.
2. Relax Your Hands
If your palms are open and facing upward, it’s almost impossible to tense your body. Try it next time you notice stress.
3. Natural Breath & Sighs
No fancy breathing techniques needed. Just focus on easy, natural exhales. Let yourself sigh audibly to release tension.
4. The “And” Statement
Practice holding two truths at once:
- “I feel anxious and I can soften my body.”
- “This is uncomfortable and I can stay present.”
- “I’m scared and I can keep moving.”
Bonus: Movement Over Force 🚶♀️
When you notice tension, move gently—walk slowly, stretch, dance softly. Movement keeps you grounded without fueling panic.
The Key Differences Between White-Knuckling and Allowing
| White-Knuckling | Allowing |
| Fighting the feeling | Feeling the feeling |
| Tensing up | Softening |
| Forcing control | Releasing control |
| Exhausting | Sustainable |
| Increases anxiety | Decreases anxiety |
Final Thoughts: 1% Softer Every Day
It’s not about getting rid of anxiety—it’s about changing how you relate to it. Every time you drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, or open your palms, you’re teaching your body something powerful:
“Anxiety isn’t danger. It’s just a wave that I can ride.”
Start small. Practice 1% more softness, 1% more willingness, 1% more allowing each day. Over time, those tiny shifts create big freedom.
Because, as we say:
It’s a beautiful day to do hard things.
The podcast is made possible by NOCD. NOCD offers effective, convenient therapy available in the US and outside the US. To find out more about NOCD, their therapy plans, and if they currently take your insurance, head over to https://learn.nocd.com/youranxietytoolkit
Transcription: Stop White Knuckling Your Anxiety (Do This Instead)
Welcome to your Anxiety toolkit.
I’m your host, Kimberly Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal to inspire you. Anxiety doesn’t get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big fat virtual hug because experiencing anxiety ain’t easy.
If that sounds good to you, let’s go.
Stop white knuckling your anxiety and do this instead. Right now, if you are gripping the steering wheel, if you are clenching your jaw or maybe you’re just holding your breath, you are white knuckling. Your anxiety and I need to tell you something, it is making everything worse. Now. We have a lot of research and I have a lot of clinical experience and evidence that show that white knuckling only fails, but I have some good news.
We now know what to do instead. So today I want to share with you the hidden physical. In mental science that you are white knuckling through your anxiety, your panic, and your intrusive thoughts. I also wanna show you why it feels like it’s the only way that you can manage your anxiety. I wanna talk about exactly what is not working, and I wanna teach you exactly what to do instead instead of white knuckling so that you aren’t exhausted.
And completely defeated. Now I’m gonna give you three practical exercises and very specific homework to help you navigate anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and panic so that you can stop reinforcing that cycle and feel more confident and capable holding anxiety whenever it arises. So welcome. This is your Anxiety toolkit.
This is a podcast where I teach you. Everything I know about anxiety so that you can go and live your biggest, most beautiful life. My name is Kimberly Quinlan. I am an anxiety specialist and I am on a mission to help humans all over the earth suffer less with anxiety. My goal and my mission is if you’re suffering less, you’re living more.
And that’s what I want out of all of the work that I do. Now, of course, as always, in. Every single thing we do at CBT School, including all of our online courses and all of the podcast episodes, we always talk about self-compassion first. Always, we wanna start with kindness. Every single time as we proceed into these harder conversations, we proceed into doing hard things.
We want. To be kind and compassionate always first. That’s gonna be our first agenda. That is the biggest work that we are here doing over here in CPT score. We also wanna remember to take small baby steps. The bigger the step, the more likely you are to give up. The more likely you are to lose yourself in those massive steps.
I just feel so big. I’m a huge fan of baby steps, small baby steps, reasonable step that you can take over time, which lead to medium sized step, which lead to very, very big steps.
Now,
let’s talk first is, so what? Is white knuckling. White knuckling is the act of trying to reduce pain or force control using tension and or resistance.
Now, often there are three types of white knuckling. Number one, physical bracing against anxiety and intrusive thoughts and panic. There’s mental suppression of thoughts and feelings, and there’s this powering through mentality that we will talk about as well. So let’s talk about the physical signs that you might be white knuckling, and you’re probably gonna laugh, but.
