Hope

How to Reduce Anxiety and Reclaim Your Peace

/ A. Ward, LPC / Leave a comment

Anxiety is part of the human experience—an emotion that whispers (or sometimes shouts) that something is uncertain or unsafe. It’s a signal, a call to pay attention. But when anxiety becomes chronic, it can feel like a heavy chain holding us back from living wholeheartedly. The good news? We can develop practices that help reduce anxiety and return to a grounded, present state.

Over the years, I’ve learned that anxiety often feeds on fear and the stories we tell ourselves. Let’s dive into some practical ways to reduce its grip.

1. Name It to Tame It

Anxiety thrives in ambiguity. A phrase first coined by psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel, “Name it to Tame It” is the first step in lowering anxiety levels. By identifying what you’re feeling, you reduce the intensity of the anxiety you’re experiencing. Are you nervous, scared, overwhelmed, or uncertain? Naming the specific emotion creates space between you and the anxiety. It signals to your brain: I see you, but you don’t control me.

Practice:
When anxiety arises, pause and ask yourself:

  • What am I feeling right now?
  • What is this anxiety trying to tell me?

Writing your thoughts in a journal can also help externalize the emotion, making it feel more manageable.

2. Challenge the Stories in Your Head

Anxiety often spins narratives about worst-case scenarios. These stories are rarely accurate, but they feel real because they tap into our vulnerabilities. When you feel anxiety building, pause and question the story you’re telling yourself.

Ask:

  • Is this story true?
  • What’s another possible explanation?
  • What would I tell a friend in this situation?

Consciously reframing the narrative with a more positive or realistic one helps you regain control of your perspective.

3. Connect with Your Breath

Our breath is a powerful tool for regulating our nervous system. When we’re anxious, our breathing becomes shallow, reinforcing the body’s stress response. Slowing down and deepening your breath can calm the mind and body almost instantly.

Try this “Box Breathing” exercise:

  • Inhale deeply for four counts.
  • Hold your breath for four counts.
  • Exhale slowly for six counts.
  • Repeat for a few minutes.

This practice shifts your body from the sympathetic nervous system, or fight/flight/freeze response, to the rest-and-digest response of the parasympathetic nervous system.

4. Build a Resilience Toolkit

Resilience isn’t about avoiding anxiety—it’s about learning to navigate it. Cultivating small daily habits can create a foundation of calm.

Ideas for your toolkit:

  • Movement: A walk, yoga, or dance can release pent-up energy.
  • Gratitude: Write down three things you’re thankful for daily.
  • Connection: Share your worries with a trusted friend or loved one.
  • Nature: Spend time outside to reconnect with the bigger picture.
  • Journaling: Write down your thoughts and feelings. If you notice a pattern of negative stories, actively reframe them into more positive narratives.
  • Prayer or meditation:
    The practice of prayer can lead to comfort and peace. Studies show it reduces muscle tension, slows your heart rate, and can actually change your brain chemistry.
  • Know when to ask for help: If you continue to struggle with anxiety or it feels overwhelming, consider therapy to gain tools for managing your inner narrative

These practices remind us that we are capable, grounded, and supported.

5. Be Compassionate with Yourself

Anxiety can make us feel weak or flawed, but it’s just part of being human. Instead of judging yourself, practice self-compassion. Speak to yourself with the same kindness you’d offer a struggling friend.

Positive Affirmations to try:
“I’m doing the best I can, and that’s enough.”

“I am not my anxiety.”

“I am present, calm, and focused.”

“I am safe and protected.”

6. Seek Help When Needed

Sometimes, anxiety feels too big to handle alone. There’s no shame in reaching out to a therapist or counselor. In fact, it’s one of the bravest steps you can take toward healing.

Anxiety doesn’t have to dictate your life. By acknowledging it, challenging it, and building habits that foster resilience, you can reduce its impact and create space for joy and connection. Remember, you are not alone in this journey—and you are stronger than you think.

My Look in the Mirror and Why It Matters

/ A. Ward, LPC / Leave a comment

There’s a reason why you’re doing this, why you made this commitment- again- why you refuse to be bucked off, circling around your old rival, why you just won’t quit.

I want to be the best version of me. I want to have energy and the health to go with it. Live a long and healthy life doing the things I love, comfortable in my own skin. Hiking, kayaking, paddle boarding, traveling with ease, easing the ache in my joints, doing the things in reality that I envision for myself in my mind.

I want to like what I see when I look in the mirror, I don’t want to cringe when I see pictures of myself, or hide behind my kids that are too quickly growing taller than me.

