I’ve lived with anxiety for most of my life, so I’ve learned a thing or two about how to get on top of those overwhelming stress hormones before they run rampant!’
Because of the things I’ve learned, I have to say I very rarely go into panic attack mode these days, and that is a blessing.
Panic attacks are no fun.
Us Mums and mumpreneurs have a LOT going on daily that can keep us in ‘run, fight or hide’ AKA the stress response.
My mission is to help with that wherever I can so here’s one of my favourite anxiety tamers!
- It’s quick.
- Easy to do and
- will lower your stress levels instantly!
I call it the Blow It Out Breath.
Use it when you feel overwhelmed with emotion, perhaps panicky or like you’re under attack. It will help calm your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and engage your parasympathetic nervous system (rest & digest) to lower your stress levels and bring you back into your body.
All you have to do is
- Notice you are losing control (and you will get better at this the more you practice it)
- Imagine you have a straw and you are breathing OUT through it. We are often told to take a deep breath first in these situations but actually, I find this makes me feel like I may hyperventilate. When you breathe out as though through a straw first it enables your body to take a natural breath in. Repeat as necessary
- Look around the space you’re in and start counting what you see. We can get tunnel vision when we go into the stress response and our eyes don’t move around. Moving them and counting helps you focus and stops you from internalising and fixating on the negative situation.
- Keep going until you feel calmer.
You can do this without evoking too much notice and if you feel exposed you can always do this in the bathroom.
I hope you don’t need this, but hey, life gets us all sometimes. It’s good to have a few tricks up your sleeve.
You can let me know how you got on with the Blow it Out Breath in my fb group @emotionalalchemyhub
And I did a vlog with a demonstration there too!!