Habits that rewired my anxious brain

This might not be your typical wake-up and eat a healthy diet list. This is not to say they are not useful, but they didn’t work for my chronically dysregulated, scared, and anxious nervous system. In this list, I will mention highly niche things that worked for me, and I will help you personalize what may work for you, too, based on the common working principle, not the habits themselves.

1- Feeding stray dogs

I have always found dogs to be the only source of unconditional love on earth. They also provide unconditional loyalty. These might be one of the two important things for a person to feel safe, loved, and chosen. I watched lots of videos about them, but I wasn’t ready for the responsibility of raising one myself, so I decided to look out for stray dogs. I started approaching a dog pack in my area. I played with them, fed them, and constantly looked out for them like they were my babies. I would go to buy something from the supermarket and get approached by a pack of seven dogs wagging their tails, hugging me, and walking me to the supermarket and then back to my home. This felt like a scene from a Disney movie. I think that the reason this might have worked to help me heal comes back to these core reasons.

A- they were an outlet to my loving, nurturing, and mothering nature.

Growing up, I learnt that loving people deeply, and caring for them deeply, kills romantic attraction, infantilizes them, and makes me seem smothering and overbearing. Adults don’t want to feel like kids, and your man isn’t looking for a mom. So this was the perfect outlet for this energy. Now, I don’t have to curse the world and men for not making me mother them forcefully.

B- Consistent unconditional love and loyalty

Never have I ever doubted those dogs’ love and loyalty, never have I begged for consistency, never have I worried about abandonment or anticipated it. I don’t know what can be more healing to a nervous system than waking up every day knowing you are loved, chosen, wanted, and waited for.

C- Caring for something bigger than yourself

I always had this intuitive feeling that being part of something bigger than yourself is a perfect way to get out of the self-absorbed way of seeing life. When I represented my school, when I sang the national song of my country, and when I gave lectures to young kids. Caring for dogs gave me a feeling that I’m part of something bigger than myself. I fed them, taught kids to love them and treat them right, fought with people who tried to hurt them, and carried them to doctors whenever they were hurt. If you can save them, you can save yourself, or that’s what your unconscious believes when you help those innocent creatures and start somatically feeling the hero and lover archetype.

2- Rituals ( repetitive, predictable safety)

I first came across the idea of rituals while watching a YouTube video about a very old woman. She was talking about how, when she came back from school, her mom would make them food and they would gather around the table to eat. She said that no matter how stressful her day was, no matter how tough things got, she knew that at the end of it she would come back home, find her loving mother, and share a warm meal with her.

That reminded me of my own childhood. It made me realize how powerful repetitive, predictable safety really is. Rituals anchor you back into your body. They ground you. They teach your mind that no matter how messy or overwhelming life feels, there is an ending point where you’ll be safe again. You’ll be okay.

That repetition is what cools the mind. It keeps it from spiraling. Because underneath everything, there’s a quiet belief that things will settle.

I think we can create rituals for ourselves, even in small ways. Waking up ten minutes earlier to do your skincare slowly. Making your favorite drink and actually sitting down to enjoy it. Reading two pages from a comforting book in the morning. Small, intentional moments like that make life feel softer.

Especially if you have one ritual in the morning and one before bed. Something that tells you: no matter how hard today gets, it will end in safety. You’ll wake up into safety again tomorrow. You’ll begin and end your day from a grounded place.

3- changing my home

One thing that people consider common sense, but rarely question, is how tourists are allowed to do things that natives would never be allowed to do. That realization changed something in me.

Instead of constantly fighting my environment for basic freedoms, I understood that I could simply change my environment.

The place you grow up in will almost always expect you to stay the same. To follow the same rules. To believe the same things. To live the same way. And when you start wanting something different, it threatens people. Not always because they hate you — but because, on some level, they want that freedom too, and they’ve repressed it. So when you try to step outside the script, you trigger everything they’ve buried.

Changing my environment became one of the most important steps in my recovery. Moving somewhere new, where no one knew me, meant no one had expectations of who I should be. I wasn’t trapped in an old identity. If I did something different, it wasn’t rebellion — it was just who I was.

People are strangely more tolerant of difference when it comes from a stranger or someone from another culture. They’ll accept behaviors from tourists that they would harshly judge in their own community. I’ve seen it over and over again. A tourist can dress in revealing or unconventional clothes and be admired for it. But a local girl wearing the same thing might be judged, harassed, or shamed.

I realized I needed to be in an environment where I wasn’t constantly projected onto, where I wasn’t reduced to old expectations, where my difference wasn’t treated as a threat.

4- Reducing ambition

When you’re anxious, you tend to overcompensate. You start believing that safety will come from becoming a billionaire, from having unlimited freedom, unlimited love, everything you could want. But the truth is, even if you became a billionaire, you’d still find something to fear. You’d be scared of losing the money. Paranoid about people using you or trying to steal from you. The anxiety would just change shape.

I realized that if your nervous system doesn’t feel safe, no external state will fix that. No matter where you are or what you have, your mind will always find something to be afraid of.

Overcompensating is just another way to stay stuck in the cycle. It feels productive, but it’s driven by panic. And panic is not sustainable.

What actually helps is much simpler. When you’re anxious, you need to prove to yourself that you’re safe through small, predictable actions. Do something that has a clear outcome. Finish it. Let your body register the success. Then add something slightly bigger. And then another. Slowly build evidence that you are capable and that the world doesn’t collapse when you move.

You keep stacking small wins until your nervous system feels safe enough to build, to rest, to try again.

But when you overcompensate and chase impossible standards that you believe will “cure” your anxiety, you usually burn out. And when you don’t reach those extreme goals, it reinforces the fear.

Safety isn’t built through extremes. It’s built slowly.

And once you’ve cultivated that inner safety, you can take bigger steps. You can expand your ambition without it being driven by fear. Then if you become successful, or wealthy, or achieve everything you once wanted, you won’t be constantly terrified of losing it — because your sense of safety won’t depend on it.