These beliefs include such ideas as It helps to expect the worst and Worry shows I care. A person who harbors the belief that worry somehow can have a beneficial effect on the future will naturally feel nervous when they first start to worry less, for fear that they’re not properly taking care of the future by worrying. I’ll take a look at these beliefs in chapter 11.
The use of worry appointments takes some commitment. I suggest you try it several times in the next few days. If it seems to work for you the way I describe in this chapter, then I encourage you to do regular appointments for the next two weeks. Review it again after two weeks and make a decision then about continuing or discontinuing.
I find that most people want to discontinue using the appointments a little sooner than I would recommend, but that’s all right. If, as often happens, they find that the chronic worry habit starts to creep in again after discontinuing, they can always resume, and stay with it for a longer time. It’s probably inconvenient and annoying to do regular worry appointments, and that’s why people are so often motivated to stop, even when they see the benefits. I think most people get a more permanent long-term improvement by staying with the worry appointments for months, rather than weeks.
A good way to commit to this is to keep a brief journal, listing your scheduled worry appointments and making notes of your reactions to the appointment after you complete each one.
Breathing and Worry
Breathing is very often affected by worry and anxiety. We see this most dramatically when a person has a panic attack and feels like he is suffocating for lack of air. He’s not—no one suffocates from panic—but he is experiencing uncomfortable breathing, which tricks him into thinking some catastrophe is about to occur. People with chronic worry often experience a less dramatic but very bothersome discomfort with their breathing as well. This can include such symptoms as feeling lightheaded and dizzy, numbness and tingling in the extremities, difficulty getting a full breath, tension and heaviness, thoughts of passing out, and increased heart rate.
These symptoms aren’t at all dangerous but can grab your attention in ways that make it more difficult to respond to the worry. For this reason, I often find it helpful for people to learn a good breathing exercise. The point of the breathing exercise is not to control your breathing but to make it sufficiently comfortable that you can return your focus to what’s more important—responding to chronic worry.
You may have already tried deep breathing and not had much success. The reason for that is that most descriptions of deep breathing are incomplete. You’ve probably been told, and you’ve probably also read it as well, that what you need to do is “Take a deep breath.” If you’re like most people, that advice hasn’t helped you much. It’s good advice, but it’s incomplete. It doesn’t tell you how to take a deep breath. A good breathing exercise should tell you how to take a deep breath, and that’s what I’m going to do. Here’s the key: When you feel like you can’t catch your breath, it’s because you forgot to do something. You forgot to exhale.
That’s right. Before you can take a deep breath, you have to give one away. Why? Because, when you’ve been breathing in a short, shallow manner (from your chest), if you try to quickly switch to a deep inhale, it’s very hard to do. You’re very likely to simply take a more labored, shallow breath from your chest. That will give you all the air you need, but it won’t feel good.
Go ahead, try that now and see what I mean. Put one hand on your chest, the other on your belly. Use your hands to notice what muscles you’re using to breathe. Breathe very shallowly from your chest a few times, then try to take a deep breath. I think you’ll find that when you inhale, you continue to use your chest muscles rather than your diaphragm or belly. Deep breathing, by contrast, comes from your belly.
When you breathe in this shallow manner, you get all the air you need to live, but you can also get other physical symptoms which add to your discomfort. You might get chest pain or heaviness, because you’ve tightened the muscles of your chest to an uncomfortable degree. You might feel lightheaded or dizzy, because shallow breathing can produce the same sensations as hyperventilation. You might also get a more rapid heartbeat, and maybe numbness or tingling in the extremities as well.
All from breathing short and shallow!
Breathing is actually a sideshow in dealing with chronic worry. The most important response to chronic worry is to use the techniques in this book to develop a different relationship with worry. However, belly breathing can help in managing the physical symptoms of anxiety while you learn how to relate differently to worry. Use it for periodic comfort when you feel the need (but don’t turn it into another method of opposing and resisting worry).
Belly Breathing Exercise
Place one hand on your belt line, and the other on your chest, right over the breastbone. You can use your hands as a simple biofeedback device. Your hands will tell you what part of your body, and what muscles, you are using to breathe.
Open your mouth and gently sigh, as if someone had just told you something really annoying. As you do, let your shoulders and the muscles of your upper body relax, down, with the exhale. The point of the sigh is not to completely empty your lungs. It’s just to relax the muscles of your upper body.
Close your mouth and pause for a few seconds.
Keep your mouth closed and inhale slowly through your nose by pushing your stomach out. The movement of your stomach precedes the inhalation by just the tiniest fraction of a second, because it’s this motion which is pulling the air in. When you’ve inhaled as much air as you can comfortably (without throwing your upper body into it), just stop. You’re finished with that inhale.
