Fact checkedExpert's opinion

Expert's opinion

The article is a subjective view on this topic written by writers specializing in medical writing.
It may reflect on a personal journey surrounding struggles with an illness or medical condition, involve product comparisons, diet considerations, or other health-related opinions.

Although the view is entirely that of the writer, it is based on academic experiences and scientific research they have conducted; it is fact-checked by a team of degreed medical experts, and validated by sources attached to the article.

The numbers in parenthesis (1,2,3) will take you to clickable links to related scientific papers.

How To Stop Shaking From Anxiety? 4 Helpful Tips To Treat It 2024

Updated on - Written by
Medically reviewed by Dr. Theresa Bautista, OTD, OTR

How To Stop Shaking From Anxiety
The healthiest way to stop shaking is to address the anxiety that is causing it. Photo: Shutterstock & Team Design

The human body has all kinds of crazy ways of expressing fear. Anxiety can manifest through physical symptoms such as damp palms, dry mouths, body shake, or sweaty armpits. Others experience tightening of the chest when they try to hide feeling nervous.

That probably happens more often than most people realize. We can hide damp palms and dry mouths, fooling people into believing we’re more relaxed than we really are. It’s harder to conceal shaking hands, unfortunately, which can sometimes add to even more anxiety. 

“Anxiety Shaking” is a common bodily response to a perceived threat. This symptom is a result of adrenaline preparing your muscles for a fight or flight response. There are a few tricks that can help you reduce shaking from anxiety on the spot. 

Managing anxiety is a skill that has to be practiced, like hitting a ball or playing a first-person shooter. The more you learn and practice, the better you’ll end up being. In some emergency situations, supplements or CBD Oil are the fastest treatment to stop your shaking from anxiety. While we might wish for a simple solution, the healthiest way to stop that shaking is to address the anxiety that is causing it.   

How To Stop Shaking From Anxiety Attack?

The shaking that comes from anxiety can be classified under physiologic tremors,[1]. Tremors of this sort are common in the presence of certain stressors. When we’re feeling anxious, anxiety tremors become large enough to be visible. 

When you become anxious and begin to experience tremors, there are a few helpful tips you can do at the moment to help.

  • Concentrate on your breathing[2]
  • Focus on your environment
  • Relax as much as possible
  • Give yourself a break

How To Stop Shaking After Panic Attack?

Breathing exercises may be the number one strategy for dealing with anxiety symptoms. It’s the first strategy most therapists will cover and it forms the basis for a lot of other techniques. Take slow, deep breaths and even out your breathing. Doing so gives you something to focus on other than the physical feelings of anxiety. 

Focusing on your environment is a similar strategy. Look around and see what catches your eye. Try to notice the smell of the air or listen to the sounds around you. 

Most importantly, recognize that everyone gets anxious feelings. You don’t need to beat yourself up for a physiological reaction that is not fully within your control. 

Managing anxiety is a huge subject, with a number of approaches and concepts. It even dips into philosophy at points. For most people, however, understanding the highlights and knowing a few basic strategies is enough. These get lumped together, as they tend to work best as a package deal.

Breath Focus

Breath Focus
Practicing deep breathing is the most basic form of meditation to keep calm yourself after a panic attack. Photo: Shutterstock

We’ve talked a bit about focusing on the breath as a way of calming yourself. For example, you could practice deep breathing to keep calm yourself after a panic attack or slow your breathing to reduce your stress hormones. That’s essentially the most basic form of meditation. There are also lots of other varieties that may help with specific problems, grow in complexity, and appeal to different philosophies.

Meditation

When you meditate, you’re practicing putting your mental focus where you want. It’s part of human nature to be easily distracted on occasion. We also have a tendency to put our focus on the things that are most concerning, even if that focus is unhealthy.

Mindfulness

Anxiety is a prime example of that. We get caught up in the aspects of a situation that make us nervous, focusing on those, and spinning them into dire scenarios. That focus on the negative fuels further anxiety, which means we focus more on the stuff that makes us anxious, and so forth, down and down. That’s called an anxiety spiral when we get caught up in negative thought patterns. These anxious thoughts are upsetting us more and more.

