Strong palpitations, increased heart rate, a feeling of suffocation and shortness of breath, a knot in your stomach, nausea … If you have ever felt anxiety you will have perfectly identified these symptoms, since they are the most common among people who suffer from it.
And is that anxiety, along with depression, are the most common mental illnesses, although there are multiple differences between them. This time we are going to focus on anxiety, which affects more than 7% of the population, as indicated by the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress, and to try to see how to improve this sensation through abdominal breathing.
Abdominal breathing to improve anxiety
If you have ever suffered an anxiety attack, you are already aware of the importance of breathing. I usually always recommends taking deep breath, hold it for a few seconds on the stomach and release it slowly. Of course it is a great option but there are others such as abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing that have great results.
To practice this type of breathing it is only necessary to know the steps to follow:
- Inhale the air slowly and deeply. Introduce as much air as you can in a calm way (do not get carried away by the hyperventilation of anxiety). Be aware of that air that you inhale.
- Go feeling how that air slowly descends through your lungs to your abdomen feeling your belly swell.
- Exhale the air by contracting the abdomen and thus letting it rise normally.
If you are an amateur even in this abdominal breathing you can start doing it lying down to be more aware of every step. Over time you will get practice and you will be able to perform these exercises standing up and even while moving.
Normally, it will be enough to do this breathing between 6 and 10 times a minute to begin to feel how the symptoms of anxiety decrease.
Other factors to consider
Once breathing is controlled, there are other factors that we can take into account to get out of that moment of crisis. Among them, one of the most commonly advised is to think about something else, it may sound topical but the more we focus in thinking about how we feel worse we will feel. So focusing our attention on another task can be a great help.
The people with whom we are surrounded when we feel anxiety are also important, since they can influence how we carry that moment, because if they use certain phrases like “calm down” or “you’re crazy” it is better that we stay away from those people.
And if possible, draw out the most rational vein and be aware that it is dealing with an occasional crisis and that we ourselves have the key to get out of it.