You’re probably doing some of these right as we speak. Number one is jaw clenching. Are you clenching your jaw together really tight? Are you shallow breathing or are you holding your breath? Sometimes I’ll be in session with a client and I’ll start to see that they’re holding their breath and they keep holding their breath and they keep holding their breath, and I’ll have to say, take a breath.
Take a second, breathe out because naturally we are going to hold our breath when we’re trying to resist or re reduce anxiety. The next one is stomach tension. Maybe you’re holding your hum really tight or you’re clenching your butt cheeks really tight. This is also very common. Um, we also have shoulder tension.
This is a huge one right now. Do a check in and I want you to drop your shoulders. You’re probably holding them very, very tight. The last one is fist cle clenching. This is actually. Another really common one. Some people also furrow their brow, squeeze their brow or their forehead very tight. There are so many different ways we might do this quenching your quad muscles and your calf muscles as well.
It’s ultimately anything that you are clenching. Now we wanna now move over to the mental signs that you’re white knuckling. This might include forcing. Positive thoughts. It might include suppressing any quote unquote negative thoughts. It might be this constant self-monitoring that you’re doing of yourself and others and around you.
It might be this sort of mentality of just don’t think about it. Try not to think about it. Suppressing thoughts. This is very common in OCD. Another one is trying to solve things like going around and around and, and quite urgently and frantically trying to make. A solution or come up with an answer. And the last one is hypervigilance.
Now, many cases, you can’t control these behaviors, but in many cases you can. It’s something that you’re voluntarily doing, and hypervigilance is a big one. You’re constantly looking around, when’s the next scary thing? Well, how can I prevent it? How can I make sure nothing bad’s going to happen? That is another symptom of white knuckling.
Now I have a listener question here, and this whole episode was inspired. By a listener who had written in and they had said, Kimberly, do you have any episodes on feeling stuck with panic attacks? They said, I feel like I know how I should be responding to them, and I am trying my best, but they still feel so uncomfortable.
So it really doesn’t feel like I’m making progress. It’s just a lot of white knuckling, if that makes sense. And it made total sense, and this is, I think, what a lot of people here on the podcast might be feeling, which is why I want. And to highlighter is you have the skills, you know what to do, you’re trying your best, but it’s still just so uncomfortable.
And because of that, you don’t feel like you’re actually making progress, or maybe you’re not making progress, you’re not getting any benefit from the skills that you’re using. And so let’s talk about how to do this now. First we wanna look at one big problem, which is. Why does it feel right to white knuckle?
Why do we do it so instinctively? Why do we do it so automatically? Well, white knuckling is a natural survival response. If you had a car coming towards you, you would naturally brace yourself. You would naturally lynch up. That is a normal response to having danger. But the problem here is your brain sees anxiety as danger.
It thinks that just because you had a thought about something that is going wrong, that that must mean it is going wrong or it is an imminent threat. And again, that’s why it feels so automatic and so out of your control in the beginning. Now, the other thing to remember here is we kind of have this faulty belief that if we have control, we’ll be able to keep ourselves safe.
That if we can just control everything, well, then nothing bad will happen. But that’s actually a false belief that we have. We also see that society rewards this idea of toughing things out, clenching through it. Powering through it, moving through it at a fast rate and not slowing down at all. And we also, I know this is true for me, we also get some short-term relief, um, when we white knuckle, right?
We night knuckle it, and then we get through the hard thing and we go, oh, okay. Okay. That worked. That worked. You know, the fact that I controlled this thing is what was the reason that nothing bad happened. But PS that’s a lie. The next thing need to remember here is we wanna be kind to ourselves and recognize that we all get triggered sometimes, and I don’t want you to beat yourself up for having this very normal white knuckling response.
I’m not here to tell you you’re doing it wrong and you’re bad for doing it wrong and you should be doing it better. We actually wanna just acknowledge as we do with self-compassion, like it makes complete sense that we white knuckle it, right? Because our brain and our DNA has set us up to engage in a.
White knuckling or the fight and flight response when we perceive danger, and I really place emphasis on that word perceive danger. So what we wanna really think about though, is when we engage in this white knuckling behavior, we tend to get. Exhausted. The more we white knuckle, the more we clench, the more we grasp, the more we try and control, the more completely exhausted we feel.
