How the Way You Breathe Can Both Cause and Contribute to Anxiety

We have a general idea of what causes anxiety. It can be hereditary, where you are more prone to anxiety because of your parents. It can also be caused by stress, trauma, anxiety-producing life experiences, the way your parents raised you, and so much more.

But anxiety can be even more complex than that. For example, the way you breathe can not only make anxiety worse (as a result of hyperventilation), but actually create anxiety itself.

Let’s talk about it.

Hyperventilation as an Anxiety Symptom

First, it’s important to understand that anxiety affects how you breathe – especially, but not exclusively, with panic attacks. When a person has anxiety, they tend to breathe more quickly. This is the body’s fight or flight mode in action. It is preparing you to fight or flee as though faced with danger, and you’re breathing quickly because if you were to fight or flee, you would need more oxygen to feed your heart as you run away.

It’s the same reason we breathe faster when we’re jogging. Our body is creating more carbon dioxide, so we need more oxygen (by breathing faster) to counteract it.

The problem is that, when you have anxiety, there is no danger. You’re not running. You’re not fighting. So the result is that you’re breathing faster for no reason. When you breathe too fast, your body doesn’t have time to create CO2 before it’s expelled, and you end up with a host of symptoms including chest pains, lightheadedness, a feeling like you can’t breathe (which, ironically, makes you try to take more breaths and makes the hyperventilation worse), and more.

Panic attacks thrive off these symptoms. But really all forms of anxiety can trigger bouts of hyperventilation, which are responsible for many of the most upsetting anxiety-related issues.

So, we know that anxiety itself triggers breathing issues that can, in their own way, trigger more anxiety and make it worse. But could breathing itself actually be a cause of anxiety? The answer appears to be “yes,” but with caveats.

How the Way You Breathe Can Create Anxiety From Nothing

Anxiety is complex, and so even though a person’s breathing can create anxiety, that doesn’t mean it’s a breathing disorder rather than a mental health disorder. Breathing can create the anxiety, but the person still experiences anxiety, and the best way to address it is through therapy.

That said, many people – especially because so many of us are on our phones or computers all day – may be struggling with what’s known as “shallow breathing.”

And there is evidence that this shallow breathing may be caused not only by anxiety and stress, but by the muscles in your body and the tightness of your chest.

Poor posture itself is considered one of the most forgotten causes of shallow breathing, and many of us have terrible posture because of our phone and computer usage. When you have poor posture, your breathing is shallow, and when your breathing is shallow, you run the risk of developing anxiety.

Does Fixing Your Posture Fix Anxiety?

Once you’ve developed anxiety, it’s not something that often goes away on its own. Remember that anxiety is complex, and it’s something that changes how your brain responds to stress and stressful situations. It’s not just how you breathe and the symptoms, but how you think as well. Those are not issues that can typically be fixed by how you breathe.

Once you have anxiety, you will also have shallow breathing, creating a vicious cycle that fixing your posture wouldn’t fix.

But it’s also important to remember that many, many things can create and contribute to anxiety, and that’s why taking care of ourselves is so important. Therapy is the best way to reduce and manage anxiety, but changing your lifestyle overall will go a long way towards helping you keep your anxiety away in the long term and live a more comfortable life.

If you’re looking for a therapist for your anxiety, please reach out to Jung Psych Services, today.

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