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You are in: Home > Chest Information > Living With > Coping With Anxiety

Coping With Anxiety

• Anxiety and panic attacks
• Recognising anxiety
• Physical symptoms
• Emotional problems
• Effects on behaviour
• Controlling your anxiety
• Breathing control
• Ask for help

Anxiety and panic attacks

One of the symptoms of many chest conditions is breathlessness. Because this breathlessness is not in relation to physical effort, it is often felt to be out of your own control and so when severe, causes anxiety and sometimes feelings of panic.

Unfortunately, these anxious and panicky feelings tend to make the breathlessness worse, which in turn increases your anxiety.

You can learn to control your feelings of anxiety. Taking control of breathlessness and learning how to deal with anxiety and panic attacks will help you to get the most out of life.

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Recognising anxiety

Anxiety can affect people in many different ways, physically, emotionally and behaviourally. It's possible to mistake symptoms of anxiety for illness.

Learning to recognise your symptoms will help you to control them and understand what is actually happening.

The symptoms of panic do not mean that you are going mad. They do, however, make you more tired. Being anxious and tense is a serious drain on your energy. Once you have learned how to manage anxiety, you will find you have more energy for other things.

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Possible physical symptoms include:

• Headaches
• Muscle tension or pain
• Stomach problems
• Sweating
• Feeling dizzy
• Bowel and / or bladder problems
• Breathlessness and / or palpitations
• Dry mouth
• Tingling in body
• Sexual problems

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Possible emotional problems include:

• Feeling irritable
• Feeling anxious or tense
• Feeling low
• Feeling of apathy
• Feeling low in self esteem

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Possible effects on behaviour include:

• Temper outbursts
• Over drinking and / or smoking
• Changes in eating habits
• Withdrawing from usual activities
• Being unreasonable
• Being forgetful and / or clumsy
• Rushing around

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Controlling your anxiety

Learning how to cope with these feelings will give you the power to control the very unpleasant symptoms involved and help you to deal with what is actually happening.

There are some techniques that you can learn that will, with practice, help you to deal with any situation that makes you feel anxious:

• Learn how to talk yourself out of panic by concentrating on how you actually feel and not how you imagine you are going to feel.
• Replace negative thoughts with positive images of you doing things without any problem.
• Try and remember that most things are not as bad as you think they are going to be.
• Learn to check your breathing so that you don't breathe too fast (hyperventilate) and practise breathing control. Counting one thousand, two thousand, three thousand helps.
• Learn and practise a relaxation technique.

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Breathing control

This is a very simple way of learning how to breathe normally and restore normal breathing when you are anxious.

It involves gentle breathing using the lower part of your chest and stomach, with the upper chest and shoulders relaxed.

Practising breathing control and relaxation techniques when you are feeling calm and relaxed will help you to cope with stressful situations when they arise. If you become confident about how to use these techniques, it will be much easier for you to use them when you actually need them.

How to do breathing control Settle yourself into a chair in a comfortable position. Make sure your back is well supported. Rest one hand on your lower rib cage with the other hand on your upper thigh. Let your shoulders and upper chest relax, think about letting your shoulders go. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Concentrate on letting the lower part of your chest move under your hand. Feel your hand rise and fall with your chest as you breathe gently in and out. Breathe at your own rate. Doing this should not tire you. Continue until your breathing is back under control once more. Once you feel happy about doing this, you may like to try resting both hands down on your thighs with the palms of the hands facing up.

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Ask for help

All of this is quite hard to take in at once. Some people find it easier to learn these techniques with the help of a professional, e.g. a psychologist or counsellor. Ask your doctor to refer you if you think this would help.

Relaxation CDs are available in bookshops and supermarkets. Some community centres run relaxation classes – your local library, or health centre, should have information about local classes.

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