Handling Your Body's Reaction to Fear: Paced Breathing

The book suggests that you need to know you can cope with your physical reactions to fear before facing your fears. Paced Breathing is a technique they suggest is the simplest and most effective for coping with sudden, acute anxiety (as opposed to "chronic" anxiety (i.e. "stress")). They also suggest not doing it right before bed, to at least get out of bed and do something before turning off the light.

Paced breathing refers to a slower, more regular rate of breathing. When doing paced breathing you breathe through your diaphragm rather than your upper chest (i.e. moving your stomach in and out, the way a sleeping baby does). Doing this if you start to get anxious can stop the vicious cycle of breathing shallower and shallower, and by practicing it, you will be more likely to remember to breathe the way you've been practicing and successfully stop the cycle.

There are three key elements to learning to breathe more effectively:
1. Breathe slowly. Concentrate on deliberately slowing down the pace of breathing. Aim for 8-10 breaths per minute, but you don't need to count.
2. Breathe through your nose. Both inhale and exhale through your nose.
3. Alternate paced and normal breathing. It's normal to have a balance of chest breaths and diaphragmatic breaths. The average ratio is 1 to 4, respectively. Aim to shift the ratio in favor of abdominal breathing.

If you have a chronic reparatory condition, check with your doctor first to be sure this exercise is safe for you (it'd even be good for you usually, but you should check first, the book says). Also there are times, like after strenuous exercise, your body needs to breathe both in the chest and abdomen, so don't worry in these cases. It is normal.

Preliminary steps:
Step 1: Find a quiet spot where you'll be free from interruptions.
Step 2: Get comfortable. Pick a spot where you can sit or lie comfortably.
Step 3: In order to rate your progress, learn to rate your level of anxiety using a 0-10 scale. Use your own personal ratings, and don't worry if it takes a few ratings to get the hang of it. You can use the following scale as a guideline:

Step 4: It doesn't matter if you close your eyes or not.

At least the first few times you practice paced breathing, begin by lying on your back. Place your hand or something light on your stomach between your belly button and the bottom of your rib cage. Concentrate on making your stomach move your hand or the object. If you are successful, you should be able to get your stomach to move toward the ceiling. It's that simple! Once you've become proficient at paced breathing, you won't need to keep watching your stomach to know that you're breathing diaphragmatically.

If you have difficulty coordinating your breathing with moving your stomach, don't become frustrated. Your body knows how to breath diaphragmatically - you do it every night when you go to sleep. Just remember the two basic rules: make sure you're breathing slowly, and breathing through your nose.