Deep breathing isn’t helping your anxiety

For many, anxiety is a recurring theme, showing up every day like an overstayed house guest. You try everything to avoid the Groundhog’s Day recurrence, only it doesn’t stop. For many, the anxiety shows up unwelcomed and unforeseen through a pain in your chest, tightness, migraines, fast heartbeat, or antsy behaviors like fidgeting, pacing, angry outbursts, sleeplessness… or all of the above. Anxiety can show up:

• First thing in the morning
• On the drive to work
• When logging off work
• Going to bed

It can impact your relationships, your productivity, and keep you in a heightened state of discomfort.

A common way many people cope is to try to calm themselves. They try everything:

• Change their diet
• Change their sleep patterns
• exercise more
• track their sleep
• track their steps
• track their heart rate
• take deep breaths, or 
• distract themselves. 

It’s incredibly frustrating when your efforts only keep the anxiety at bay for a moment before it reemerges, like a firefighter who puts out a fire, only for the house to burst into flames the moment you roll up the hose.

Deep breathing isn’t helping.

Deep breathing doesn’t stop your anxiety from resurfacing

There’s a reason your anxiety keeps reemerging. The more you tamp down your anxiety, the worse it will become. It will get louder and louder. The emotional energy pushing your heart rate up, messing up your sleep, causing you to pace is much stronger and more resilient than any breathwork you can do. For many, the anxiety peaks into a panic attack, IBS issues, back pain, addiction, or relationship problems. 

“Why is this? Why doesn’t the deep breathing or sleep tracking work?” People often ask. “I must not be diligent enough. I’ll double down on my tracking and be more strict about meditation.” 

I see this cycle all the time in my practice. Clients treat their anxiety like a tumor they must remove, or an invasive ivy they must uproot before it takes over. It’s an aggressive metaphor in which we battle against anxiety to try to achieve peace.

Using a battle metaphor profoundly shapes the way we see the problem. In this metaphor, anxiety acts as a villain we need to defeat.

There’s a historical reason some people use a battle metaphor to understand their anxiety.

Early experiences impact your perspective on anxiety

This isn’t your first time handling anxiety, not by a long shot. 

Your first time handling anxiety was when you were a baby. You’d cry, you’d get scared, and you learned a certain way to manage yourself in tandem with your caregivers. For some, they learned an aggressive way to handle anxiety – called avoidant attachment.

These children learned that when in distress, it was their crying that was the main problem to be fixed. “Stop crying or else something bad will happen” was the message reverberating in their minds. Instead of focusing on solving the larger reason for their tears, their parents focused on turning off the tears. 

This strategy teaches a child that their cries aren’t actually useful for solving a problem. They learn to see their cries as unhelpful and disgusting to others, not as signals that something is needing attention.

• The kid with a splinter who cries out and is dismissed may end up with an infected toe.
• The boy who bites their lip to keep from crying when they’ve been rejected at school may fail to elicit their parent’s support to make new friends.
• The young adult who learns to silence their own cries after being unfairly treated by a partner will lock themselves into a hellish relationship.
• The adult who silences their anxiety may be completely unaware of the ways their life is needing care and mending. 

Instead of deep breathing, reframe your perspective on anxiety

Anxiety is not the villain. It’s actually the signal that will point you toward healing.

I’m aware how that sounds: woo-woo, therapy speak, lofty. But consider it with me for a minute. The reason tamping down a fire alarm doesn’t work is because when there’s smoke, the fire alarm will sound – it’s doing its job to point you toward the fire. 

Anxiety is a signal. It’s fear. It’s telling you you’re feeling unsafe where you are. If we even make this small shift, what starts to come into focus? Why might you feel unsafe? What might feel threatened or fragile or lost in your life?

Take a moment to think on these questions.

Sometimes the answer is immediately apparent: a current relationship, or work stress, or direct worries about finances or job stability. Other times the worry is less apparent: There’s a sense of instability, but you can’t pin it on your current situation. Our minds are incredibly intuitive. Most of the time, our fear response precedes our rational mind. Anniversaries of difficult moments, reaching the age our parents were when a major crisis hit, our own kids reminding us of past trauma, our friends’ situations reminding us of our own pain that needs attention. 

Instead of deep breathing, cultivate curiosity about where your anxiety is leading you

Curiosity is the right stance. You want to be in an open, curious stance toward your anxiety, as this will lead you toward security and healing. 

In fact, you want more than to constantly combat and suppress your anxiety. You want more than constant vigilance about your anxiety. Not only does it not work – it’s overwhelming and frustrating. What you really want is security. Here’s what that looks like:

Secure People Identify Their Pain

Secure people are adept at recognizing when something isn’t right. They don’t see pain as an enemy but as information. They notice the signs of anxiety not as failures but as prompts to dive deeper into what might be causing distress.

