Anxiety and fear, like pain, are wired into our nervous system. Also like pain, they are signals that something requires our attention. Anxiety and fear are signals of impending threat. The body reacts virtually instantly to defend itself in the face of a threat. The threat might be a physical challenge, such as an attack by an assailant. Or it might be a psychological threat, such as taking an important examination, giving a speech in public, or having a suspicious spot on a medical X-ray.
A key step in managing fear and anxiety is practicing something we can do without any conscious effort—breathing deeply. But many of us have forgotten how to breathe deeply or never learned to breathe deeply in the first place. Gaining control over our breathing helps tone down our body’s alarm response and quells anxiety. Here’s a diaphragmatic breathing exercise you can learn in about a minute’s time:
1. Sit comfortably in a chair, placing your dominant hand on your stomach.
2. Place your other hand over your upper chest.
3. Breathe deeply, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth, taking in a sackful of air that pushes out your dominant hand with each in-breath. Try to keep your other hand still while breathing in and out. In this way, you regulate your breathing through your diaphragm and not your chest or throat muscles.
4. Match breaths so that each in-breath and out-breath are approximately equal in length.
5. Once you get the knack of it, you can remove your nondominant hand from your chest, letting it lie comfortably on your side.
6. To deepen your state of relaxation, pick a calming word you can repeat silently to yourself on each out-breath, such as the words "one" or "relax." Simply repeat this word silently to yourself each time you exhale. Stretch out the sound of the word as you repeat it. Breathe deeply in and out, repeating your calming word on each out-breath.