The therapy is to sort of snap out of that mindset. A few of the quick tips mentioned distracting yourself from your anxiety. This is why that works, through derailing the spiraling anxiety.

Applying the skills that we learn in meditation,[3], placing our focus where we want and not getting sucked into negative thought patterns, is basically the idea behind mindfulness. Mindfulness is all about identifying the spirals and anxiety triggers. That way, you’ll notice before the anxiety becomes a problem and can use some strategies to defuse it. 

Do that until it becomes a habit and eventually you won’t even notice the negative thoughts, let alone get sucked into an anxiety spiral.

How Effective Are Exercise And Healthy Eating In Reducing Anxiety?

Exercise And Healthy Eating In Reducing Anxiety
Exercise and healthy eating not only improve your physical health but also improve your mental health. Photo: Shutterstock

You don’t have to be a gym rat, but modern life might just require some sort of organized exercise routine. It’s hard to overstate the positive effects regular exercise can have on your health. Obviously, exercise will improve your physical health a great deal. However, it can also improve your mental health,[4].

We don’t fully understand how exercise helps,[5] reduce anxiety symptoms, though the evidence seems to show that it is. Exercise seems to strengthen a person’s resistance to stress across the board. You can combine exercise with supplements for boosting your mood and energy.

Likewise, studies show a link between eating a healthy diet and reduced stress,[6]. In particular, a diet rich in whole grains, vegetables, and fruits is best, particularly if you can avoid processed foods.

Learn Your Triggers

Most anxieties are pretty standard. Public speaking is always terrifying. Taking tests can be nerve-wracking. Even the most confident people are wary of new social situations. You may have some specific anxieties that you react to in particular, like freaking out over spiders or refusing to get into water over your head. Other anxieties may be more serious.

It can be helpful to examine some of those situations more closely. Is it speaking publicly as a whole or some specific aspect of giving a presentation that causes problems? Are there some social situations that cause more anxiety than others?

With that knowledge, you can start to make some more informed choices. You can choose to avoid the situations that cause you anxiety. 

Alternatively, you can face those situations in controlled circumstances. For example, give your presentation to a group of friends first. Experience with a trigger can sometimes make it less likely to cause anxiety.

Anxiety Disorder

It’s true that everyone faces anxiety symptoms in their lives. There’s no getting around it. However, some people experience anxiety disorder to such a degree that it interferes with their ability to live a satisfying life. As an extreme example, people suffering from agoraphobia experience such strong anxiety reactions that they can’t even leave their homes. 

When anxiety symptoms begin to make basic aspects of life difficult, then it may rise to the level of an anxiety disorder,[7]. Not all of them are as dire as agoraphobia, but they all can make life difficult. Some types of anxiety disorders include:

  • Generalized Anxiety Disorder
  • Panic Disorder
  • Social Anxiety Disorder
  • Separation Anxiety Disorder

The good news is that there are lots of ways that a therapist can help you manage and reduce your anxiety. You may want to seek out a professional if your anxiety:

  • Is intense enough to cause discomfort
  • Lingers for a long time beyond the triggering incident, even days
  • Interferes with tasks of basic living
  • Have a serious effect on your overall life.

The standard line is that stress breeds anxiety. We find ourselves in stressful situations, which quite naturally creates some anxiety. That is true a lot of the time, without question. Stressful situations arise and we end up sweating and shaking from anxiety

However, many intelligent people have also observed that anxiety breeds stress. That is, if we perceive something as creating anxiety, it can add stress to our lives. Our negative patterns of thinking create stress where there doesn’t need to be any. With a little practice and persistence, it’s possible to bring anxiety under control.


