As if anxiety and panic attacks were not already bad enough for those affected, I keep hearing the advice to simply relax and the fear would go away.
Relaxation can indeed help us cope with fear, but it is not enough on its own. Although it would be nice if I could tell my patients "Just relax!" and make the fear magically disappear, unfortunately it does not work that easily. However, relaxation is a great general strategy for stress management and can help our body become calmer and more resilient over time.
When Relaxation Can Help
Relaxation exercises primarily serve to calm down and can therefore be quite beneficial for minor fears. If you have exam anxiety or fear of presentations and feel a certain nervousness or excitement, appropriate relaxation exercises can work wonders.
These fears do not require psychotherapeutic treatment either, but can be managed with exercises.
When Relaxation Can No Longer Help
However, there are also anxiety states and panic attacks that have deep-seated causes, and these must be addressed at the root. Superficial relaxation methods such as breathing techniques can help in the short term during a panic attack, but in order to live completely free of fear and panic, psychotherapeutic help or coaching is necessary.
Looking at the exam example, it is important to distinguish whether it is nervousness, or whether you develop such anxiety states or even such panic that blackout or hyperventilation threatens -- these are signs that it is no longer a minor fear. For any form of higher states of arousal, targeted psychotherapeutic methods are needed for treatment.
Fears such as hypochondria -- the fear of illnesses, usually in connection with fatal diseases -- always have deeper underlying causes, for example a traumatic experience that needs to be processed in order to deconstruct the fear. Here, relaxation exercises cannot provide improvement.
As highly praised as various relaxation methods may be today, we must not forget that relaxation serves to calm and is not anxiety management!
As long as the cause has not been resolved, the fear cannot be "calmed away."
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Related Topics
- Understanding Panic Attacks – Building deeper understanding
- Panic Attacks, Causes & Symptoms – Detailed guide to panic attacks
- Meditation – Topic page on relaxation
- Panic Attacks (topic page) – Treatment and ways out