Mindfulness Skills for Anxiety Treatment In Maryland—Part 1, Breathing

Focusing on the breath can be a powerful tool for managing anxiety, as part of a plan for anxiety treatment in Maryland.

Anxiety can sometimes come crashing in, seemingly out of nowhere, and totally upend your plans for the moment. Or it can be sometimes be humming along in the background continuously, draining your energy and attention away, like too many browser tabs open on your computer. How can mindfulness based tools help treat and manage anxiety? If you are curious about what mindfulness is, check out an earlier blog post about mindfulness based therapy. For now, we’re going to start with focusing on breathing.

Breathing, really?

I know, I know. This can sound like the most basic, unhelpful suggestion ever, like all the times you may have been told to take a deep breath and count to ten when you were mad. But, please, stick with me for a minute. I’ve got the science-based receipts to back it all up.

The breath is a major key with your entire body and brain stress system. Want to give yourself some uncomfy sensations that can remind you of anxiety or panic? Go ahead and hyperventilate (breathing really quickly and shallowly) for a couple of minutes. Just that alone can start to turn on the whole stress response system (the sympathetic nervous system for all you science geeks out there). Once that system does get turned on, the body and brain experience signals to prepare to fight or flee—heart rate increases, blood flows to your limbs and away from the digestive system, you might feel lightheaded or like everything is a little unreal. During times of high anxiety or stress, we might be unknowingly breathing in this quicker, shallow and constricted way, just chucking gasoline on the fire of our stress responses.

But First, Awareness

Before we even get into the concrete—let’s get down to business—how do we turn this crazy train around—plan for using the breath wisely, step 1A is having the awareness that we need to be paying attention to our breath and doing something about it. A stellar plan is of zero use if you don’t remember that you have one or what it is. Bad news, our best thinking goes out the window when we get really far into the stress response. The part of our brain that is in charge of that fight or flight response steals the spotlight, and the part of our brain that has all our plans and detailed knowledge gets super hard to access. If you are someone that gets really anxious about tests, this is what is going on when your mind goes blank as soon as you sit down for the exam, even if you studied hard and knew all the material cold just hours before. See also: not remembering any of your really good points in an emotionally overwhelming argument with someone and then remembering them hours later once you’ve cooled down.

So, a smart course of action is to practice, practice, practice with the idea of becoming aware of your breathing through good times and bad, on a daily basis. Just like an athlete runs drills over and over, or musicians practice scales and exercises, or a new driver practices parallel parking between cones a lot before trying it with pricey cars on either side. We practice skills over and over in lower pressure situations so they are more readily available to us when the pressure is on and it’s harder to think clearly. Deliberate practice of taking time regularly to check in with your breath and assessing what’s going on with it will pay off when you need it.

REduce Anxiety And Stress: Skills from Anxiety Therapy in Maryland

Breathing for relaxation (also sometimes called deep breathing, belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing) is like the manual override switch that tells the brain that there is no DANGER and that it can start winding down those fight or flight responses from the sympathetic nervous system—like calling all the fire trucks back to the station when we find out that it was just a little burned popcorn in the microwave that set off the alarms. It activates the parasympathetic nervous system (cutely known as the rest and digest response). Heart rate comes back down, blood flows back to the digestive system, muscle tension eases, and the part of your brain that’s in charge of all your most intricate thinking gets to step back into the spotlight. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Spell it out for me