And that is because there is a vicious cycle that feeds us around and around when it comes to white knuckling. Now we have what we call the white knuckling exhaustion cycle. Let’s talk about it. Number one, it starts with just good old fashioned anxiety or intrusive thoughts or panic attacks. So you have the onset of good old fashioned anxiety and intrusive thoughts and panic attacks, and our natural response is to white knuckle it.
Now what happens here is when we white knuckle it, it does give us this temporary suppression of what’s going on. It does give us a false sense of security and control. Um, and like we are, you know, we could solve this one, we could get through the. This one, but what happens is if you right now clenched every muscle, like I want you to do it.
Hopefully, if you’re driving, don’t do this. But otherwise, clench your fist, clench your nose, clench your jaw, clench your tummy, clench your, uh, shoulders, like, oh, you’re really, really, uh, knuckling. You’re gonna start to feel fatigued. Your muscles are going to start to feel achy or knotted or uncomfortable or exhausted.
That’s what happens when we engage in white knuckling, and what that does is it creates a cycle where now you feel less capable with coping because you’re fatigued. You’re using up all your energy sources on clenching instead of moving through to the next activity. And when that happens. We tend to have even more anxiety.
You guys know when we don’t get enough sleep or when we’re exhausted, we tend to cope less and we tend to reinforce that something is wrong. The thing to remember here too is if you have an intrusive thought, let’s say you have OCD or you have an intrusive thought about, um, a health anxiety or social anxiety, or even PTSD, if you have an intrusive thought and you respond to it as if it is a fact.
Your body and your brain is going to continue to believe that all thoughts are facts and you’re feeding that cycle as well. And PS, we’re gonna talk about that here in a little bit. So there is a real cost to you engaging in this white knuckling. There is emotional exhaustion. There is. Physical attention and pain.
There’s a lack of confidence and a lack of mastery over your anxiety. There is decreased performance. I know for me, anytime I’m giving a presentation, if I’m tensing, I’m using my energy towards tensing instead of using my energy towards performing well. There’s also a ton of less joy. There’s a complete.
Reduction in your ability to be present and joyful in the moment. So white knuckling wallet may feel effective. We know that it’s not. We know that there are a lot of consequences to this behavior, and so when it all comes down to it, there’s a very common saying that we use in therapy, which is what you resist, persist.
What you try to push away or suppress or control will usually bubble up in some way. And the harder you fight anxiety, the stronger it gets. Now this is sort of like a tug of war. Imagine you’re in a tug of war with anxiety. You’re pulling that, it’s pulling, so you’ve tightened your grip a little bit more and you tense up your face.
You’re starting to feel exhausted. The thing is, anxiety can go all day. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t, it’s not gonna give up. It’s gonna keep going and going and going, and you’re gonna start to get more and more exhaustive. Now we have a lot of science that shows that resistance actually triggers the threat.
Response even more. It’s like an on and an off switch. So the more you resist, the more you’re turning on that threat response in your brain. So white knuckling actually sends the danger signal to your brain even more, right? So it’s even feeding that cycle even more than we originally thought. We also have research to show that your body can’t tell the difference between a real threat and internal resistance.
So if you are tensing, we could even maybe do an an exercise where if you are resisting and clenching monitoring your anxiety. You might actually find that you have more anxiety just by tensing and resisting and clenching and, and fighting and trying to control. Now we also know that by clenching and resisting triggers, we actually.
Continually activate the sympathetic nervous system. That’s the part of the nervous system that gets ramped up, um, and, and speeds up. The parasympathetic nervous system is the part of your nervous system that slows us down. So we don’t want to activate the sympathetic nervous system all day if we can avoid it, because again, that’s a lot of energy that gets consumed by.
Activating that type of system and having it go while you are trying to enjoy your day. We also know that there is something called a rebound effect. Now, what we wanna think about here is just like a regular trampoline. If you jump heavily onto a trampoline, boom, you’re gonna pop up really fast, right?
And that’s the same with resistance. The more you pull something down, the more it’s going to. Bo go up as high as we can go. A really great example of this is if you had a beach ball or you were in a pool holding a beach ball and you pushed it down under the water, the further you push it down, the more it’s gonna boing pop up out of the water and go high.
