Why anxiety causes shortness of breath?

What are the physical symptoms of anxiety?

Anxiety is a natural fear response that the brain sends to our body to turn on our flight, fight, or freeze response.  This is something that the brain does when it senses a threat, whether the threat is real or not. Many physical symptoms are associated with anxiety, such as rapid breathing, tightening of the chest, fast heart rate, sweating, dry mouth, and many others.  Shortness of breath is one, and it can be two-fold by being a reaction to anxiety and causing anxiety.

Why shortness of breath?

Our brain’s main goal is protection.  When we start to feel anxious many physical symptoms, as listed above, begin to happen.  The reason for this is that the brain sends signals to our bodies to prepare for an attack.  When this happens, the heart starts to pump faster to help with clotting. If an attack were to occur, we start to breathe faster to supply oxygen to the body.  By us breathing faster, it can cause us to feel short of breath.  This feeling can cause panic, which further fuels the flight, flight, or freeze response. Recognizing that these sensations are just the body's way of protecting us can help us switch from panic mode to getting back into a regulated state.

What can I do?

When you start feeling the physical symptoms of anxiety, and when the shortness of breath becomes a concern, it is important to try to override the system by getting your breathing back to normal. Breathing is easy to do, and you can do it anywhere.  You can do this by taking deep breaths in and holding those breaths and then releasing them out.  A good method for this is to remember 5’s.  Take a breath in for the count of 5, then hold that breath in for a count of 5, and then release for a count of 5.  Doing this for a few minutes will send a signal back to the brain that the threat is over and will help bring the body back to homeostasis, and the anxiety can dissipate.