Anxiety

Anxiety, racing thoughts, panic attacks, and social anxiety are all too familiar feelings for many of us. If you suffer from anxiety, you know how overwhelming and debilitating it can feel, and how often it can feel like there is not much you can do to manage those feelings. But, did you know that deep breathing is one of the simplest and most natural techniques that you can use to help you feel calmer?

In this blog post, we’re going to explore the five reasons why deep breathing is such an effective tool for reducing anxiety, and then describe five useful deep breathing techniques so you can find the ones that work best for you.

 

Why Deep Breathing Helps Reduce Anxiety

1. Deep Breathing Calms Fight Or Flight

While many different parts of our brain are involved in processing anxiety, one significant area is the amygdala, a small almond-shaped region in the brain that plays a crucial role in our emotional responses. When we experience a threat or stress, the amygdala sends a signal to the hypothalamus, which triggers a fight-or-flight response. This response results in increased heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, and the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. This is where deep breathing comes in. When we engage in deep breathing, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps to slow down the fight-or-flight response. This leads to a reduction in heart rate and the release of relaxation hormones, such as dopamine and serotonin, which slows down racing thoughts and allows you to think more clearly about your worries.

 

2. Deep Breathing Can Calm Your Thoughts

When you’re anxious, your thoughts can feel scattered and jumbled. Deep breathing can slow down your thoughts and help you to focus on how to solve the issue that caused you to feel anxious about. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) asks you to identify the thoughts that are increasing your stress or overwhelm and then challenge those negative thoughts and come up with more helpful ways of thinking, but you can’t do that until deep breathing has calmed down those racing thoughts.

 

If you tend to overthink things read 5 Signs You Are Overthinking & How CBT Can Help!

So you can see that in addition to the physical benefits, deep breathing also has mental and emotional benefits. When we take deep breaths, we focus on our breathing, which can take our minds away from any anxious or stressful thoughts we might be having. Focusing on our breath can help us to be in the present moment and can give us a sense of calm. Over time, regular deep breathing can help us develop greater emotional regulation and mindfulness skills.

 

3. Deep Breathing Increases Oxygen to the Brain

Your brain needs oxygen to function properly. When you’re anxious, you may have shallow breathing, which means your brain isn’t getting as much oxygen as it needs. Deep breathing increases oxygen to the brain, which can help you to feel more relaxed and less stressed.

 

4. Deep Breathing Promotes Relaxation

Lastly, deep breathing can also help to reduce muscle tension and promote relaxation. When we feel anxious, our muscles can become tense, which can exacerbate feelings of anxiety and stress. By taking deep breaths, we can help to release this tension in our muscles, which can promote relaxation and lead to a sense of calmness.

 

5. Breathing & PMR For Better Sleep

Anxiety can interfere with your ability to get a good night’s sleep. Deep breathing can help to relax your body and mind, which can improve your sleep quality. If you practice deep breathing regularly, it can also train your body and mind to relax more quickly, which can help you to fall asleep faster.

If you have trouble getting to sleep, I also recommend Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) when you are lying in bed. To do PMR, begin by tensing and holding the muscles in one part of your body for 10 to 15 seconds. Then, relax the same muscle group for 30 seconds while focusing on how relaxed it feels. Repeat this process with all major muscle groups, starting from your toes and working your way up to your head.

To read more about sleep and ways to improve it read  Sleep: Why It’s Important & How To Get It!

 

 

5 Types of Deep Breathing Techniques That Help Calm Anxiety

We are now going to discuss five different types of deep breathing exercises. Practice them all to find the one or two that you prefer. Practice them when you are not feeling anxious so they become a habit and you can do them, without thinking, when you need them.

Belly Breathing

Belly breathing is one of the easiest and most effective deep breathing exercises. To practice this exercise, you need to lie down in a comfortable position or sit on a chair and place one hand on your belly and the other on your chest. Take a slow, deep breath through your nose, and let your belly push your hand out. Exhale through your mouth, feeling your belly sink back in. Repeat this exercise for 5-10 minutes, or until you feel relaxed.

 

Box Breathing & Square Breathing

Box breathing is a powerful technique that can quickly calm your nerves. Start by sitting or standing comfortably and inhaling deeply through your nose while counting to four. Hold your breath for a count of four, then exhale through your mouth for a count of four. Finally, hold your breath again for a count of four before repeating the cycle.