Secure People Soothe Themselves

Instead of suppressing their feelings, secure individuals learn self-soothing techniques. This process is something natural to our nervous system. Secure people develop a calming internal presence that reassures them of their value and their safety.

Secure People Ask for Help

Understanding that no one can manage everything alone, secure people reach out for support when needed. This could mean talking to friends, consulting with therapists, or joining support groups where they can share and learn from others’ experiences. On a more immediate level, they express what they feel and get support then needed.

Secure People Create a Plan

Once they understand their anxiety, secure individuals take proactive steps. They don’t just name their feelings and move on. Instead, they listen to their anxiety as feedback about things that might need to change, they set expectations in relationships and work, they plan breaks and self-care activities, and they confront conflicts directly to get resolution. All in all, they listen to their feelings to help them  discern a plan for enhancing overall life satisfaction.

Secure People Help Others

Finally, secure people often extend their understanding and skills to help others. By sharing what they’ve learned, they contribute to a community of support, teaching others how to navigate their own anxieties. This not only helps others but reinforces their own sense of security and belonging.

Anxiety will lead you toward health

Instead of treating anxiety like it’s some intruder to be expelled, and suppressing it with deep breathing, let’s consider it more like that annoying alarm clock that never seems to let you snooze. It’s irritating, yes, but it’s also trying to wake you up to something important. It’s time we stop fighting the signal and start listening to what it’s got to say. 

So, when anxiety next comes knocking, don’t immediately reach for the bolt. Maybe sit with it for a bit, hear it out. You might just discover that what you thought was an enemy is actually your mind’s way of telling you where you need to look next for healing.

A panic attack can be really scary and overwhelming.

A lot of people can get frustrated with themselves when they experience a panic attack.

It can be something that happens constantly and as a “regular” thing in your life. Because of that, you don’t feel comfortable going out in social settings or to work or other places where you fear you’ll have another panic attack. So you stay close to home and isolate yourself.

Panic attacks are a difficult experience that can cause disruption to your daily life. Let’s talk more specifically about what they are and what you can do the next time you find yourself experiencing one.

What is a Panic Attack?

A panic attack is a heightened state of anxiety. It can feel like a heart attack; you might experience heart palpitations (your heart beats really fast), chest tightness, headaches, and the inability to think clearly.

Sometimes the only thing you can do when you’re experiencing a panic attack is lay down in bed or some other safe space and wait for the pain to pass.

Why do we Have Panic Attacks?

Panic attacks can be a sign of dysregulated anxiety that’s become extremely physiological. Whenever we get anxious, our bodies sometimes give out smaller signals at first. We might feel fluttering in our chest, or we feel tension and anxiety around certain situations. Then it can build without our knowing it, until it gets to the point where it feels like something is physiologically wrong. Many people even go into the ER because they think they’re having a heart attack.

There’s actually a lot you can learn about yourself if you are experiencing panic attacks. When you experience panic attacks, it’s a sign that something is off in your life. Something is hard to deal with, something is putting pressure on you, you’re experiencing some sort of big stressor in your life. However, sometimes you don’t know what that is on the surface, which is frustrating and difficult.

How to Reduce Panic Attacks

1. Journal Panic Attack History

Set aside some time to journal and ask yourself a few questions. When did the panic attacks start? How bad are they? What’s the normal course of a panic attack for you? When does the pain start? What symptoms do you experience? How intense do those symptoms get? When does the panic attack finally pass? Usually panic attacks last under an hour, typically around 30 minutes. Have you always experienced panic attacks or when did they start to become a thing in your life? Was there a moment in which they became worse?

The reason these things are important to know is because when you go into a panic attack, you want to know what triggered it and how long the course of the panic attack might last.

2. Make a plan for the panic attack

A lot of people get frustrated when they experience panic attacks; they just want them to go away. But once you get to that heightened state, there’s not much you can do aside from waiting it out. As difficult as it may be, waiting it out requires you to release, relax, and let it all pass. So find a comfortable, safe space where you’re not around other people. It might be helpful to have something to hold, somewhere to lay down, something to drink – whatever will help you feel safest. Let yourself ride it out, knowing that it will eventually pass. You don’t have to talk about your anxiety during those 30-ish minutes or try to figure things out ways to make the panic go away. You just need to ride the wave. At the end of those 30-some minutes (or however long it takes for the panic to pass) is when you can do some assessing.

3. Assess Causes for the Panic Attack

Get out the same journal you originally wrote in (or a piece of paper or even a Notes app) and ask yourself: When did I first start experiencing this panic attack? When did it first start to come on? What was the earliest point that I can recognize I started to feel anxious? For some, the anxiety builds for a week before they experience a panic attack. For others, the anxiety builds for a day before they experience a panic attack. What was that moment for you, in which you started to feel anxious and tense? See if you can do a bit of exploration to understand the earliest moment at which you remember yourself feeling anxious.

