Breathing to Relieve Anxiety

 

Anxiety is an unpleasant experience. As I see it there are three ways of approaching anxiety relief.

The first is to control the arousal, the second is to increase the acceptance of the anxiety, and the third is to look at the underlying causes of the anxiety.

Controlling the arousal is usually something that happens in the acute phase.  In other words, when you are already feeling the anxiety and you need relief, the most effective way is through using the breath.  And there are many ways of breathing that can help bring relief.  The trick is finding the one that works for you.

Increasing the acceptance of the anxiety is something that can be worked on with your therapist.  It might seem opposing in some ways to the first approach.  The first approach suggests trying to control the anxiety, whereas the second approach is about accepting the anxiety.  However, the second approach is more about learning to accept the anxiety through mindfulness, and noticing it in your body, thereby building resilience and strength so that anxiety becomes less frightening, and therefore rather than controlling it, your are accepting it and thereby it dissipates.

Exploring the underlying causes of anxiety is the third approach.  Usually clients have an idea of what is causing the anxiety, but digging deeper and externalising the fear can help clients name it, and therefore tame it.

Whilst there is a plethora of information in books and on the internet about these approaches, seeing a therapist can help you as an individual, explore what will work best for you, as there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach when it comes to anxiety relief and management.

As a client you can choose to have just a couple of sessions of therapy to explore what type of approaches may work for you, but if you really want to get to the root cause, it may take a bit longer.  The most important thing to remember though, is that the choice is yours, not the therapist’s.  And a good therapist will know this.