A variation of this type of breathing is called Square Breathing. With square breathing, you visualize a square as you box breathe, drawing or tracing a square with your finger as you breathe.

 

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Alternate nostril breathing is a yoga breathing technique that helps to balance your mind and body. To practice this exercise, sit comfortably and place your right hand on your nose. Use your thumb to close your right nostril and inhale through your left nostril. Then, close your left nostril with your ring finger and release your thumb and exhale through your right nostril. Inhale through your right nostril, then close it with your thumb and exhale through your left nostril. Repeat this exercise for five to 10 minutes.

 

4-7-8 Breathing

This breathing technique is developed by Dr. Andrew Weil and helps you to reduce stress, anxiety, and can even help you to fall asleep quickly. To practice 4-7-8 breathing, inhale deeply through your nose for four counts, hold your breath while counting to seven in your head, exhale through your mouth for eight counts. Repeat the cycle for five to six times.

 

 

Another easy way to deep breathe counting breaths can be found in my blog post A Simple Way To Keep Calm

 

 

 

Ocean Breathing

Ocean breathing is a breathing exercise that helps to calm your mind and body. To practice this exercise, sit or lie down in a comfortable position and close your eyes. Take a deep breath in through your nose, and then exhale slowly through your mouth, making a “hissing” or “ocean” sound. Repeat this exercise for five to 10 minutes, or until you feel relaxed.

 

If you find the ocean relaxing read my other post Beach Waves Mini Meditation

 

 

How & Why Deep Breathing Helps Anxiety & Feeling Overwhelmed

Deep breathing is a simple technique that can help you to overcome anxiety and feeling of being overwhelmed. By activating your parasympathetic nervous system, increasing oxygen to the brain, helping you to focus, reducing cortisol levels and improving your sleep quality, deep breathing can provide a range of benefits for your mental and physical health.

If you’re struggling with anxiety, give deep breathing a try and see if you notice a difference. We have discussed 5 deep breathing exercises. With practice, you may find that one or two of these simple techniques can help calm you and feel more relaxed and focused. Sometimes, deep breathing alone is not enough as it doesn’t fix the situation that made you feel tense and stressed. If you have anxiety, deep breathing is the first step so you can calm your racing thoughts and think calmly about your next steps. It can be a powerful tool for managing symptoms in the moment, but you may need additional help to address the root of your anxiety. Seeing a therapist who specializes in treating anxiety can be an essential part of recovery.

A therapist can provide evidence-based strategies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and teach you coping skills that will help you better navigate the challenges of life and learn to find balance in your life. With the help of a therapist, you can gain insight into how anxiety is impacting your day-to-day life and develop an individualized plan for managing it.

If you are struggling with anxiety, counseling can be an invaluable tool for relief. Please don’t hesitate to reach out for help from a mental health professional if you are struggling – your mental health is worth it.

For other ways to reduce anxiousness quickly read my article 7 Simple Grounding Techniques For Calming Down Quickly

 

 

 

When clients first come in to see me, the main concerns that come up again and again are:

1. How can I feel less stressed, angry and overwhelmed?

2. What should I do if I feel panicky?

3. How can I stop worrying about everything: my children, partner, friends, work, my “to do” list….

 

 

So I put together a booklet with some strategies I am always giving to my clients to help them begin to feel less anxiety and to worry less.

I hope that you will find it helpful too.

Add your first name and email address in the box below and you will be sent the steps to download your FREE book.

 

If you would like to work with me to understand why you are feeling anxious and learn effective coping strategies that reduce anxiety, please phone me at 847 791-7722 or email me below.

 

Dr. Allen has over 25 years experience and specializes in helping people treat their anxiety. Her professional license allows her to offer phone and video appointments to people living in Illinois and Florida.

If you would like to read more about her please visit her Bio page Dr. Sarah Allen Bio. To read media articles she was been interviewed for visit  her Media Interviews page. She has many other blog post about anxiety and worrying Dr. Sarah Allen Anxiety Blog Posts.

 

Do you find yourself reading too much into situations or spending too much time trying to make decisions? You are likely overthinking things and it is probably not helpful to your emotional well-being as overthinking can cause worry and anxiety!

