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When someone deals with anxiety, let alone a panic attack, it can truly be debilitating. With so many things going on in someone who is struggling to maintain or just trying to cope with their anxiety, it’s important to have a few very simple but effective techniques under your tool belt to apply when anxiety is proving to be extremely difficult.

One of my most favorite tools for anxiety therapy that I enjoy teaching and get often a positive response when I see a client in future sessions is what I simply call “The Fern Technique.”

Now, before I continue on with the talking about this simple yet powerful method to support anxiety, I do need to add a disclaimer that might be a little bit funny, however, is true….and that is DO NOT ATTMEPT THIS WHEN DRIVING! Seriously though, when I first learned about this technique, I was curious to see if it would work while driving. Well, so much so that I almost drove off the road when I was driving southbound Stony Trail in Calgary Alberta one morning…Literally.

The Fern Technique works best when sitting by yourself in a healthy isolated environment, however, you can learn to adapt this to any environment such as work, when in crisis, during a team meeting. Except of course when driving…unless you’re the passenger.

The Fern Technique is simply what is known as a mindfulness technique to allow you to healthily distract yourself from whatever you are feeling anxious about. This does take practice and if you can include deep breathing you can take an anxious and unregulated moment in time and switch to a calm and self- regulated individual and be cool as a cucumber.

Now of course the object you pick does not have to be a fern. The fern I refer to with my clients is a plastic fake fern that sits on my office mini book shelf. The object, however, I would suggest be a positive object/image or a non-emotional object/image. For example, the fern is generally considered a nice (positive) and calming (positive) green plant, whereas, a picture of a loved one might not be the best image to pick, especially if you’ve just had a fight (negative) with the person in the picture.

Using the image at the top of the picture, I would like you to allow me to guide you through the steps. Take a moment and intentionally place yourself, if possible, in a quiet environment with the above fern picture.

1. Begin looking at the ‘Macro’ which is looking at the whole of the whole picture and just notice the plant and holder the plant is in.
2. Now either talking out loud (preferable) or to yourself (if in public) begin to look at the ‘micro’ part of the picture saying to yourself…

• “I’m noticing the green leaves that as I look closer at the leaves are actually compiled of what turns out to be multiple leaves and now as I look closer to these multiple leaves I’m noticing all of the various edges…etc, etc…”
• From there you start moving around the plant and noticing different things like noticing the reflection of the plastic leaves from the light in the room and also noticing other items like the base the leaves are being held in and noticing more intricate things such as the lines and groves in the pot part of the plant.

Now if this makes sense to you, then I would encourage you to try it out and see if this strategy helps support you in taking your mind of the current anxiety you’re dealing with.

Of course, it is possible that this technique totally doesn’t work for you and that’s completely fine as there are many techniques to support someone’s anxiety. Sometimes you just have to practice a few techniques out to find out what will actually work for you. In this case example, this tends to be the one I practice with a person dealing with anxiety in the office or online to support the client.

Staring at a fern or some other object, is obviously not going to be the miracle cure for anxiety. However, if it helps even just a bit to support self-regulation and get through the day then this technique could be a much-needed tool to add into your toolbox.

If you are finding the Fern Technique sort of helping, however, there is much more getting in the way to your anxiety, it might be time to consider finding a quality clinical counsellor that can support you in dealing with your ongoing issues of anxiety.