When anxiety causes shortness of breath, the feeling can be alarming. Even though you may be breathing rapidly, you still feel as though you can't get enough air. What is happening is that you are hyperventilating. Hyperventilation frequently occurs with anxiety attacks or feelings of generalized anxiety. Finding a way to stop hyperventilating will get rid of the shortness of breath that anxiety can cause.
Instructions
1. Talk to yourself. Telling yourself, "It is anxiety and it will pass," will often help you to calm down and begin to breath at a normal rate again. With any anxiety-related symptom, understanding the cause can help relieve anxiety. Since you know you are hyperventilating, you don't have to worry that you are short of breath because there is something horribly wrong. Keep in mind that hyperventilation can be very subtle and doesn't always involve loud and overly rapid respirations.
2. Sit down and put your hand on your stomach. If you do not feel your stomach rising with each inhalation, you are breathing by using your upper chest. This makes hyperventilation much more likely. Switch to belly breathing, and practice doing it often. Changing the habit of chest breathing will reduce instances of anxiety-related shortness of breath.
3. Do yoga breathing. Put your hand on your stomach to make sure that you are taking breaths from your belly and not your chest. Inhale very slowly through your nose to a count of seven. Hold your breath for a count of four. Exhale through your mouth to a count of seven. Purse your lips when you are exhaling, as though you are blowing out a birthday candle.Take a couple of regular belly breaths, and repeat. Do this until you have broken the cycle of being short of breath due to anxiety. This technique works due to raising the levels of carbon dioxide in your blood, which become out of balance when you are hyperventilating.
4. Talk to your doctor about taking a beta-blocker for hyperventilation or an anxiety medication. These can block the symptoms of too much adrenaline, which can cause hyperventilation.
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