4. Work with a Therapist who can treat a Panic Attack

In addition to these things, working with a professional will be important in order to understand your panic attack history and to learn ways to manage and regulate your anxiety before it escalates to a panic attack. Through therapy, you get the opportunity to learn how to pay attention to the cues your body gives you when you are feeling anxious, and know how to take care of yourself in the moments when you are feeling increasingly stressed. You learn to listen to yourself, to take care of yourself, and to resolve the anxiety before you find yourself in a full blown panic attack. We have therapists who can help with anxiety and panic attacks.

A panic attack can be treated, and you can experience relief

Those who deal with anxiety and panic attacks often feel very alone, but you are not alone. Please reach out to a professional if these are things you are struggling with. It might be nerve-wracking to do so but doing so is also a significant step towards better understanding yourself and prioritizing your mental and emotional well-being.

I help professionals who experience panic attacks to learn new ways of coping with difficult emotions.

The familiar pounding in your chest, the tightness in your lungs – it can feel like you’re having a heart attack. What’s worse is you are afraid it could happen again at any moment. You feel hesitant going out, being social, even driving, for fear that you’ll have another attack.

As someone who takes pride in your work, who is used to pushing hard and getting a result, it’s common to feel shame about the anxiety attacks. You can wonder

• Why is this panic attack happening?
• Why won’t it go away?
• What do I do when I have panic attacks?
• Do other professionals experience this?

There are many people who experience panic just like you. It’s a common way our bodies react when anxiety flares up. Let’s talk about why panic attacks happen and how to shift your approach to help you grow.

Why you’re experiencing panic attacks: suppressing anxiety

Panic attacks happen when anxiety is “disregulated”. This means that the anxiety isn’t consciously seen or paid attention to. When this happens, the anxiety doesn’t have a backboard. It becomes louder and louder until it shows up in a strong physiological way: heavy breathing, tight chest, and the feeling like something is seriously wrong in our bodies.

Why is the anxiety not consciously paid attention to? For some of us, we don’t like to pay attention when we’re anxious. We might avoid feelings like disappointment, worry, and concern because they make us feel out of control. Sometimes our way of getting through those feelings is to “change the channel”. This is called affect suppression. When the feeling of anxiety comes up we don’t pay attention to it or wonder about it – we try to get it out of our heads. This can look like

• Addictive behaviors
• Fidgeting
• Workaholism
• Excessive phone use
• Substance use
• Sleeplessness
• Avoiding silence

But the trick is, the less we pay attention to the anxiety, the louder it tends to get.

How to make panic attacks stop: seeing anxiety as a signal

For panic attacks to stop, we need to see anxiety as a signal, not a disease. Our anxiety is usually a signal that something doesn’t feel safe. It’s a sign that something needs attention, just like when a fire alarm goes off.

If your building’s fire alarm went off, you wouldn’t put in headphones right away. You’d turn, look, not for the alarm sound, but for the look and smell of smoke. In the same way, our panic attacks are not themselves the thing we need to “fix” or make go away. They are a signal that something is off in our lives. It may be a relationship, a re-emerging trauma, a life-transition, or work-related stressor that is no longer tolerable. Your mind is telling you that you’re unsafe and you need to pay attention.

What happens if we don’t pay attention to the anxiety signal?

If we don’t pay attention to the signal of anxiety, our panic will get worse. The more common panic attacks become, the more they lead to agoraphobia – the fear of leaving the house. You may feel this presently in your life. It’s the feeling of fearfulness and avoidance of any trips or engagements that take you away from home. The fear that you’ll have another panic attack keeps you close to home. People who have agoraphobia struggle to accomplish daily tasks and the world feels unsafe to them.

Additionally, if we don’t pay attention to anxiety, we continue to avoid and suppress it through addictive behaviors. It becomes hard to sleep, hard to rest, hard to concentrate. We depend more and more on substances like caffeine, alcohol, and other addictive substances. We avoid anything that will trigger an attack.

Most of all, when we don’t pay attention to anxiety, we diminish some of the most vibrant parts of ourselves.

There’s a different way to handle anxiety and panic attacks

We need to learn a new way to engage our anxiety if we want panic attacks to subside. For lawyers and other professionals, it can be hard to slow down and trust that doing so will actually move them forward faster than “changing the channel”.

It’s incredibly difficult.

Because listening to your anxiety requires a new voice inside: one that can be understanding and empathetic toward your experience. One that is soothing rather than critical. It can be difficult to trust that this small act is actually a fulcrum that will change the course of your life. Yet this is the work I engage in all the time with people just like you. One of the most powerful things you can do with your panic attack is give yourself a chance to listen to yourself. I can help you do that. Contact me today for a consultation.

Connor McClenahan