Breathe in, you’re held. Breathe out, you’re not holding it all.

Anxiety is partly a posture. Your body braces as though your grip were the thing keeping everything upright, and after a while you cannot tell the bracing from your actual personality. Two facts get handed to you here to breathe around: you are held, and you are not the one holding it all. Both take about four seconds to remember.

Use it when the tightness starts, before it becomes the whole afternoon. One slow breath in for the first half, one slow breath out for the second, nothing elaborate. Do it three times and go back to what you were doing.