Here are 5 signs that suggest you overthink things and some simple steps to help you stop. We will also look at how a type of therapy called Cognitive Behavior Therapy, or CBT, can help reduce overthinking.

 

1. Rumination Is Causing Overthinking

A clear sign you are overthinking is that you spend a lot of time ruminating, which is the act of continuously thinking about a problem without finding any solutions.

You pick over situations and conversations in your brain that could have happened last night or perhaps several years ago, and yet you are still thinking about it. It is exhausting. You are wasting your emotional energy thinking about it and it can leave you feeling physically and emotionally drained.

Rumination can be addressed through CBT. By breaking down problematic thoughts into smaller components, individuals can begin to understand why they are having certain thoughts and develop coping mechanisms to reduce their impact on daily life.

Ask yourself is there actually anything you can do about the situation you are ruminating about? Can you go to the person and ask them why they did (situation you are ruminating about) or can you go to them and say what you wish you had said back then? When I ask my ruminating clients these questions they usually laugh and say no, it’s too long ago or they would think I am being silly.

If you don’t want to, or can’t, change anything about the event then you have to accept that it is in the past. You can learn from it if a similar situation comes up again but you can’t change it, so let it go! Try to focus on something you can change instead.

 

To read more about reducing worry and rumination read The Number One Question That Helps Worrying

 

 

2. Perfectionism Can Cause Overthinking

Do you agonize over decisions, afraid to make even the smallest mistake? If so, you may be a bit of a perfectionist. While striving to do well at school, work or while doing your hobbies, can reap great results, no one can do everything perfectly and striving for perfection can lead to overthinking and in a lot of cases, anxiety. The fear of making mistakes, or failing, can be completely overwhelming, and worrying about what people think about you can lead to overthinking your every action, which to extremes can be paralyzing.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is one type of therapy that can be very helpful in managing perfectionism. By being aware of our fears and worries, we can begin to understand how our thoughts contribute to our perfectionism. Then rather than overthinking, or ruminating about a situation, you can break down task components into small manageable steps, recognizing what you have managed to achieve rather than aiming for flawless results. Try to bring your focus on doing your best and accepting that is good enough. If you want to achieve more than ‘good enough’ what would that even look like and is that even humanly possible? Who do you know that actually reaches perfection in everything they do? No one, as mistakes are a natural part of life.

 

3. Overthinking Causes You To Not Be Emotionally Present Around Others

Overthinking things can lead to you spending a lot of time in your head, which means you’re not completely emotionally present when you are around others. If you are focusing on your thoughts rather than the person in front of you, it can make them feel that you are not interested in them or what they are saying to you, which of course can be detrimental to the relationship.

Try to catch yourself if you are doing that and instead ground yourself by really focusing on the person you are with or your surroundings. Bring your attention to how your feet feel strong as they press into the ground, focus on actually listening to what the person is saying, notice what other sounds or things you can see in the room. Bringing your focus back into your body, the environment you are in and the person you are with gets you out of your head therefore making you more present.

 

4. Overthinking Affects Your Sleep

Another sign that you are an overthinker is that you are sleep deprived because your ruminations are stopping you falling asleep or are waking you up in the middle of the night. When you are overtired you become more emotional, anger more easily and have less focus and concentration which can hurt your functioning and relationships in real life, not the imaginary life of your thoughts.

You can overcome this by setting aside a time each evening that you sit down and write out the things you are thinking about. This can clear your head for when you are trying to sleep. More about how to do this in the section about CBT towards the end of the article.

 

To read more about sleep and ways to improve it read  Sleep: Why It’s Important & How To Get It!

 

 

5. You Let Your Anxiety Hold You Back

You really know that overthinking is holding you back when anxiety prevents you from doing things or moving forward in your life. Usually this involves thoughts about “What if?” and then thoughts about all the things that could possibly go wrong.

In cognitive therapy we call this type of negative thought pattern ‘catastrophizing’. You go to all sorts of worse- case scenarios and that can make you very stuck and scared. I always think a good way to challenge this is to ask yourself “What is the worst thing that can happen?”. Catastrophizing thoughts are attached to very strong emotions as fear whips up our adrenaline system. However, if you breathe (to calm down the adrenaline) you can rationally challenge your thoughts and find that the worse things probably aren’t nearly as bad as your emotions suggest and that you could cope with them.

