Why breathing techniques aren't going to fix your anxiety

I sometimes see articles and posts about psychology that suggest the “5 best breathing techniques to cure your anxiety”, or the “3 things you have to do to get over heartbreak”. I’ve even written some articles like that myself. One problem with these approaches to thinking about psychological suffering is that they offer a concrete solution to a problem that is anything but concrete. Most people, in my experience, don’t need another tool to try to fix their problem, they are looking for something deeper and more fulfilling. Your anxiety is not the end of the story, and coming up with the best breathing technique there is will ultimately be unsatisfying because your symptoms are not just a problem to be gotten rid of - they are a communication from a deeper part of you to be paid attention to and understood.

In my experience, when people come into therapy they often have some idea of what's wrong with them - they are anxious, depressed, have a drinking problem, their marriage is falling apart. These are real struggles and deserve to be taken seriously and supported. However when we see the presenting problem as the whole story, and we jump to fixing the apparent problem at hand with bigger and better tools and strategies, we miss something important.

Psychodynamic, or depth oriented psychologies explore psychological suffering from a different angle. Rather than viewing your depression or anxiety as a problem to be solved as quickly and efficiently as possible, psychodynamic therapy looks at psychological suffering as a communication about the deeper underlying structure of your self. By sitting patiently with, and trying to understand more about the architecture of who you are - you can gain insight into why your anxiety is showing up in the first place, rather than just trying to get rid of it. A psychodynamic therapist views your anxiety as a communication from your inner world that has not yet been able to be put into words. In psychodynamic treatment then, we attempt to put that unique communication into words, sometimes for the first time in your life.

When we slow down to try to listen to the story under the story, we hear something more complex than we saw at first glance. Someone’s depression may be an internalized rage that has had nowhere to go since childhood, someone’s anxiety might be an echo of an old threat that never got resolved, someone’s drinking is probably a welcome medication of a deep heart ache that hasn’t been fully faced.

By putting into words and speaking out loud stories that have never been spoken before, you can start to inhabit parts of yourself in a new way, and that is where lasting change begins. Yes you may need to learn breathing techniques to help you out of a panicked place, but that is where treatment starts, not ends. Once the technique is applied, then the real work of therapy begins - to sit and listen to the deepest parts of yourself that have been left dormant or ignored for too long, and to try to understand, not just fix, the core parts of who you are.

Helpful tools and strategies are a necessary part of getting better, but they are a part of the healing process, not the whole thing. The other, I would say more important aspect of psychotherapeutic healing comes not in fixing, but in understanding. If you rush to apply the top ten anxiety reduction exercises, you might miss the opportunity to try to make sense of what your anxiety is trying to tell you. Working with a therapist who understands this can make the difference in feeling like you are applying a bandaid to a gaping wound, versus feeling like you are taking the necessary time to do the longer term healing work of listening deeply to yourself to try to understand what is really going on inside.

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Connor Moss, LMFT is a psychodynamic psychotherapist practicing in Santa Cruz, CA. He offers couples therapy and individual therapy for anxiety, depression, addiction, trauma, and more. He welcomes inquiries from new clients and can be reached at (831) 204-0131 or online.