And that’s the same with anxiety. Now, I know you’re kind of getting the point here, right? I can imagine. But what we’re really trying to get at here is you cannot hold this stuff down forever. It will eventually pop up, and that’s often what happens with panic. The more you try and resist it, the stronger the panic attack.
For the listener who wrote in that question, that probably explains a lot of why they don’t feel like they’re having progress because they’re clenching around the panic, they’re tightening around the panic, making the panic worse. Now we have even more research to show that experiential avoidance, which is ultimately the experience of avoiding, is linked to worse outcomes, and we know now that.
Acceptance based approaches show better results. And I’m going to teach you exactly how to do this right here and right now.
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Big hugs. And now let’s get back to the show.
So let’s go back to the listener questions. They said, I feel like I know it, how I should be responding. I’m trying my best, but they’re still so uncomfortable and it doesn’t feel like progress. It’s just a lot of white knuckling. So now we’re starting to understand why they don’t feel like they’ve made any progress.
So now let’s talk about the shift. That’s what you’re here for, right? To get that gold information so that you can go on and live. The best life you can where fear doesn’t interfere. So the shift I want you to make is allowing, what allowing means is you are creating space for feelings and thoughts and sensations without resistance.
Now, what this means is. You’re acknowledging reality and what’s happening. You are removing any internal resistance that might be physical or mental. You’re working with your discomfort not against it, right? You’re working with it and you’re letting anxiety, panic, intrus, and intrusive thoughts move.
Through you like waves of an ocean, they will rise, but they will fall. Nothing that goes up will stay up. It has to come down eventually. Right? And that’s what we wanna do. Now, what I wanna remind you is what knuckling is not giving up. It’s not letting anxiety control you and it’s not staying stuck and it’s not weakness.
A lot of people think allowing is a weakness, but that’s actually not what we’re talking about. There is a three. Pillar framework that I want you to follow when it comes to managing white knuckling. Number one is, again, acknowledge. Acknowledge what’s going on. I’m gonna teach you how to do this here in a second.
Then allow and then redirect. So what we can see now is in that listeners’ question, the one line that I really wanna zero in on. Is they said, I know how to respond. I’m trying my best, but they’re still so uncomfortable, and the solution there is to move towards willingness. Now, in all of our courses, we always talk about skills that you’re going to need to increase.
That ability to allow willingly to have. Discomfort In your anxiety and panic toolkit, we have a whole module called Skills that Will Change Your Life, your OCD Toolkit. We have another module very similarly, which will be showing you the mindfulness and the self-compassion skills that you’re going to need.
But for right now, I’m gonna give you a little bit of an inside view of what that looks like. It involves willingness. Now I wanna give you a little bit of a story. When I was new to becoming a therapist and I just started treating OCDI was a little baby intern. We actually used to use what’s called the SUD scale.
The SUD scale is subjective units of distress, and it’s a scale where clients would come in and say, my anxieties added. Eight out 10 or a 10 out 10 or a five out of 10, or a zero outta 10. And we used to determine that success of work we were doing was based on whether their anxiety was coming down. But what we’ve found since then with research is rating your SUD scale.
Looking at how much anxiety you have actually makes it worse because it puts so much attention on whether the anxiety’s going up or down or you know, sideways, that it actually creates more. Distress. So what we did instead is we don’t talk about suds anymore. Instead, I’ve found it’s much more helpful to talk about clients with the willingness scale.
How willing out of 10 are you to feel this feeling? Now, often when they check in, they’re like. Oh goodness. A nine, an eight. I don’t know. And then I will say, is there a way I could get you down to maybe like a, so often clients will say, I don’t know, I’m like at a six, maybe a five. I’m not very willing to feel that feeling.
And so then what I’m gonna say is, okay, how can I get you to increase that willingness? How can I get you from a five to a six? What would you need to do to become a seven? What would that feel like? And often they’ll say, well, I don’t know. I’d have to drop my shoulders, or I’d have to let the feeling be there.
I’d have to stop holding my breath. I’d have to let a thought come and go without judging it. That’s the work of willingness and when you can master that skill, you are gonna be on your way. To, so the listener who wrote this question, your main goal is to focus on the willingness. You’ve been putting everything together so beautifully.