How exactly does this work? In a general sense, we want to start to mimic our most relaxed, natural breathing—the kind we have when we are sleeping. Are you old enough to remember cartoon images of a character just snoozing away, with a belly that rises and falls dramatically, snoring loudly? Maybe a little sleeping cap waving away with each snore? Good news is that you don’t need a sleep cap, or any snoring. But that belly movement is a great key. Diaphragmatic breathing means that we are breathing all the way down to the very bottom part of our lungs (most of the time when we’re awake and wandering around in life, we’re breathing into the upper 2/3 of the lungs). With the breath reaching all the way to the bottom of our lungs, it pushes against the diaphragm (a dome shaped muscle under the lungs), and we see the belly push out/rise in response. On the exhale, the belly contracts and relaxes as the air leaves the body. Your body absolutely knows how to do this while you are sleeping, or even laying down while very relaxed. Being able to use this while sitting, standing and basically going about your day is something that most bodies actually have to be taught, since it’s not the standard operating procedure for just breathing while we are living our lives. People who are singers, competitive swimmers or play horn or wind instruments typically learn diaphragmatic breathing as a way to fine tune breath control and power. Most of the rest of us don’t pick this up until we deliberately set out to learn it.

Since your body already knows how to do this laying down, that’s a great place to start. While laying on your back, place one hand on your belly and one hand in the center of your chest. What you’ll want to see when you’ve got the hang of this is that the hand on your belly should move a lot more than the hand on your chest. On the inhale, imagine that there is a balloon attached to your belly button and you are trying to get the air down there to inflate the balloon—letting the air go all the way into the bottom part of your lungs and feeling the belly rise naturally (not trying to use your abdominal muscles to push it out. On the exhale, the belly relaxes and falls. Spend a few minutes just tuning into this sensation. We’re not trying to fill ourselves with all the oxygen in the world—it’s more important that you are directing the breath to the bottom of the lungs than trying to fill up with lots and lots of air. We are not deep sea diving.

In this naturally relaxed breath, we are also generally breathing out for a little longer than we breathe in so many people find that it also helps to count along with your inhale and exhale. If you breathe in for four counts, try breathing out for six. Maybe there’s even a tiny pause between the inhale and exhale—see what your body does. The counting can also help anchor your mind, working on the tendency for the mind to just wander off in a million other directions.

Let’s take this show on the road

Once you feel like you get the idea of what this intentional, deliberate breathing for relaxation feels like when you are laying down, try doing it while sitting up. It will likely not feel the same. The whole belly rising and falling part might feel forced. This awkwardness is normal! Like we said earlier, we’re not usually breathing this way while we are up and about, so it’s going to feel weird. See if you can toggle back and forth between laying down and sitting up, tuning into the differences in the body and trying to bring what you’ve clicked into place from the laying down position into a seated one. Keep your hands on your belly and chest, concentrate on feeling that hand on the belly moving more. Bring the gentle count in to help remind you to breathe out for a little longer than you breathe in. There are other breathing/counting patterns that are very effective as well, but let’s just start with this one to get the basic idea of diaphragmatic breathing.

Once it clicks for you while you are sitting up, spend a few minutes with it. Notice what happens to your body and mind after just a few minutes. You can also then try it standing up. These are important steps because if we want to be able to use this out in the world, when stress and anxiety hit, we’re not usually going to get a chance to lay down on the spot. We’re in a meeting, on a plane, in a classroom, or at the store, and we need help NOW! If you’ve practiced this so much that your body knows how to do this quite easily from sitting or standing (once you’ve remembered you need to pay attention to this and told your body what to do), you’ll be able to bring this skill into the stressful moment and encourage the fired up sympathetic nervous system to stand down a bit.

REceipts, Please

This is not woo-woo, wish upon a star stuff. Feel free to read up on info from the Harvard Medical School or the University of Washington Medical Center about how this works. Get a video demonstration of diaphragmatic breathing from the good folks at the University of Michigan Medical Center, and learn how it’s an important part of treatment for GI concerns. Check out the massive list of research for the use of this technique in treating a wide range of physical and psychological concerns, provided by The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. This works. It’s portable, it’s free and doesn’t come with a long list of potential negative side effects.

A free consultation for Anxiety therapy in Maryland

I hope this is useful to you and inspires you to try this out for yourself. If you want to explore more about how to reduce anxiety and find more ease in your mind and body, feel free to contact me for a free 15 minute phone consultation. You can also find out more about how I help with anxiety treatment, mindfulness-based therapy, and other services throughout my website.