Pause. How long? You decide. I’m not going to give you a specific count, because everybody counts at a different rate, and everybody has different size lungs. Pause briefly for whatever time feels comfortable. However, be aware that when you breathe this way, you are taking larger breaths than you’re used to. For this reason, it’s necessary to breathe more slowly than you’re used to. If you breathe at the same rate you use with your small, shallow breaths, you will probably feel a little lightheaded from overbreathing, and it might make you yawn. Neither is harmful. They’re just signals to slow down. Follow them!
Open your mouth. Exhale through your mouth by pulling your belly in.
Pause.
Continue to repeat steps 4 to 7.
Give it a try now. Go ahead and practice the breathing exercise for a few minutes.
Let your hands be your guide. They will tell you if you’re doing this correctly or not. Where is the muscular movement of the breathing? You want it to occur at your stomach; your upper body should be relatively still. If you feel movement in your chest, or notice your head and shoulders moving upwards, start again at step 1, and practice getting the motion down to your stomach.
This might feel awkward and difficult the first few times, because breathing in the short, shallow way is such an old habit for people who struggle with anxiety. Don’t let that bother you. It just means you need persistent, patient practice. Breathing style is a habit, and the best way to retrain a habit is lots and lots of repetition of the new habit.
This isn’t really something new for you. You used to breathe this way all the time, certainly when you were an infant and young child. In fact, if you want to see some world-class belly breathers, visit the newborns in any maternity ward. They don’t breathe with their chests at all—just their tummies, which expand outward when they inhale, and contract inwards when they exhale. Infants don’t do chest breathing!
Having Trouble? Tips to Help Learn Belly Breathing
If you have trouble redirecting your breathing from chest to stomach, practice isolating your stomach muscles first. Interlace your fingers across your stomach, and practice pushing your stomach out, then in, without breathing. As you get good at that, begin to pair it with your breathing.
Use a variety of postures. When you’re sitting down, you may find th
at leaning back in the chair or leaning forward with your forearms on your thighs makes it a little easier than sitting up perfectly straight.
Lie on your back. You can put a heavy book or other object on your chest to make it easier to focus on using your stomach muscles.
Lie on your front, with a pillow beneath your stomach, and pressing your stomach against the pillow.
Practice in front of a full-length mirror, to see what you are doing.
If you are unable to breathe comfortably through your nose, due to allergies or any other reason, use your mouth instead. You will need to inhale even more slowly this way, in order to avoid gulping your air.
You’ll know you’ve mastered this technique once your breathing feels more relaxing and soothing.
Build the Habit
How often should you practice deep breathing? As often as possible, in sessions of one minute or so, for two weeks.
When it’s time to practice, the first thing to do is notice how you’ve been breathing. Then sigh, and switch to belly breathing for about one minute, as you continue doing whatever you were doing before you started. Don’t interrupt your activity. You want good breathing to be portable!
You’ll probably do best if you have a system for reminding yourself to practice. Here are some systems you might use:
Do the deep breathing every hour, at the top of the hour, during your waking day.
Use ordinary, frequent sounds or occurrences in your daily life as signals to do the breathing. For example, you can do the breathing each time: the dog barks
a car horn honks
a phone rings
someone walks by your office
your child drops the sippy cup
you receive a text or tweet
Place stickers or Post-it notes throughout your home, office, or wherever, to remind you.
Tie a string around your finger.
Wear your watch on the opposite hand, and practice each time you notice it.
Set your iPod, wristwatch, or phone to ring periodically.
Do this for two weeks, and you’ll be well on your way to changing your breathing for the better!
How Much Is Enough?
People often want to know if they have to breathe this way all the time.
The answer is no.
Just focus on mastering the technique through regular, brief practice. Add it to your list of automatic responses to worry. Use worry appointments, and mindfulness meditation, on a daily basis. And use the belly breathing whenever you feel the need. Over time, I think you’ll find that you use this kind of breathing more and more as you make it your new habit. But you can let that happen naturally just by following the suggestions above.
It’s Not a Silver Bullet!
Some psychologists and health care professionals believe that professionals such as myself shouldn’t teach our clients belly breathing, because people may come to think of the breathing technique as a silver bullet, a lifesaver, and use it the same way they might use any other anti-worry technique.
They have a point.
Still, I find it useful to show this technique to most of my anxious clients because they often have a bad breathing technique, one that creates more anxious physical symptoms. These physical symptoms give rise to more worries and interfere with your ability to handle the anxiety. But keep this point in mind: Belly breathing is best used to help you work with the worry without getting so focused on unrealistic fears of asphyxiation and other physical concerns. Belly breathing will not protect you from physical threats because shallow breathing doesn’t actually cause physical calamities.
