Techniques
Yves Gendron Psychologist

1. Practice belly breathing every day at home. Eventually, it will become automatic. You should also regularly practice instant relaxation. Anxious people often breathe through their thorax, which amplifies or even triggers anxiety symptoms.

But innate breathing is belly breathing, as you can see with babies and animals: they all breathe through their bellies. So the first thing for a person suffering from anxiety is to relearn how to breathe properly. This breathing must become automatic again. This is perfectly normal, as you're fighting against something you've already learned, but once you've got over this hurdle, you'll be able to breathe like you were born - a real treat.

It's a good idea to do breathing sessions several times a day, with 10 breathing movements in a row (in the morning in bed, at lunchtime and in the evening before going to bed). The one I liked best was the evening breathing: I ended up falling asleep like a baby, and you'll see that you end up feeling very relaxed (see "How to sleep well").

By the way, if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night with feelings of anxiety, repeat the breathing exercise until you feel a sense of calm, and then fall asleep peacefully.

2. Stop anticipating (see "Managing anticipation and anxious thoughts"): What a horror for an anxious person! They often live by imagining the worst, conjuring up catastrophic scenarios and making situations worse.

It's important to remember that imagination is often worse than reality, but the problem is that imagination causes a great deal of anxiety long before the person actually experiences the real situation.

You'll have to learn to anticipate less and reduce your anxiety by adopting a new way of thinking. To stop anticipating, you need to stop thinking and then change negative thoughts into positive ones.

You'll need to read the document on anticipation carefully, because it's a difficult one. It's one of the hardest to understand and put into practice, but it's indispensable - it changed my life.

3. Learn to stop being afraid of panic attack symptoms (see "Dealing with panic attacks"): they are never dangerous, they are certainly very unpleasant, but they always subside in the end. The aim is to wait for the symptoms to subside and, above all, not to run away.