Instead of putting your energy into your worries and increasing your anxiety, you can focus on other things instead to give your mind and body time to calm down. Distraction strategies help lessen anxiety when it is bad, but they are best when used alongside other treatments.

Distraction appears to be helpful in regulating emotions not only with anxiety-related disorders, such as with PTSD, but with depression and even acute and chronic pain. It appears that there's a physiological basis that may help explain these findings.

Distraction only helps you in the experience that you find yourself in, and once it is over you have to use distraction again the next time you face that stressor or else something bad might happen then. As you can see from this, and the last few posts, it is the Safety Seeking Behaviors that are really a main culprit in the maintenance of stress.