Most people aren’t hardwired to do so. But there’s a huge potential upside to assessing your state of mind regularly.

It can keep minor mental issues from becoming major ones.

That’s why there’s a huge potential upside to reading The Instant Anxiety Solution (Hatherleigh Press, 2024) by Michelle Biton. That’s because, as doctor and author Nadine Macaluso notes in the foreword, occasional feelings of helplessness or fear of the future are natural.

What’s not is when they occur with such frequency you develop what medical practitioners call anxiety disorder. But this is exactly what has happened to 40 million U.S. adults and in large part, Biton explains, because anxiety is “primal and cannot be rationalized.”

So Biton’s written a book that features a five-step strategy to learn ahead of that next bout of anxiety, for when it occurs “your body shuts down [your] thinking capability.” The formula’s to follow, and its acronym, A.L.A.R.M, makes it easy to remember.

A, activate your parasympathetic nervous system.

L, label your emotion.

A, acknowledge emotions are temporary.

R, remember to avoid adding on extra thoughts and emotions to your original, true emotion.

M, move forward, problem solve, and take action.

Biton explains that doing the first “A” is the only way to counteract an overactive sympathetic nervous system, an overactivity that increases your breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate, maybe makes you shaky or nauseous, and definitely has you fully prepared for “fight or flight.” While following the other steps in the acronym are important, the first “A” is not only first but also foremost.

For the other four can only be accomplished once the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system has created a sense of calm.

You can create a sense of calm by getting cold, really cold. Since cold exposure activates the parasympathetic nervous system, Biton suggests taking an especially cold shower, holding ice cubes in your hands or placing them in a bucket of ice water, splashing cold water on your face, or jumping in a cold pool or lake.

You can also create a sense of calm by getting intense, really intense during exercise. This works by “drastically increasing oxygen in the body [while] dramatically decreasing your stress level.” Not to mention, that sort of effort forces you to focus on the effort itself and not whatever situation triggered the stress.

What also warrants mentioning: Biton’s examples of intense exercise are brief, a sprint down the block, pushups or calisthenics until you can do no more; that intense exercise should not be attempted until you see your doc; that longer, low-to-moderate aerobic exercise works just as well as brief, intense exercise - “if you’re not really stressed out,” but your mood’s not as good as you’d like.

Toward that end, Briton suggests brisk walking and cites research that found any type of similar 20-minute workout of can improve mood for up to 12 hours. It’s a suggestion that can lead to the huge upside referred to in the intro: keeping minor mental issues from becoming major ones.

And toward that end, I’d be remiss not to digress a bit and provide yet another example of how just about everything you read in this column is interconnected by reminding you how last week’s article ends. With a meta-analysis published in the December 2017 issue of Sports Medicine that found weightlifting - that type of exercise I so often argue you should do - “significantly reduced anxiety symptoms among both healthy participants and participants with a physical or mental illness.”

And speaking about all the ways in which your health is interconnected, Briton writes that anxiety and sleep disorders “go hand in hand,” that the former leads to the latter and vice versa. “In fact, a sleepless night is known to cause a rise in anxiety by 30%.”

Another connection Briton brings to light that you might have not suspected links gut health with mood and motivation. Poor gut health not only diminishes the brain’s ability to produce the neurotransmitters needed to create a good mood, proper motivation, and ample energy, but it also creates an imbalance that can do more to muck up your mental state.

It can lead to anxiety, stress, burnout, memory problems, and depression.

In short, The Instant Anxiety Solution was not written solely for the aforementioned 40 million adult Americans who currently suffer from anxiety disorder. While it’s an “essential read” for them, it’s sure to also help anyone who occasionally feels helpless in the here and now or fearful of the future.

In other words, anybody. Which, the last time I looked, is a group that includes both me and you.

One final note: Biton’s book does come with a disclaimer that it’s not the same as undergoing therapy. Instead, it’s a generalized program for educational purposes only and “depending on how deeply rooted your anxiety is, you may need to seek out help from a professional.”