I want my clothes to fit, and then be too big, then my smaller ones to fit, then get too big as well. I want to wear my pre-kid clothes myself instead of passing them on to my tween, and I want her to see me do it.

I don’t want to be the fat mom. I want to be healthy and limber and lean. As I struggle to find my people in this town where I still feel alone, I don’t want to wonder in the back of my mind if my size is the reason I don’t fit. Whether it be the friend group, the promotion, or the invitation to be included. I don’t identify as fat in my brain- pictures usually come as a shock, shockingly. The me in my head is sexy and strong and carries herself with confidence. She doesn’t align with what’s in the mirror. That’s not the me inside.

I want my outside to match my inside. In counseling we talk a lot about congruence. About all the pieces aligning in the whole. I’m growing, I’m building, I’m becoming. I want my pieces to match.

Good things are coming, it’s true, but good things are also already here. Business aspirations unfolding before my eyes, walking into bigger rooms with bigger stages, the fragmented pieces of my dreams coming together in congruence, the bigger picture starting to make sense and actually look possible, even while I’m still figuring out the details.

And there are details- details that I haven’t figured out as I take step after step of blind faith, daring to dream and speak and pray the big things into existence.

But in every dream, in every detail. I am healthy, full of life, and vigor, and energy. Comfortable in my own skin and these clothes that I wear, in the pictures they take and the hands that I shake, and the example I set for my daughter as well as for those in my sphere of influence.

On a girls’ trip this summer, I stood next to my sisters in a tasting room on a too hot July day. The youngest (and hardest to impress) was making fast friends with the bar man. She introduced our crew in turn. “The stylist, massage therapist, the spiritual healer, the stay at home mom, and business owner,” she finished as she turned to me with a look of respect I won’t forget. “She and her husband are counselors and she speaks and leads and owns her own practice.” My heart heard that.

Last week my daughter drew a portrait of me. At first I was hurt because she drew me at a desk, working. I asked her if she felt like I was always working and is that how she saw me. “No!” She exclaimed. “This is you writing the books you’re going to write and running your own business. You’re a boss lady.” She remembers the dreams she hears me speak, and speaks them back to me when I forget.

She’s watching. My sisters are watching. So are my clients, and so many more. It’s easy to forget that others see me, and that more than I realize are paying attention. People are always watching, for better or for worse, and the influence and mark I leave matters. I want to set the best example I know how to set. In all things. And I want to be healthy enough to keep up, to thrive, to shine.

I want the outside to match the inside. My outer self to be in congruence with my inner self. I want to prove to myself that I can do it. That I am not my own rival at all- she is me, and I love her. I want to lead and blaze a trail- for my daughter and all who follow. And I want to do it healthy, proud of the path that I carve, and of the figure I cut while I do it.

The Awakening

/ A. Ward, LPC / Leave a comment

Awakened.

That’s a word we hear thrown around a lot. Being in touch with our inner selves- alive and awake to the calling within us to make this dream a reality. In some ways, I feel farther away from this dream than ever- mentally, financially, physically. Still vigorous, yet slightly startled to find that the slow beat of time I marched to in my youth has picked up its tempo. Real worries and deadlines and responsibilities that keep me up at night and feelings of not quite yet where I thought I’d be make up the cadence of the drumbeat to which I trod, up, up the mountain.

And it is here- at this tenuous precipice- that I find myself daring to hope for more, praying for abundant blessing to rain down from heaven and water these dry bones, breathing fresh life into these dreams of mine. For this dream ahead of me calls louder and shines clearer than ever. So clear, in fact, that what’s here and now verses what’s yet to be flickers in and out of view. But who’s to say which is more real- that which stands in front of me or that which beats within me?

This in-the-middle-age is no joke. As the little hands that hold tight to mine grip a little looser and grow a little bigger every day, they serve as a constant reminder of the press of time as it falls faster and faster through the hour glass of my life.

Visions of what could be if I dare to pour life into this hope are a fragile lifeline to this dream of mine in my all too awakened spirit. A lifeline that I balance upon, walk like a tightrope. A trapeze artist, I fly higher and higher as I strive, only to find I must let go of my safe hold if I am to soar above my circumstance and awaken fully to my dreams.

Fear-Stained Heart

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I have lived in fear of this day for over a decade. First in the abstract- a distant bridge to be crossed some day. When we’re older, wiser, more prepared. And then- in these last few months- as an end date. A day of unknown trepidation to which we were marching with ever gaining momentum. Could this really be the fix we’re looking for? That seemed too big a thing to hope. A promise too far away, and the cost too much to pay.


