Stop me if this sounds familiar: The day finally comes for some much-needed R and R. All you want to do is chill, take a bath, catch up on Selling Sunset, breathe in some fresh air, or do whatever it is you’ve been daydreaming of doing for days. But the moment you sit down to relax, you feel it creeping in: trusty ol’ anxiety, all too happy to gate-crash your downtime and ruin any opportunity you had to unwind.

As awesome as it’d be to hit snooze on stress whenever we needed to recharge (or permanently, while we’re wishing for stuff), it’s rarely that simple. So how are you supposed to get actually restful rest when your anxiety loves to show up uninvited? Below, find expert-approved tips, from dealing with symptoms in the moment to developing long-term strategies for rest.

1. Don’t try to relax.

I know, I know. The whole point of this is wanting to relax. But once we’re already anxious, it’s a lot easier to exacerbate the problem than it is to calm it. “Anxiety is a very powerful response,” David Rosmarin, PhD, founder of Center for Anxiety and author of Thriving with Anxiety, tells SELF. “The more you fight it, the worse it’s going to get.”

You can thank your sympathetic nervous system for that. Anything can catch its attention, from stray thoughts about your inbox to random false alarms courtesy of an anxiety disorder. When your anxious brain perceives a threat—be it real or imaginary—your body’s fight-or-flight response kicks into gear. Stress hormones flood your system, making your heart pound, your blood pressure rise, your breath quicks, your thoughts race…and none of it is super conducive to feeling relaxed and rejuvenated.

As tempted as you might be to try whatever you can to stomp the feeling out ASAP, resist the urge to interrupt your body’s process. Treating your anxiety as a threat and spiraling about how to fix it is a quick way to douse your system with even more stress hormones, prolonging your anxiety response. On the other hand, “if you allow your sympathetic nervous system to run its course without fighting against it, your parasympathetic nervous system will kick into gear and usher in a relaxation response,” says Dr. Rosmarin. “The way to relax is by going through anxiety, not by going around it or resisting it.”

To ride it out, Dr. Rosmarin recommends focusing on the experience of anxiety itself. “Just notice it in your body,” he says. “Count how long it lasts. Don’t judge. Don’t try to change it. Just observe it and let yourself feel it.”