Breathing and Anxiety

So now the count is like what.......... 4 different ways to decrease your anxiety aka "alarm center"??

1. Using your 5 senses

2. Engaging in pleasant and calming activities

3. Being mindful/training your attention

4. Doing physical activity

Did you get them all??

If not, go back and review the previous lessons, cause we're moving on to the most simplistic coping skill ........

Breathing........

How many times have you heard the phrase "just take a deep breath" ??? 

Makes you feel absolutely furious right? 

Or it makes you feel helpless, cause you can't? 

Or it's like "that's not what I need right now".........

Here me out .........and listen to what I have to say about "breathing" and anxiety ...........

I kept deep breathing to the end (yeah, you're almost done !!!) because folks always tell people with anxiety to "take a deep breath", and social media tells us to "breathe through it", and medical folks say "just take a breath", and just about everyone is saying to breathe ............ so it gets a lot of not-so-good press.

So I'm gonna teach you how to "square" deep breathe.

Square breathing consists of inhaling for your maximum about of seconds (5 seconds is best, but if you can't - go lower; if you can do it for 5 seconds, slowly work your way up to more seconds, to no more than 7!!!)

Once you inhale, you hold your breath for the same number of seconds

Then you exhale for the same number of seconds

And lastly, you just "sit" (breathe normally, be still, refrain from moving) for the same number of seconds

Let me take you through this, so you understand

Now there are definitely other ways to "deep breathe" so you can reduce your anxiety.

Here's a few different ways to deep breathe.