Mindfulness Meditation
People who aren’t accustomed to meditation often think it involves a state of inner peace in which the mind is silent, without all the intrusive thoughts that can interrupt our inner calm. They may occasionally try meditation and feel discouraged when they don’t attain this state of inner quiet and calm.
This isn’t really what meditation is about, at least for most of us. A monk in a monastery, who devotes large amounts of daily time to meditation, may well obtain significant periods of inner peace and quiet. However, most of us will find that intrusive thoughts initially come to the fore when we set out to meditate and have a quiet mind. So meditation actually consists of noticing, and passively observing, all the thoughts that get in the way when we sit down to have inner peace.
This is particularly the case with mindfulness meditation. It’s a process of passively observing thoughts as they come and go while you focus on something basic like your breathing. Don’t try to engage in any discussion with your thoughts, nor try to silence or remove them in any manner. Simply observe them.
I attended a meditation workshop years ago at a conference. The workshop was held in a room adjacent to another workshop led by a speaker with a booming voice. I could hear everything this other speaker said as I tried to follow the meditation instructions. I focused on my breath, but kept having thoughts about what a stupid arrangement this was, and those thoughts disrupted my meditation. I had thoughts about the content of what the other speaker (whom I knew personally) was saying and I got irritated with him. I got irritated with the leader of my workshop for asking us to meditate in such noisy circumstances, and irritated with the conference sponsors for selecting such inadequate facilities. I probably looked passive and contemplative, as I sat there, eyes closed, but inside I had a raging storm of thoughts as I struggled to meditate while my unhappy, complaining thoughts grew louder and more numerous. Having thoroughly criticized the workshop, the conference, the sponsors, and the facility, my thoughts moved on to criticize myself, asking, What is wrong with you that you can’t just sit here and relax? I was actually entertaining thoughts of getting up and walking out when I noticed another thought drift across my mental horizon: That’s just the way you are. That simple thought allowed me to notice and accept my limitations, and I got back to the task of observing my thoughts. That’s meditation.
In this section is a simple practice of mindfulness meditation that can be of help in changing your relationship with chronic worry. (I also offer a recorded version on the website for this book: http://www.newharbinger.com/33186.) Some readers may like it well enough that they are motivated to look more deeply into meditation, to take some instruction and become further involved with meditation as a part of life. That would be great! There’s a lot of value to meditation. For others, this simple starter dose of meditation might be all you need.
Want to try it?
Do you immediately find, in your mind, reasons to postpone this, or to “think about it” before you experiment with it? This is a common occurrence. You can notice that thought for what it is, a thought, without becoming engaged with the apparent content of the thought. In other words, you can have the thought about waiting for a better time or opportunity to meditate, and simply do the experiment now anyway. Nobody says you have to do an excellent job of it, or pick the best time to do it. It’s just an experiment.
What’s that you say? You really have a good reason to wait? You’re on a train, or sitting in a waiting room waiting for a doctor? You have a headache, and could probably do a better job some other time? You’re too restless…or too tired…or too hungry? Those are excellent thoughts! You can have those thoughts, and you can also do the experiment. If you’re willing, go ahead and practice “yes, and,” rather than “yes, but.”
Here’s the exercise:
Sit quietly and comfortably somewhere you can be relatively free of interruption for five to ten minutes.
Take a minute or two to slow down, sit comfortably erect, and turn your attention to your own thoughts and sensations. It probably helps to close your eyes if you want.
Lightly focus your attention on your breathing. Let your attention follow it, as you inhale and exhale. Notice the flow of air as it passes through your nose, your throat, and your lungs. Notice the sensation of your belly as it expands and contracts. Let your attention focus more and m
ore closely on these sensations, as you withdraw your attention from the sights and sounds of the room you occupy. If you don’t want to use your breath as a focus, the sound of a fan or something similar will suffice.
You may experience some brief moments of quiet, and you can focus, lightly, on that experience. Sooner or later, probably sooner, any inner quiet will get interrupted by automatic thoughts. Simply notice those thoughts, without becoming strongly involved in judging them. Simply allow your attention to passively return to your focus when you are interrupted or distracted by thoughts. For most people, meditation is not the achievement of internal quiet. It’s noticing the interrupting thoughts that come to mind when you seek internal quiet.
The interrupting thoughts may clamor for your attention. Notice the forms they take to grab your attention. The thoughts may embody not just worry but also judgments, criticisms, anger, regrets, and more.
Notice the thoughts the way you might notice drops of rain or snow falling onto your windshield, briefly holding your attention until they’re swept away by the windshield wipers and replaced by more raindrops or snowflakes. You don’t need to become deeply involved with each snowflake to become aware that there is plenty of snow, and you don’t need to become deeply involved with each thought to notice that there is plenty of worry, judgment, criticism, and more in your thoughts as they come and go. Notice their coming and going.
The Worry Trick Page 16