Anxiety relief breathing

           

7/11 breathing is a good skill to use for anxiety. It’s recommended to do it for 10-15 minutes. Like any other skill it does require a lot of practice I advice that you practice it when you are feeling calm (so you are ready in a time when you need it). If you lose count, simply start again until you do 15 minutes. It will also help with distraction even if you don’t get it right the first time. 

Breathing out longer than you breathe in actually activates your parasympathetic nervous system-

Anxiety is your sympathetic nervous system (“fight or flight”) setting off all the alarms, while breathing like this will set the parasympathetic system (“rest and digest”) into action shutting off the alarms and settling your nerves.

Other things that help are laughing, checking out what’s going on around you (moving head and eyes to orient to your surroundings), or getting curious about something. :)

personal update

Through out this project, I have educated myself a lot on different topics regarding depression and anxiety, as well as learned things in class about them. I have my own personal view point on depression being a person who struggles with it, as well as anxiety, in my regular everyday life. Being a person who struggles with depression, I always want to understand why what's going on in my head is. This project has made it a lot easier to learn about these things from a psychological point of view, instead of just my personal understanding. It is, however, hard to blog about this without it getting too personal, but I do find it to be an interesting topic to venture upon. All I can hope is that I can help someone in some way.

                                                -Shiloh