Does Breathing Help Anxiety?

Most people want to know what they can do to manage their anxiety symptoms especially when they start to feel panicky. You may find yourself in situations that trigger your anxiety, or feel anxious and need to calm now. You may even find yourself feeling nervous at times during a big presentation, or having to speak in front of a crowd, or meeting someone you aren't familiar with, or feel like the attention is on you or feeling fearful of something or someone. Those are all experiences and situations that can trigger anxiety, which is your body's physical response to the environment, for you, your experience.

How Can Breathing Help Me Calm down?

Just like when you workout, breathing helps you push harder by calming your central nervous system down when it becomes triggered. It usually becomes triggered when it senses danger around you and puts you in a state of flight where you get into survival mode, aka protect yourself.

That can be taxing on the body, and may require you to exert a lot of energy to survive whatever you are experiencing at the moment.

This is where breathing may be helpful to get you to calm down so you can think rationally and assess if there is indeed a threat. Sometimes there isn't a threat, but because your body may be conditioned in a certain way to perceive threats and since your mind can't tell the difference between perceived threat and actual threat, especially if you've been through similar situations in the past. You will find that you unconsciously start to have similar reactions as if you were actually in the past experience.

Once you access your surroundings, and become aware that there is no threat, your mind sends a signal to your body to calm down, and this is where you can breathe to ensure you are relaxed and can go on with your day, meetings, and experiences.

So next time you feel triggered, anxious, overwhelmed and nervous, access where you are and take 3 deep breaths. To make this an easily accessible thing for you, practice deep breathing regularly. That way when you are feeling intense emotions, my body’s natural response will be to take in deep breaths. Routine exercise is a great way to make sure you are practicing your deep breathing since it requires you to take in deep breaths to keep going.