Now we zero in on willingness. So let me show you how we would do that using the your Anxiety toolkit methods. So first, we wanna practice just acknowledging. Acknowledging is ultimately where you name what you’re feeling without judgment. The not judging is so important. So you’re gonna notice the sensation, right?
You’re gonna name it. So it might be, this is anxiety. Or you might say, I notice my ti, my chest is tired. Or I notice I’m holding my breath, or I’m noticing I’m clenching my jaw. Right? And then we’re gonna practice non-judgment. We’re gonna say, okay, this tension is anxiety. This is not danger. I’m gonna let it be there.
Or I’m not good or bad for feeling that it’s totally neutral. And then we may practice externalizing it, which is that I’m having. Anxious thoughts, not I am anxious. Or you might go, I am observing the urgency to tense up my body. Or I’m observing the thought that something bad might happen, or I’m noticing that I’m having intrusive thoughts about A, B, and C, or I’m observing the rise of panic.
Then what we wanna do is we wanna move into that allow component. Now, what does that mean? It means you. Create space for that sensation or experience to exist because the truth is, I promise you, it will not kill you. It will not hurt you. Having an allowing anxiety is a wonderful opportunity for you to practice being uncomfortable on purpose.
Willingly. You wanna say, I can feel this and still be okay. You wanna say, let the wave pass through us, right? Let the wave rise and fall on its own. I actually have to do nothing about it. Often. I remember in my worst panic attacks being like, all right, Kimberly, you’re along for the ride. Just let go and pretend.
It’s like a rollercoaster and it will rise and fall on its own. It’s just a matter of time. There’s no fixing, there’s no forcing. And we’re going to soften that physical resistance soften. The last piece here is to redirect. Now redirect means gentle action versus force. So what? Redirecting is slowly.
Gently shifting into a value-based behavior, a value aligned behavior or action and compassionate movement. Not mean jarring, judgmental movement. We wanna redirect because sometimes clients, I have found, when they’re not white knuckling, they just sit there and stare like they become like a deer in headlights.
They go into the fright. Mode, right? Instead of we still wanna move through it, we wanna keep moving in our action. We wanna move towards values, but we don’t wanna move while we clench ’cause that’s exhausting. All right? Again, in your anxiety and panic toolkit and in any of the courses at CBT score, this is where we make a plan.
We identify what are the behaviors that you value. We get very clear. We might even schedule them and we are gonna think, okay, while we practice, not white knuckling, what could we be doing? It might be a bunch of things, right? And I’m gonna talk to you about some homework. All right, so do you have your notepads?
Because I am assigning you homework. I’m gonna give you three practical techniques. Actually, I think I put in a fourth one there. So let’s just wait and see. Sometimes I, I get a little excited. So the first thing I want you to do is make a goal to make just 1% improvements with white knuckling. So nothing crazy.
We just wanna soften a little bit at a time and slowly but gradually do that work. So we’re going for 1% improvements. And what I want you to practice for homework is what we call the white knuckling. Check in or a body scan. So what you’re gonna do is whenever you notice that you’re white knuckling, you’re gonna pause and you’re going to do a scan.
Where am I clenching? Is it my jaws? Is it my shoulders? Is it my hands? Is it my stomach? You’re gonna notice any clenching or bracing, and then you are going to breathe and soften that part, and you’re gonna repeat that because the chances are within a couple seconds you’re backup, clenching again. That’s fine again.
We’re here just to learn, and then you will notice it again, acknowledge it, allow it, and redirect. Now, another really helpful tool, and I’ve talked about this before on your anxiety toolkit, is to relax your hands. When I was delivering my daughter, one of the midwives told me that, she said, my God, you’re completely white knuckling this.
And I was like, no, I think I’m doing pretty good. And she’s like, look. Your hands and I looked down and they were completely clenched. In fact, I had kind of pushed my nails into my palm to the point where it made indents. I didn’t even notice. And she said, turn your palms up ways towards the roof and just let them flop.
She says, it’s almost impossible to. Any part of your body. If your hands are completely relaxed, go ahead and try it. You will be shocked. It is very hard to white knuckle if your hands are relaxed. So it’s a really great one to use when you’re really, really struggling with white knuckling. Now our next activity or homework I’m gonna give you if you would like, is to breathe and do some breath work.
