You’re feeling anxious and it’s beginning to feel overwhelming. Maybe you’re about to take an important phone call, or going into a social gathering, or entering some other situation that tends to cause you anxiety — even a panic attack. What do you do?

A good breathing technique or 2 is a necessary tool to have in your belt.

Why Breathing Techniques Work For Anxiety

Put simply, breathing techniques allow you to address your anxiety at the level of your body. When you calm your body down, you calm your mind down. Mental chatter or trying to “will” yourself to calm down can often make anxiety worse. (“Just calm down!”, “Oh no, I’m feeling anxious again!”). Using breathing techniques allows you to bypass this chatter by calming your body and redirecting your attention.

Physically, when you are anxious, your sympathetic nervous system is highly activated. This is the system that controls the “fight-or-flight” response, and causes your body to be on high alert. When your sympathetic nervous system is more active, your heart rate is higher and your in-breath is more exaggerated.

Breathing techniques (at least the ones used to manage anxiety) are designed to lengthen your out-breath, activating your parasympathetic nervous system.

The parasympathetic nervous system is the yin to the sympathetic nervous system’s yang, and is responsible for relaxation and recovery. When your parasympathetic nervous system is more active, your heart rate slows and your body calms down.

It doesn’t matter what’s going on in your head, your body will slow down and you will be calmer.

Breathing Techniques and Attention

Breathing techniques not only work by using your body, but your attention as well. By focusing on your breath and keeping to the technique, your attention is not on the past or on all of the things that could possibly go wrong. It is in the present moment, on your body and breath. If a worry does come up, your attention is automatically redirected to your breath rather than spiraling into worry after worry. You are able to create an internal space where all that matters is your breath.

Don’t Forget: You Have to Actually Use Them!

For breathing techniques to be useful, you have to actually use them. Choose one to learn, and practice it a few times while you’re calm. Imprint it into your memory. Then, aim at working it into your routine whenever you start to feel anxious. You will get to a point where doing a breathing technique when experiencing increasing anxiety is automatic for you. You will begin to replace your current pattern of dealing with anxiety (which might be making it worse!), with this new, more effective pattern.

A Caveat

I do want to mention that there are many aspects to anxiety and breathing techniques are not the be-all-end-all. They will have an effect in the moment, and be useful long term once you make it a habit to use them. This will go a long way for most people, and for some, this is enough. However, deeper work can be done in therapy. If your anxiety is affecting your every-day functioning or creating a barrier to living the life you want to live, exploring therapy options is highly recommended.