What is anxiety?
Anxiety is a feeling. A feeling we often get when we are worried about something that is about to happen or we think might happen in the future.
Each of us will experience and feel anxiety differently. For some people It may feel like your heart is pounding through your chest, for others it may feel like their stomach is tied up in noughts .
Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety at some point in their life. It is a natural human response to stressful or scary situations.
Anxiety can become a problem if we experience it very strongly, for long periods of time, or when it begins to have a negative impact on our life.
Anxiety is a normal feeling. But it is important that we learn to recognise when feel it and how it impacts our lives.
How can we better cope with anxiety?
One way to help us when we experience anxiety is to focus on our physical symptoms, particularly our breathing and our heart rate.
When we get anxious our heart rate increases as our heart pumps blood fast around our body, to help us prepare to run away from the threat.
Using some simple breathing exercise we can lower our heart rate and reduce the physiological response.
One example could be box breathing. Box breathing is simply when we breathe in four seconds hold for four seconds breathe out for four seconds and hold for seconds. We can repeat this for as many times as need to try and relax. I would recommend trying it for three rounds.
