5 Simple Techniques to Deal with Anxiety

Hi guys and welcome to today’s session on the 5 simple techniques to deal with anxiety.

Now, the reason I thought to do this little quick video today is because I was recently at a dinner party, and a lady friend of mine had approached me on how to deal specifically with her teenage son who was really struggling with social anxiety, and more specifically at this time of the year since many students are returning back to school. She just kind of said, “Is there any kind of quick tips and techniques that you’ve learned along the way as a psychotherapist that may be helpful to my teenage son?”

I just thought I’d kind of throw this together to hopefully provide some good content in case that you may, or have a loved one that struggles with anxiety. Some of the things I’m going to cover will need to be coached, that’s how I teach it in my clinic. Some of them you can do on your own. I guess you will see as we get through them which is which. The first thing we’re going to look at is just a simple breathing technique. As you see there’s a pretty rudimentary kind of drawing of the lungs. I’m just going to my cursor on here. Most of the time when you ask somebody to take a deep breath in, if you observe them they usually say they are. However when you look at them their shoulders usually go up. What that usually means is that the lungs don’t really have anywhere to go so it forces your shoulders to come up.

In fact if you try to get into diaphragmatic breathing, it’s actually your belly that will push out on your organs so it will cause your belly to kind of just get inflated like a balloon, if you will. The first technique is full diaphragmatic breathing. Before I proceed, if you look at this kind of little caricature you might see my cursor there on the screen. A lot of the areola are in the bottom half of the lung. By inhaling deeply, you get much more benefit of the oxygen and thus you get better oxygenation. Now, it does take a couple repetitions of practice in order to have this work effectively. How I usually coach this is I ask people to put a hand on their chest, and 1 hand on their stomach. The goal of the technique is to raise the bottom hand, so the hand that’s on your belly.

Now for a lot of my clients when I get them to do this, it’s actually while standing up. I find in a chair the proximity of the legs to the stomach doesn’t allow for the belly to really inflate out…if you’re laying down in a bed, this technique works really well too. It’s to take a really slow deep in breath through the nose, and as you do so not feeling your shoulders go up, but actually your stomach get pushed out. For a lot of my clients, especially young clients, I just kind of use this kind of language where I want you to pretend like there’s a balloon in your stomach. With every breath that you take, every deep breath that you take, we’re inflating that balloon.

What you’ll find that when you do this, and when you practice this, usually after about 4 to 6 repetitions the person feels much more relaxed. In fact some of my clients feel a little bit light headed because they got so much more oxygen within their lung capacity. That’s our start, is just that full diaphragmatic breathing. Like I said, it’s not to raise your shoulders with a deep breath, it’s to push the belly out with that deep breath.

The second technique is I want you to be able to find a focal point that’s above horizon. The camera right now for me is right at horizon. What I want to do is just slightly above horizon. If you look at my eyes on camera, hopefully you can see that, it’s just slightly above where the camera is. As I focus on that elevated point, I keep my eyes on that elevated point and I do what’s called, “Square breathing.” Square breathing is pretty simple, you take an in breath for 5, you hold for 5, you breathe out for 5 counts, and then you breathe normal for about 5 seconds.

Now, when I’m coaching someone in doing this, if you’re teaching this to a friend, or you’re having a friend being able to help you when you’re in a more stressed state, or a panic state, the most important things for them to do is to create an auditory sound of the in breath. A lot of people will use very blip language like, “Oh you’re panicking, just breathe.” Well obviously if the person could do that, they wouldn’t need your help. It’s much more useful to kind of forcefully have them hear and match your in breath.

How it works is simply like this. You count them down, so if you’re coaching a friend you say, “Okay, in 3, 2, 1 breathe in. Hold, and out for 5. Good. Then breathe normal.” Again, by doing … I feel just more calm and relaxed just doing it just now. As you do that for about 5 to 10 repetitions, the person will feel much calmer. Again, it’s always keeping in mind here that focal point. The point above the eyes, then you focus on the square breathing. Again with your eyes up you can say, “We’re going to start in 3, 2, 1, breath in. Hold, and out. Breathe normal.” Again, when you try that with a person for about 3 to 5 repetitions.