That actually works. Now, this is not like doing some crazy breath practice. I actually don’t really think that’s super helpful. But what I do want you to do is I want you to practice not doing any forced breath and focus on just the exhale and taking natural easy. Brass. That’s it. That’s all I want you to do.
Just take natural brass because again, it’s really hard to white knuckle when you’re just doing easy, simple brass and what you may do as well. And I have actually found this to be very beneficial. We do this in my house all the time. Uh, my husband, my two children is if we’re feeling a little bit tense or things are tense between us, we will do a side breath, which is a hi.
Right? It’s not like, uh, it’s not a growl. Ah, and it’s just letting that outbreath all the way. Again, we’re not here to control the breath. We’re just practicing, not holding it. All right? The next exercise you can practice is called the and statement. Now, often when we’re white knuckling, we are thinking, I can’t relax because anxiety’s here, I can’t do both.
I have to completely clench my body, or I have to completely control or have to completely solve this. I have to completely ruminate until I make this. Better. Again, what I wanna introduce you to you is a dialectical term where you are gonna practice the word, and so I’m gonna feel anxious and I can soften my body.
This is uncomfortable and I can stay present. I’m scared and I’m going to soften my body and take action. This is the beautiful part of holding space for discomfort and softness. You can learn to do both those things at the same time. The last activity I did tell you that I had one bonus that I had forgotten about is movement over force.
Now again, when we practice not white knuckling, we do tend to go into freeze mode. And so what I’m gonna encourage you if you do really notice a lot of tension, is just to walk. Take a, I remember what I used to share with you guys when I was really struggling with anxiety and OCD and PTSD. I used to take what was called an OCD walk when I knew I was clenching, when I knew I was doing compulsions, when I knew I was ruminating, I go, okay, I need to get out.
And I would slowly just heel toe, next foot, heel, toe, notice the trees, notice the lemons, notice the birds, and just ground myself by back. Sting very slow. My neighbors probably thought I was, I don’t know, crazy. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to be mindful and I did not want to do any more mental compulsions.
You might also practice gentle stretching. Um, maybe you dance gently, you just swing your arms around, stretch the main. Thing here I want you to do is slow down. Right is so easy when you’re white knuckling to rush and move and be erratic and jarring, and it’s just too much. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for the people around you.
It’s not good for your anxiety. I just want you to slow down. Now what we wanna look at here, let’s do a review. There are key differences between white knuckling and allowing. Number one, white knuckling is fighting the feeling. Allowing is feeling. The feeling white. Knuckling is tensing off. Allowing is softening.
White knuckling is forcing control. Allowing is releasing control. White knuckling is exhausting. Allowing is sustainable. White knuckling increases anxiety, allowing DRE decreases anxiety. So there are things I want you to remember here. It will feel weird at first. In fact, it might even feel scary and dangerous.
But that’s okay. Your brain will resist it. It wants to get control, but it might feel like not fighting means you’re doing nothing about it, but you’re actually strengthening your ability to allow and to let go and to bring your attention to the things that you allow. You may notice that you need to tolerate that feeling of being irresponsible or losing control, but I want you to practice trusting this process.
Anyway. Okay, so let’s do a recap. We learn that white knuckling makes anxiety and panic and OCD and intrusive thoughts Worse, we know that the cycle of white knuckling leaves you feeling more exhausted and defeated. We learn that it’s not your fault, it’s just a natural response. We learn a three pillar framework to stop reinforcing that cycle, and we learn four core exercises you can use.
To practice. Now again, our goal is to make 1% improvement. So if there’s one thing you take away, it’s that from today. Okay, so I wanna thank you so much. I hope that this has been helpful. Once again, head on over to cbt school.com. We have courses on OCD, anxiety, panic. We have courses on depression. We have courses on time management.
We have courses on BD, D, and we are constantly adding. To our library. So head on over to CBT school.com. It has been my pleasure being here with you. I hope this was incredibly helpful ’cause I know how important and valuable your time is. Have a wonderful day, and as always, it is a beautiful day to do hard things.
Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbt school.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbt school.com.
