Heather Mason, Founder and CEO of The Minded Institute, shares her recommendations for severe anxiety.
Over the years I’ve been very honest about the mental health challenges I have faced and how Yoga and Buddhist practices have transformed my life and been my saving grace. However, what I rarely address is the difference between techniques that can help manage low to moderate level anxiety vs. severe anxiety.
Firstly, I want to add the caveat that nothing I am sharing below offers guaranteed relief, should not be a substitute for any medical treatment you are seeking, and is based on my own lived experience both as a person with anxiety and as a clinician. The below is derived from an in-depth understanding of the nervous system, spiritual practice, and extrapolation from research. However, the techniques suggested are not researched and come from my own creation, not the advice of others. I am thinking of writing a book on this topic and below is a little introduction to the Heather Mason guide – my personal guide – of how I have worked with myself and others over the years when anxiety has been crippling.
For those of us that have had severe anxiety, we know that there is a big difference between worrying about something, feeling on edge, being less tolerant, having narrow thinking, and having bit of trouble sleeping, versus a full-blown attack of dread and fear that may swiftly become a panic attack.
Other common experiences of this level of anxiety include feeling unable to leave the house (not to be confused with agoraphobic),, the feeling of heat and dizziness that makes us feel faint, and a sense that we are entirely losing control of our mind which in and of itself can be incredibly scary.
It is not my experience that self-help books or the internet provide lots of information about self-management of intense crippling anxiety (although it is the purview of psychology and psychiatry).I want to offer some suggestions from the mind-body realm, as not many trained clinicians understand or know mind-body practices that work well with this level of anxiety.
If you choose to use anything below, you should be familiar with the technique before the moment of abject dread.
This means that the techniques below are probably only helpful if you have some experience with them;, try them out in times when you are feeling okay or just a little anxious. Practising them when you are not overwhelmed by anxiety will be useful in promoting resiliency and will mean you can be fluent with them when you need them most.
When employing anything to help yourself, you need to understand what you are currently capable of. Most importantly, can you move or not? If going for a run would change things, but you don’t run, or currently feel totally frozen, then this clearly would not be a sensible or accessible choice.
Below are suggestions for when you feel you cannot move and are almost pinned down by your anxiety, even though you might also be, ironically, struggling with sitting still. Please note: whichever technique you may choose from below, once you are finished with it, do another one.
Severe anxiety will likely return if you don’t put a good hour or more into the practice. Altered brain chemistry and the neurological pathways need time to taken root otherwise you will probably ricochet right back to where you started after just a few moments of relief. If you are struggling with something specific that keeps triggering you and which is causing the anxiety, you might need to repeat several of the practices below multiple times a day. In each instance, if life and your nervous system allow it, try to sleep.
- Breathing..
- My suggestion in most instances is to engage in slow, controlled breathing with a long exhale.
- However, if anxiety is gripping you in the most intense way, sometimes rapid breathing is in order. Rapid breathing cuts through thoughts more strongly and changes the neurochemical more quickly than slow breathing.
- Having said that, if you are struggling to breathe, you are dizzy, or have any contraindications for rapid breathing like high blood pressure, pregnancy, psychosis, or bipolar disorder, this is not the tool for you right now (or at all).
- If rapid breathing seems sensical (and you have former experience with it), try 5 rounds of kapalabhati with 60 intense pumps followed by breath holds of 30-60 seconds on the inhale and 20 seconds exhale. By intense pumps I mean strong guttural pushes of the abdomen and diaphragm. Be careful not to push too hard if you have lots of tension in the neck and shoulders.
- Another rapid breathing technique is the Wim Hof technique.
- Whether you choose kapalabhati or Wim Hof, do this twice more with 3-minute gaps between each group of rounds. It is important when you finish that you then do something else. If you can move, you might do physical practice that seems appropriate.
- You can watch the full ‘Breath Techniques To Reduce Anxiety’ series for free here. This exact protocol is not there, but you can learn many other things and practices akin to what is suggested.
- Listen to a Yoga, Buddhist, or inspirational talk from a teacher you respect. It is best if this is someone you are accustomed to listening to so you have a conditioned response to their voice, and their message aligns with a value system you espouse but happen to be struggling to connect with right now. While listening to this talk, breathe in and out deeply but gently. Let the breath be slow. Every time you notice you are getting lost in your thoughts, repeat the last thing the teacher said out loud which should help bring you back to the present; hard to think of something else while saying a different thing!
- Engage in the Kirtan Kriya while pointing and flexing your toes. Practise the kriya for at least 10 minutes. Keep pointing and flexing until you cannot do it anymore; doing it for over 10 minutes is probably not possible and will likely make walking hard the next day Around 3 minutes should be the maximum time. Your calves will tire quickly and the desire to keep going will take you out of your anxious thoughts, as you will feel actively fatigued. If it feels appropriate, take a 3 minute break and continue 2 more times.
- As a variation, you can also try singing your feelings while using this practice.
- Call a pre-agreed breath friend who talks you through a breathing technique – it could be arapid or a slow breathing technique as described above.
- Move your eyes gently from left to right while engaging in slow controlled ujjayi breathing while flexing and pointing the feet. The eyes should only move back and forth for about 1 minute (the nerves of the eyes are gentle and should not be overworked) before resting for two minutes and then beginning the movement again. You can do this for up to 10 rounds.
- Get a journal and start writing anything you can on the paper while engaging in slow controlled breathing. This can be interspersed with rapid breathing if it becomes overwhelming. However, I find it is nearly impossible to write and breathe rapidly, so you would need to be taking short breaks, rapid breathing and then writing again. When you feel able to, write five things you feel grateful for.
Many of the above techniques might seem odd, but they are all relying on the same principle; getting your brain out of its obsessive anxious loop and into another state. These are all based on an understanding of how the brain operates. Rapid breathing, speaking/singing, listening to insightful words (while also sending different feedback to your brain), moving your eyes, moving your fingers, or moving your feet, all send lots of different information to the brain and shift circuitry. Pairing such things together floods the brain with new information, giving you a moment of respite and building new pathways. Note that it is unlikely that any one technique will work all the time so you must be willing to be flexible while also feeling free to chop and change the above suggestions as you feel is necessary.
Please let me know by leaving a comment below if you have your own mind-body techniques for extreme anxiety when moving (barring the fingers, eyes, and feet) feels almost impossible. Sharing in this way may help other people like yourself that really need a lifeline in what can feel like the most unbearable moments.
I wish you peace in your journey and experiences. Namaste, Heather.