You’ll see that technique 2 through 4, so the next 2 slides in addition to that 1 always focuses on that square box breathing. It’s the first graphic you’ll see on the next slide. Now, with this next technique, I’m just going to move my screen a little bit over here so it’s more useful, there we go. It’s the use of a modulator. Now, I tried to put something on screen that maybe useful, but it’s really instead of a focal point, you use more a modulator. A modulator is really used in hypnosis, but you just follow the hand up and down.

Again, it’s to, you use the same techniques as we did before. “At the count of 3 you’re going to follow my hand up. At the top we’re going to do our pause for 5 seconds, and then we’re going to slowly exhale for 5 seconds.” Again, if you’re the coach here in this perspective, the friend, the coach, the helper, make sure to extenuate your breath on the in, and on the out. This is how it would work. “In 3, 2, 1, breathe in. Hold, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and out. Breathe normal.” That’s why you see the graphic on the screen of having your hand go up and down. Again, about 4 to 10 repetitions. I usually like to do it with about 5 repetitions with my clients and they usually say that they feel so much more calm and relaxed after doing this just for a few quick brief moments.

Now, the next technique is also very helper oriented. The difference is here we’re going to still be using the modulator, but here the helper will have the modular clasp their hand so that they follow together. It will look like this … of course I’m holding my own hand, but you kind of get the idea. “In 3, 2, 1 breathe in. Hold, and out.” The person will hold the helpers hand. As they hold the helpers hand they’re using their hand as the modulator, and also they’re regulating their breathing at the same time. This is especially good with young children, especially the ones below age 12. They find that connectedness really, really helpful. I also know with some adults they prefer this technique.

The reason I give you several is because you can mix and match. Obviously if you have a helper around, a significant other, a family member, they can kind of help you when you’re really struggling. Also, there’s a couple good techniques like the focal point, and that kind of stuff, and the visualization techniques we’re going to look at next, that you can do on your own so it’s not necessary to have somebody there.

The very last technique is the use of visualizations. Here, one of the visualizations that I like using is the visualization of the horse. As the person is breathing I just get them to notice the in breath, the coolness of the in breath, and the warmth of the out breath. As they do that I get them to physically imagine stroking a horse. Between the nose, or between the nostrils, up the bridge of the nose, into the mane, down the back, notice the muscles in the legs, and the bristleness of the tail. They do that fluid motion with their hand.

By doing that, I found with clients, especially my young clients, that they were able to get relaxed in just doing that simple visualization 2, 3 times. A lot of times it’s not the ability to slow down your thoughts, it’s the ability to have resources where you can get calm, where your brain will start to work again. Know that the more the stress goes up, the more the brain shuts off. That’s why it’s really important to get the person kind of grounded and focused again. That’s simply the horse, it’s just simply a visualization where they imagine petting a horse between the nose, into the head, between the ears, and I usually add visualizations like, “Notice the ears moving right and left.” Horses are just such a gentle creature, a lot of people can really associate with the power and gentleness of the horse, and working your way all the way down the body.

Now I’ve been asked, “Is it important to move the hand at the same time or is it just the visualization?” Actually it’s both. When you can do the visualization accompanying with the hand movement, I think it’s the ebb and flow of the hand movement is also helpful in creating that peaceful calm relaxed state of mind. The last 1 is a technique I’ve done clinically with some clients that were really struggling in terms of feeling anxious. It worked really well in my environment in Sarnia, I had an office that had a nice little backyard. A lot of times I would say to clients, “Okay well just for the first few moments here we’re going to walk and talk.” I get them to take their shoes off and socks off, to roll up their slacks or whatever they were wearing, and to just kind of feel the grass between their toes.

All the while they do that, they focus on their breath. Again, the coolness of the in breath, and the warmth of the out breath. As they walk through the grass it helps them get grounded, centered, and focused in the moment. It’s great to have great techniques like cognitive restructuring and all that kind of stuff, but I find that it’s almost impossible for those techniques to work when the person is not kind of grounded in the moment.

These are the 5 simple techniques that I’ve used with several clients that have been very beneficial in terms of helping them get kind of centered, and grounded again. Then like I said before, the use of other techniques like cognitive behavioral have been really helpful to both identify the triggers that gets person into trouble with anxiety, as well as identifying ways to get out of it. Lastly, thanks for joining me. Like usual please leave comments, likes, suggested topics that you would like for me to cover in sessions to come. Thanks so much for joining, have an awesome day.