To overcome this pattern, take a problem-solving approach. Identify what is holding you back and what small steps you can take to overcome the problem. Rather than just going around and around thinking about it, take action in a way that is not too much outside of your comfort zone.

 

To read more ways to reduce anxiety read 6 Ways To Reduce Stress & Stop Worrying!

 

 

How Does CBT Help To Stop Overthinking?

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) looks at how your thoughts (also called cognitions) affect your emotions and how both thoughts and emotions affect the way you behave. Typically CBT therapists are not just teaching you the simple steps I discuss below, they gain awareness of all the stressors, physical and emotional, you have going on but these strategies are useful first steps so perhaps try them out by yourself and see if they help.

Firstly, download all the thoughts and worries that swirling around in your brain by writing them down on a piece of paper. This is called Mind Dumping and can be done in bullet points or written out in paragraphs, depending on your preference.

Next go over each separate thought/worry and analyze the accuracy of the thought (termed Thought Analysis) and then ask yourself if there is a different, more helpful, way of looking at the problem/thought that you wrote down. I think real life examples can help describe this process.

E.g. Julie was lying in bed, unable to sleep because she was ruminating about the evening before when she was out with some friends and one of her friends (Helen) seemed annoyed. Julie was worried that Helen was upset with her, which led to other worries that people don’t like her and she doesn’t have friends (in CBT terms this is Catastrophizing).

When Julie asked herself “what evidence do I have that I have annoyed Helen?” she couldn’t remember anything in particular that she had done, or said, and when she asked herself “Did Helen seem annoyed with anyone else?” (yes) and “Does Helen have anything stressful going on in her life at the moment?” (yes) she concluded that Helen probably wasn’t upset with her personally and was probably stressed because she had found out some bad news recently. Julie also decided that if Helen seemed annoyed next time they met up, she would subtly ask Helen if she had done something to upset her.

Catastrophizing, Personalization and Jumping to Conclusions are three common thinking errors that can be addressed with Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). Recognizing negative thought patterns and distortions, which can lead to negative emotions such as sadness, anxiety, anger etc., is the first step in changing those negative thoughts into more helpful or realistic ones which can then change emotions to more positive ones.

CBT also helps people to think about things in a structured way and decide whether they want to take some action towards solving the problem (this is the behavior part of CBT) which stops overthinking. This is a simplified way of discussing CBT and of course, in real life there are usually lots of thoughts that get tangled up together and it can be very helpful to have a few sessions with a CBT specialist to teach you techniques in a way that are relevant to your life and worries.

An important part of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is keeping track of unhelpful thoughts, (also called cognitions). When working with a mental health professional who specializes in CBT you identify Cognitive Distortions and together you can look at where these types of thoughts come from, how they are holding you back and how to think about things and reframe your thoughts in a way that improves your mood.

To help manage overthinking, anxiety and rumination, I recommend using a Thought Diary. This tool provides structure to identify unhelpful negative thoughts. If you prefer, simply writing them down on paper works too. Page 2 of the diary offers questions that assist in challenging these thoughts as just because we have a thought, it doesn’t mean it is true!  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) emphasizes tracking these unhelpful thoughts, also called cognitions. A CBT specialist can help identify cognitive distortions and explore their origins, how they limit you, and guide you towards reframing your thoughts for an improved mood.

Click link for Dr. Sarah Allen Thought Diary Page 1

Click link for Dr. Sarah Allen Thought Diary Page 2

 

When clients first come in to see me, the main concerns that come up again and again are:

1. How can I feel less stressed, angry and overwhelmed?

2. What should I do if I feel panicky?

3. How can I stop worrying about everything: my children, partner, friends, work, my “to do” list….
   

 

 

So I put together a booklet with some strategies I am always giving to my clients to help them begin to feel less anxiety and to worry less.

I hope that you will find it helpful too.

Add your first name and email address in the box below and you will be sent the steps to download your FREE book.

If you would like to work with me and learn more ways to reduce overthinking and other coping strategies that reduce anxiety, please phone me at 847 791-7722 or email me below.

Dr. Allen specializes in helping people treat their anxiety using CBT. If you would like to read more about her please visit her About Sarah page Dr. Sarah Allen Bio. To read media articles she was been interviewed for visit  her Media Interviews page.