Exercises for Anxiety

I’ve written before about my depression and about how exercise helps me keep the Depression Monster in its place.  In the times when the monster gets out, I tend to get some anxiety symptoms as well.  Fortunately, my anxiety does not surface in the gym or studio, but I do understand when other people find theirs in that space.

Coping with exercise anxiety is a lot like coping with every other kind.  Not every technique works every time, so it’s always useful to have a few extra on hand, just in case.  Here are a few that some folks might find helpful.

• Take a friend.  The right friend to bring along to the gym when dealing with exercise anxiety has some special characteristics.  This is not the time to grab a that critical friend, or the competitive one.  The one with the sense of humor is perfect.  The one who loves us no matter what our hair happens to be doing.  We want to have someone there on the next treadmill or spotting our lift who can natter on about puppies or brownies or shoes, who will tell us as many times as we need to hear it that it is all going to be fine and that we’re doing great.

• Breathe.  Anxiety tightens up our chests.  We start breathing shallowly.  Sometimes we even get the full-on panic attack.  If we’re already a bit breathless from exercising, anxiety just makes it all that much worse.  We can slow down or stop for a few seconds, take a couple of real breaths.  Then a few more.  We can let our bodies remember that they know how to breathe without our interference.  As we get in the cardio habit, we may find that we have trained ourselves out of some of the panicky breathing.  Some of us might find yoga or another mind-body practice useful (others may find the whole idea of breathing quietly to be panic-inducing all by itself; it is okay not to like yoga.).

• Don’t push.  Maybe we do the shortest workout ever.  We show up, we hop on the exercise bike, we freak out, and we hop right off.  Good on us for showing up.  We have to start somewhere.  Another day we might get a little farther.  We were brave enough to begin.

We can do this.