100 Day Breathing Challenge?

There are some days when your anxiety means that you just can’t get anything done. The thought of going to the bank, store or dinner with friends, just gets too much and we need to cancel. It is all so overwhelming, as we want to go do these things, but we can’t. And that is difficult for friends and family to understand.

For me the hardest part was how bad I felt cancelling things or getting nothing done. The guilt. And that makes the anxiety worse, beating yourself up for what the anxiety is causing. It is just a vicious cycle.

There was just too much blame I was putting on myself. When I started to learn more about anxiety, it made me feel better about myself. I realised that cancelling and not getting things done was not my fault. It was just a symptom of anxiety disorder.

Anxiety made me feel continuously bad, so knowing that it wasn’t my fault really helped me.

I then read something that seemed so small but changed my life. A 100-day challenge. I never thought I would be able to do 3 days lets alone 100 days, but I decided to give it a try.

The challenge was to take 3 deep breathes every time you perceive your thoughts. For example, when I found myself worrying, obsessing or thinking too much, I would stop and take 3 deep breathes.

I found myself doing it a thousand times a day! Surprisingly, it felt great! Every time I realised my thought, I stopped and breathed, breaking the anxiety cycle. I suffer from focal seizures also, and I found that it helped me with that too. It just made me feel so good, so before I knew it, 6 months had passed. It has been over a year now and I still do it every day. The reason they say 100 days, is that it takes that long to program the change into our brain and routine.

From my experience, breathing heals, calms and cures almost everything.

So when anxiety cripples you from doing things and it all gets too much, take those 3 deep breathes! Before you know it, it will be part of your routine!

Love, @powerofanxiety