How Fighting Anxiety Makes It Worse: The Mind-Breath Connection and the Power of Engagement

This podcast episode features Dr. K interviewing Ana, a streamer who initially started streaming to overcome her social anxiety and discomfort with public judgment. Ana shares her lifelong struggle with self-consciousness, stemming from childhood experiences of being teased for her appearance and interests. She describes how these anxieties manifest, leading to negative assumptions about how others perceive her, and also discusses a physical symptom: persistent breathing difficulties that her doctor attributed to anxiety, where she feels unable to take a full breath, especially when nervous.\n\nDr. K delves into the intricate relationship between the mind and breath, explaining it as a two-way street where mental states influence breathing patterns, and conversely, conscious control of breath can influence one's mental state. He illustrates this with examples of different breathing patterns associated with emotions like calm, panic, and anger, highlighting axes such as depth and speed. He also references a fascinating study on facial expressions, demonstrating how even partially mimicking an emotion can induce that feeling, underscoring the body's powerful feedback loops and the principle of homeostasis.\n\nCrucially, Dr. K argues against the common approach of "fighting" anxiety. He uses metaphors like being at war with anxiety, comparing it to cancer of the mind that grows with attention, and holding water in one's hands – the harder you try to grasp it, the more it slips away. He explains that active suppression or distraction, while seemingly helpful, often creates tension and reinforces the anxiety, making it stronger in the long run. This is particularly evident in Ana's experience where trying to control her breathing only worsened it.\n\nThe core practical insight offered is the distinction between "distraction" and "engagement." While distraction is an active effort to push away unwanted thoughts, engagement is a natural, effortless movement towards the present moment, allowing one to be fully absorbed. Dr. K demonstrates how engaging Ana in the conversation about mind-body connections naturally alleviated her breathing anxiety without any conscious effort to fight it. The episode concludes with the recommendation to acknowledge anxiety gently, allow it to be present without resistance, and cultivate genuine engagement as a more effective path to managing and ultimately overcoming anxious states.

"I worry a lot about what I talk about what I say how people perceive me I worry that people judge me and maybe it doesn't matter but it's still something that I typically worry about in a social setting."

"I think that what you're experiencing is the classic definition of anxiety right so you're concerned about how people are judging you and that's pretty classic anxiety."

"Sometimes I feel like I don't get a full breath of air like my lungs don't feel like they get filled up especially when I would I'm struggling with with something that makes me nervous or anxious it's like I I don't feel like I'm breathing properly."

"as you become aware of breath your breath begins to change"

"the worst thing that people can do with anxiety is you try to control it you try to push it down and how does that work mmm-hmm poorly absolutely"

"your mind determines our pattern of breathing like when you get anxious you can't take a full breath right"

"your facial expression actually controls the way that you feel too"

"engagement is different from distraction and what we did was engagement which is to genuinely like take your mind and have you appreciate and enjoy and be in the present whereas distraction is actually like pushing something away"

"the way to overcome anxiety is to actually not try to fight it because what happens when you when you fight anxieties it creates tension in your mind"

"anxiety is like cancer of the mind like so what cancer does is it takes the nutrients that your body has and it grows with them and the more that you fight against anxiety it's gonna grow based on your attention the more you try to fight it the worse it's gonna get"

"fighting anxiety is a little bit like holding water like the harder you hold the more the water slips out of your finger"