If you’ve been dealing with any measure of stress and anxiety, then you know just how difficult it can be to get back on your feet and get the rhythm back in your life. You may not be able to completely eliminate the attacks, but you can often do some work to minimize their impact and get back to normal quicker than usual.

One of the more effective methods for handling an anxiety attacks may very well be simple breathing techniques. This is a method that I’ve written about in several other places, and people should definitely take a moment and figure out if something like this may be effective for you. In the next couple of sentences below, I’ll describe what is probably the simplest approach to deep breathing in order to handle anxiety symptoms.

To begin with, remember that you can’t really deal with anxiety on your own. Even if these techniques work in the short term to deal with acute symptoms, professional help should be sought out. Moving along, it is simple: take a breath in and try to stretch it out for five seconds on the inhale. Then, when you hold the breath for just a moment, begin to exhale at the same rate. That makes five seconds in, and five seconds out. Try and do this for a couple of minutes and see if your nerves are a little less frayed.

This works equally well for anxiety as well as panic attacks for many people. There is little difference between an anxiety and a panic attack, which may be the reason for the cross over effectiveness of the method.

Remember that anxiety and panic problems are serious and should not be remedied only with breathing techniques. Getting to the root of the problem is often a necessary step, and there is no substitute for the help of a qualified professional.