When a person begins feeling anxious, their pace of breathing will increase – this is even more true when experiencing full-blown panic. As described elsewhere on this site, this is a hard-wired response in your body to prepare you to fight off an imminent threat or to run for your life. Unfortunately, when that shallow, quick breathing is sustained for a longer period of time, it can make the feeling of anxiety and panic even worse due to inefficient intake of oxygen. For those of us who have experienced full blown panic attacks, it is a truly agonizing experience that feels like death is imminent. It’s horrible.
There are two pieces of good news related to this: 1) it’s extremely unlikely if not impossible that you would actually die of a panic attack, and 2) you can train your body to breathe more slowly so that it does so automatically, and you can also train yourself to slow your breathing even when it’s already increasing due to feelings of anxiety or panic.
There are many systems out there to help you do this: the most simple one is slowly inhaling while slowly counting to 2, and then exhaling even more slowly while counting to 4. Do this repeatedly for about 2 minutes and your brain and body will begin to shift to a more calm and peaceful state. For those with greater lung capacity, you can increase the count. The key is long, slow, deep breaths, ideally from the abdomen/diaphragm rather than from the chest. One way to check this is to place your hand on your stomach and see if it rises while you inhale – if it does, you are breathing from your abdomen/diaphragm.
Another method that Navy SEALS use is called “box breathing” – it works by either imagining a rectangle in your mind or finding the shape of a square or rectangle anywhere in front of you – a door, window, book, screen, sign, bulletin board, anything – and then slowly inhaling while following the outline of the “box” with your eyes from one corner to the next corner, then exhaling while following from the 2nd corner to the 3rd, and then repeating as long as it takes to slow your breathing and calm your feelings of anxiety and/or panic.
There are also several apps that provide a guided breathing experience – most of these can be used either silently by following visual prompts or with audio turned on and a soothing voice guiding you. Many smartwatches also have breathing apps built into them and can be lifesavers when you need help slowing your breathing but can’t leave a meeting or other crowded environment to do so.
Ultimately, it’s most effective if you schedule two or more times a day to intentionally slow your breathing for a couple of minutes each time. Repeated practice is where the magic happens of training your brain to be more calm all on its own, even when you’re not feeling anxious or panicked.