One thing we know as clinicians is that breathing is a very,
Very powerful way to manage anxiety.
Deep and controlled breathing can actually bring anxiety under control very,
Very quickly and it's something that a lot of adults use and it's something that adults are often trying to convince young people to use as well.
Now,
I love teenagers and what I love about them is they are skeptics.
They are wonderfully skeptical of what adults put in front of them and so one thing I've learned over time from working with young people is that when I say,
Oh you know you should try breathing to reduce your anxiety,
Often either I get an actual eye roll or I get what is clearly a un-eye rolled eye roll.
Like I get evidence that the teenager's like okay that makes no sense.
I don't know why you're saying that.
It strikes me as silly and if we think about it for a minute like why wouldn't it?
Why would they assume that if they're feeling really,
Really anxious just changing how they breathe will make a difference?
So given this,
What I have found is that it works so much better if you walk young people through the neurobiology of why breathing reduces anxiety and I think in some ways it's like just honoring the fact that young people are tough customers and they're not just going to do something because we just tell them to do it.
So what this worksheet does is it actually walks through the science of how breathing reduces anxiety,
How breathing is a way that we can override one of the systems that is caught up with anxiety and use it to communicate to the brain from the lungs speaking to the brain that we are safe and everything's okay and the anxiety alarm can actually be turned off.
What is incredibly cool is that when we give young people good biological information about why anxiety is tamed with breathing they are so much more likely to use it and to use this information and to use a breathing practice.
I think the other thing that we just want to add in here that's so important about talking with young people this way is also helping them understand the biological nature of anxiety.
I think it's you know a very complicated emotion and I think sometimes young people can feel like it's just a feeling and they should be able to control their feelings and the more we can help them understand that anxiety is a very ancient and very biologically based emotion that comes through us you know to us through evolution to help us stay safe it helps them better understand that they're having a biological reaction often when they are anxious and that a biological response that is actually set in motion by overriding their own breathing is a wonderful wonderful solution and it's one they carry with them everywhere they go and they can use anytime they need.
