Can you feel your heart racing, palms sweating, and stomach tightening? Do you feel dizzy, struggling to breathe or breaking out in a cold sweat when faced with certain situations? Then you may be experiencing symptoms of anxiety.
Anxiety is a powerful force that can affect many aspects of your life. One of the more difficult parts for some people to deal with is anxiety breathing symptoms, which is often caused by hyperventilation. If you're constantly feeling breathless or have difficulty catching your breath, it's time to take action and learn how you can stop them!
The root of these may be traced back to one thing: breathing patterns. Our bodies are equipped with complex systems for managing stress levels on their own accord, but sometimes they need our help too.
Why Anxiety Changes Your Breathing
Your body is hard-wired to any response to stress because of the sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system.
When you feel anxious or scared, a sequence of hormonal changes occur which lead to physical changes that prepare your body to fight or flee. It is your body’s natural way to protect yourself against any danger. So every time you feel stressed or anxious, your body does the same thing: release the same chemical and make a flee or fight response.
1. Hyperventilation Triggered by Stress Hormone
Notice that when you are calm, peaceful, and relaxed, you breathe properly and slowly from your lower lungs. But when you are stressed or even anxious, adrenaline kicks in causing faster heartbeat and breathing as well as higher blood pressure. When this happens, your airways open wider. This type of upper airway breathing causes you to hyperventilate.
2. Hyperventilation Due to Too Much Oxygen
Too much oxygen intake can also trigger hyperventilation. When you panic and breathe excessively, you may feel that you cannot get enough air, but in reality, you are overbreathing.
Hyperventilation due to too much oxygen also happens when you overthink about your breathing. Being too conscious about the way you breathe and even trying to control it can cause you to overcompensate your breathing and take in too much air.
Quickly taking deep breaths is counterproductive. It may signal your brain to expect conflict and lead to increased feelings of anxiety.
How to Feel Calm
Anxiety can affect your breathing even if you’re not hyperventilating. When you’re stressed, you breathe through your mouth instead of your nose.
What you can do is calm yourself down, activating your parasympathetic nervous system.
The parasympathetic nervous system responds like an emergency brake so you can slow down your heart rate, decrease muscle tension, lower your blood pressure, and normalize your breathing to a calm state.
Here are the ways to do this:
1. Breathe Through Your Nose
When you breathe in your nose and resist, the urge to breathe into your mouth can help you be more calm and restore your normal breathing pattern. When you do this, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system as changing your breathing pattern sends a powerful signal to your brain, calling off the alarm.
2. Reestablish Your Normal Breathing Pattern
Gently inhale through your nose and slowly exhale naturally. You’ll notice that your stomach will rise and fall, not your shoulders. Breathing naturally through your nose will help you keep the alarms from sounding off.
Conclusion
When you are experiencing feelings of anxiety, it may affect your breathing. But by establishing calm in your breathing patterns, you will turn off the switch that leads to anxiety attacks and other symptoms.
Hope Seed Support Center is an organization dedicated to providing mental health and support to the community. We offer nutritional therapy and counseling in Houston. Reach out to us today and let us help you overcome anxiety.
