The role of breath in the management of anticipatory anxiety



Do you remember when at the sole idea of ​​performing a given action a creeping anxiety takes hold of you and you would do everything, really everything, in order to avoid that task? Go to a place, take the means, leave for a trip etc ...

Well, in very poor words, you are experiencing an attack of anticipatory anxiety and are implementing the strategy of avoidance related to it: try to escape the event feared in every way because it causes discomfort, so much as to cause anxiety before of a departure and to question the holiday itself.

Leaving aside this profane explanation, we leave the floor to an expert on the subject for a technical definition of the disorder: " The term anticipatory anxiety is used to describe a condition of anxiety to the idea of ​​having to face some more or less distant future feared situations. Well, this type of anticipatory anxiety is characteristic of Panic Disorder. Those who suffer from this problem tend to live with concern the mere idea of ​​having to face situations that are considered at risk of panic attacks such as travel, driving in traffic, leaving home, staying alone, entering the subway in the future ", explains Dr. Spagnulo, psychiatrist and psychotherapist.

Why is this type of anxiety to be recognized and learned to manage? First of all because it is the antechamber and the incubator of the panic attack (which often follows it after hours or days), then for the limiting component that it brings with it: in fact, there is a tendency to avoid the event that it generates it by doing nothing more than to make the anxious state chronic and entailing a, sometimes very serious, limitation of one's personal freedom.

Furthermore, recent studies show that states of anxiety that are not properly managed would cause the shortening of telomeres, favoring cell aging.

Stress is an enemy of our brains, why?

A simple but powerful exercise

Obviously understanding the root causes of one's anxiety states is a profound work that must be done primarily by the person and, if necessary, with the supervision of a professional. Here we will limit ourselves to providing some suggestions and giving you some food for thought to put into practice when you feel this specific type of anxiety.

Here is an important exercise : as suggested by the aforementioned Dr. Spagnulo the first thing to do is to become aware of the malaise that is being experienced, of the thoughts and fears that distinguish it.

At this point, attention is drawn to the breath, as many meditation techniques teach. There is no standard time, it continues until a feeling of relief is felt and the "thought-resulting anxiety" loop breaks.

Once the calm has been regained, the usual activities continue without arranging any avoidance behavior. If distressing thoughts return, the exercise of attention to the breath is repeated until they are thinner and so on.

The point of this technique is not to erase anxiety, but to recognize it, to manage it and to slowly tear away a few moments of calm, breath after breath.

Discover also the useful yoga asanas against anxiety

Commit to your own well-being

Just so little? No, we need the most important thing: constant commitment and the desire to face and solve our problems. At first, this exercise will seem useless or trivial because avoiding it is much more comfortable: we don't fall into this trick of our mind and at least give it a chance

Seeing is believing.

Are you in the bank line and starting to get impatient? In the meantime, perform breathing exercises.

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