What to Do When “Take a Deep Breath” Doesn’t Work
Sep 15, 2022
Have you ever been feeling anxious, worried or stressed-out and someone says to you, “Take a deep breath.” and it just didn’t work? Or have you offered this advice to a child and they resisted it? They said, “No!” or “I can’t!” There are several reasons for this.
Most people know that a deeper, slower breath can calm the nervous system, but sometimes it’s hard to do that. When stressed or anxious, your breath becomes short and shallow. If you are often stressed and worried, then restricted breathing becomes a habit and habits can be hard to break.
There are other reasons you may find it hard to take a deep breath.
Watch the video to get some fun breathing facts and 5 reasons why you may not be able to breathe deeply when you are anxious…along with what to do about it.
In the video, I mention “resistance”. Here’s another video I did about that - https://youtu.be/4nQSgGJQZhc
If you’d like some help developing better breathing habits, check out our 21-Day Journey from Anxious to Awesome - https://www.anxioustoawesome.com/21-day-journey. We’re helping you on a day-by-day basis - in small, bite-sized pieces - develop these kinds of healthy habits so you can be the captain of your own ship on the journey from anxious to awesome.
Get 5 Surprisingly Simple Ways to Help Kids Feel Less Anxious and More Awesome
We are passionate about helping children better understand and move through anxious feelings. It’s a big problem for a lot of kids right now! So we’ve created a free resource guide full of proven strategies that have been successfully used with kids just like yours for many years.
Whether anxiety has been showing up in your life more lately, or it’s been around a long time, this free guide will help you and your kids shift out of anxious feelings today!
