Anxiety has a public-relations problem. We treat it like a flaw in the machine. It is closer, structurally, to a smoke detector that has been tuned to be more sensitive than the room around it currently requires.
The amygdala — the small almond-shaped structure that, at this moment, is deciding whether your heart should beat faster — is doing its job. The job is to keep you alive. The job description was written in an environment with very different threats than yours.
The five-second exhale, explained
Of all the cheap, fast, well-studied interventions in psychology, the slow exhale is the one most likely to work in the next four minutes. Inhale for four counts. Exhale for six or eight. The vagus nerve, which connects your brain to your heart and gut, responds to long exhales by quietly telling the whole system: false alarm.
“You cannot think your way out of an anxious body. You can breathe your way out of one.”A working definition of self-regulation