+ 7 sources

Health Canal avoids using tertiary references. We have strict sourcing guidelines and rely on peer-reviewed studies, academic researches from medical associations and institutions. To ensure the accuracy of articles in Health Canal, you can read more about the editorial process here

  1. Bhatia, K., Bain, P., Bajaj, N., Elble, R.J., Hallett, M., Louis, E.D., Raethjen, J., Stamelou, M., Testa, C.M. and Günther Deuschl (2017). Consensus Statement on the classification of tremors. from the task force on tremor of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. [online] 33(1), pp.75–87. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.27121.
  2. ‌Maleki, A., Majid Ravanbakhsh, Saadat, M., Mehdi Sayah Bargard and Seyed Mahmoud Latifi (2022). Effect of breathing exercises on respiratory indices and anxiety level in individuals with generalized anxiety disorder: a randomized double-blind clinical trial. [online] 34(4), pp.247–251. doi:https://doi.org/10.1589/jpts.34.247.
  3. ‌van, Faber, M.J., Anne, Peerbolte, T.F., Bloem, B.R. and Helmich, R.C. (2020). Stress and Mindfulness in Parkinson’s Disease: Clinical Effects and Potential Underlying Mechanisms. [online] 36(1), pp.64–70. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.28345.
  4. ‌Sharma, A., Vishal Madaan and Petty, F. (2006). Exercise for Mental Health. [online] 08(02), pp.106–106. doi:https://doi.org/10.4088/pcc.v08n0208a.
  5. ‌Anderson, E. and Geetha Shivakumar (2013). Effects of Exercise and Physical Activity on Anxiety. [online] 4. doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00027.
  6. ‌J. Douglas Bremner, Kasra Moazzami, Wittbrodt, M.T., Nye, J.A., Lima, B.B., Gillespie, C.F., Mark Hyman Rapaport, Pearce, B.D., Shah, A.J. and Vaccarino, V. (2020). Diet, Stress and Mental Health. [online] 12(8), pp.2428–2428. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12082428.
  7. ‌National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). (2023). Anxiety Disorders. [online] Available at: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders.

Medically reviewed by:

Theresa Bautista

Sean Newton has nearly ten years of experience as a health and fitness writer, focusing on diet and its effects on your health. He also is an avid athlete and martial artist, specializing in bodyweight exercises and movement training. Together with an evidence-based approach to good health, his goal is to lay out the facts for readers, so they can make informed choices.

Medically reviewed by:

Theresa Bautista

Journal of Physical Education and Sport

Trusted Source

Go to source

SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

Trusted Source

Go to source

African Journals Online

Non-profit Platform for African Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of The American Board of Family Medicine

American Board of Family Medicine

Trusted Source
Go to source

Informit

RMIT University Library

Trusted Source
Go to source

European Food Safety Authority

Science, Safe food, Sustainability

Trusted Source
Go to source

OrthoInfo

American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Trusted Source
Go to source

American Academy of Family Physicians

Strengthen family physicians and the communities they care for

Trusted Source
Go to source

Agricultural Research Service

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Trusted Source
Go to source

The American Journal of Medicine

Official Journal of The Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Database From National Institute Of Health

Trusted Source
Go to source

Lippincott Journals

Subsidiaries of Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute on Aging

Database From National Institute Of Health

Trusted Source
Go to source

Translational Research

The Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine

Trusted Source
Go to source

Cell

An All-science Publisher

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of Translational Medicine

BioMed Central

Part of Springer Nature
Go to source

Federal Trade Commission

Protecting America's Consumers

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Human Genome Research Institute

Database From National Institute Of Health

Trusted Source
Go to source

Food Production, Processing and Nutrition

BioMed Central

Part of Springer Nature
Go to source

BMC Gastroenterology

BioMed Central

Part of Springer Nature
Go to source

ACS Publications

A Division of The American Chemical Society

Trusted Source
Go to source

Annual Reviews

Independent, Non-profit Academic Publishing Company

Trusted Source
Go to source

PubChem

National Center for Biotechnology Information

National Library of Medicine
Go to source

PLOS Journals

Nonprofit Publisher of Open-access Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

Thieme E-books & E-Journals

Peer-reviewed & Open Access Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

European Journal of Agriculture and Food Sciences

Peer-reviewed International Journal Publishes

Trusted Source
Go to source

Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing Home

Chemical Science Journals, Books and Database

Trusted Source
Go to source

Frontiers

Publisher of Peer-reviewed Articles in Open Acess Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