Was it worth the risk? How could we choose optional brain surgery? But was it really an option anymore? His seizures were getting worse, technology better, and we’d run the gamut of medications. Dare I trust my person- this wonderful husband of mine- to the lauded hands of the handsome young surgeon?
But then, it wasn’t just his hands at all. As the prayers and well wishes poured in, the wise words of a nurse and friend seeped into my fear-stained heart. “Good news is that the Lord has a steady hand.” Deep breath. We’re going to do this.


And the one who formed the oceans knows my name. Who spoke the stars into existence steadies the hands of the healer, and heals the parts of us no surgeon’s hands can touch. “Lean in and trust, close your eyes and fall, I’ve got you,” His voice seemed to whisper. My knuckles clenched. I swallowed hard. Tossed and turned in the sleepless nights as fear turned to resolve. Ride the wave. Trust in Him. Stay the course.


The body of Christ rose up and around me. My tribe showed up and answered the call. Held my hand a 5am, cooked meals, and watched my children. Cried big tears with me, helped me laugh out loud, and made me feel sane, even when I broke apart. They sat the watch, held their breath, celebrated the victories, fed me, cared for me, and prayed over me with love. Peace descended. Fear deserted. Hope overcame, and I knew I was not alone.


And the surgery? It went great. He sleeps peacefully in his bed tonight. Vitals are good, wit and humor intact. His grip on my hand is strong, his steady breathing balm for my soul. “He’s still him,” I confided to a friend as I hugged him tight. His eyes glittered with quiet understanding as they looked back into mine. I’d whispered my fears to him days ago, and we’d both cried. Friends filled the room, laughter trickled down the hall, and the road to recovery began. With my heart a little braver, my faith a little deeper, my love a little stronger. And my gratitude- as wide as the sky.


As for physical healing? We shall see. But oh, how I believe! For He healed something sacred in me.

Plowing Forward in the Storm

/ A. Ward, LPC / Leave a comment

This photo speaks to my heart. Female buffalo in a snow storm plowing forward, beautiful in determination and coming out the other side in victory and stronger than before. I’m not sure about what lies before us in the days ahead, but I do know that they are days I’ve prayed would never come.

A decade or more ago, I stared his brain surgery in the eye and we decided against it for a myriad of reasons. His seizures weren’t that bad, weren’t that often, there were other medications to try. We were too young for so drastic a measure. The list goes on.

And if the worst happened? Shouldn’t I be pregnant beforehand so a piece of him lives on? These last questions I asked quietly when the doctor and I were alone. He told me what I already knew- there are no guarantees. We decided to hold, to wait. He agreed.

And in the exhale, in the quiet hospital room I lay curled by his side, relief flooding in as the possibility of risky surgery was temporarily passed by. A worry for another day, or for someone else down the hall. “Not now,” came the whisper, “but one day you will have to cross this bridge. This cup is yours to drink, but it will wait. For a while.”

So we went home. We finished our counseling degrees. We built a home, a family, a life. The years passed, month after month we were lulled into a false sense of safety that this time, this time, we’d found the magic pill. And then another seizure would strike. Back to the drawing board. Again. The doctor called me up at work- they’d found a magic surgery that just might do the trick. “If he’s a candidate, I want you to do it,” the good doc said. We agreed. But he wasn’t. Whether we sighed with relief or disappointment, I’m not sure. Maybe both.

And then a year ago, in a heartbeat, everything changed. I found him on the floor, unresponsive. Oh he came right around, thank God, breathing normally before I was, but the spell was broken. It was time.

His gentle doctor retired, and we were pointed in the direction of the latest and greatest by a wise friend in the position to know. “What do you want?” asked the new doctor. He wasn’t one for beating around the bush. “If it’s seizure freedom you’re after, then you need to have surgery. The pills have lost their magic.”

So they lined up a year’s worth of testing and pokes and imaging. We made it through that obstacle course with flying colors and several tears, looking up to see the prize just there, on the other side of the bridge.

Like a mirage.

So here we are. With our hearts in our hands and the bridge now here- right in front of us, ready for us to step on the creaking boards. Will it hold us? Will we fall? Oh, but what if we fly? I can scarcely imagine it.

In the medical circles we’ve travelled here lately, the surgeon’s peers speak of his skills in quiet awe. “That’s a special set of hands he’s got there. You’re lucky to have him.” Lucky indeed.

The internal war continues to wage. God’s led us here, there’s no doubt. But he leads people lots of places. This is a blessing, an opportunity few receive. The chance for healing. But first, the test. This isn’t mine to control.

I open my hands to surrender, let go. Focus ahead with steely resolve and knocking knees to plow through this thing with courage despite my fear. To take the bull by the horns, so to speak. Bring on the storm, here we go.

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” – Crowfoot, Blackfoot Chief