De Gruyter

German Scholarly Publishing House

Trusted Source
Go to source

Hindawi

Open Access Research Journals & Papers

Trusted Source
Go to source

Oilseeds and Fats, Crops and Lipids

EDP Sciences

Trusted Source
Go to source

Cambridge Core

Cambridge University Press

Trusted Source
Go to source

FoodData Central

U.S. Department Of Agriculture

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of the American Heart Association

Peer-reviewed Open Access Scientific Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

The Americans with Disabilities Act

U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division

Trusted Source
Go to source

Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Organization of Food and Nutrition Professionals

tr
Go to source

Sage Journals

Database From Sage Publications

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute of Drug Abuse

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

The ClinMed International Library

A Repository and an Open Access Publisher for Medical Research

Trusted Source
Go to source

The Royal Society Publishing

United Kingdom's National Academy of Sciences

Trusted Source
Go to source

APA PsycNet

Database From American Psychological Association

Trusted Source
Go to source

The Pharma Innovation Journal

Peer-reviewed And Refereed Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research and Development

Peer-reviewed Bimonthly Journal

Trusted Source
Go to source

British Pharmacological Society

Journals - Wiley Online Library

Trusted Source
Go to source

American Psychological Association

Scientific and Professional Organization of Psychologists

Trusted Source
Go to source

AAP Publications

Database From American Academy of Pediatrics

Trusted Source
Go to source

Karger Publishers

Academic Publisher of Scientific and Medical Journals and Books

Trusted Source
Go to source

Cambridge University Press & Assessment

Database From Cambridge University

Trusted Source
Go to source

National Institute of Mental Health

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

MDPI

Publisher of Open Access Journals

Trusted Source
Go to source

Bulletin of the National Research Centre

Part of Springer Nature

Trusted Source
Go to source

The New England Journal of Medicine

Massachusetts Medical Society

Trusted Source
Go to source

Economic Research Service

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Trusted Source
Go to source

MedlinePlus

Database From National Library of Medicine

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

National Institute of Health

An agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Trusted Source
Go to source

Trusted Source

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

The BMJ

Weekly Peer-reviewed Medical Trade Journal

The British Medical Association
Go to source

The British Psychological Society

The British Psychological Society is a charity registered in England

Database From Wiley Online Library
Go to source

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

PubMed

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S National Library of Medicine
Go to source

DailyMed

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S National Library of Medicine
Go to source

Google Scholar

Go to source

Science.gov: USA.gov for Science

Government Science Portal

Go to source

ResearchGate

Social Network Service For Scientists

Find and share research
Go to source

American Heart Association

To be a rentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives

Go to source

BioMed Central

Research in progress

Go to source

JAMA Network

Home of JAMA and the Specialty Journals of the American Medical Association

Go to source

Springer Link

Database From Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Springer - International Publisher Science, Technology, Medicine
Go to source

ODS

Database from Office of Dietary Supplements

National Institutes of Health
Go to source

Federal Trade Commission

Bureaus of Consumer Protection, Competition and Economics
Go to source

Trusted Source

Database From U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Governmental Authority
Go to source

Oxford Academic Journals

Oxford University Press

Trusted Source
Go to source

Taylor & Francis Online

Peer-reviewed Journals

Academic Publishing Division of Informa PLC
Go to source

WHO

Database from World Health Organization

Go to source

Journal of Neurology

Peer-reviewed Medical Journal

American Academy of Neurology Journal
Go to source

ScienceDirect

Bibliographic Database of Scientific and Medical Publications

Dutch publisher Elsevier
Go to source

Wiley Online Library

American Multinational Publishing Company

Trusted Source
Go to source

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

U.S. National Public Health Agency

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

Trusted Source

Database from U.S. National Library of Medicine

U.S. Federal Government
Go to source

U.S. Food & Drug Administration

Federal Agency

U.S Department of Health and Human Services
Go to source

PubMed Central

Database From National Institute Of Health

U.S National Library of Medicine
Go to source
Feedback

Help us rate this article

Thank you for your feedback

Keep in touch to see our improvement