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Key points
- Relaxation exercises can be helpful when anxiety becomes high or severe.
- With mild or moderate levels of anxiety, relaxation exercises may not be needed.
When I first started my clinical training as a psychologist, some of the first techniques I learned were relaxation exercises. These are concrete, specific behaviors that clients can use to reduce the symptoms of anxiety. Relaxation exercises often target physical symptoms of anxiety such as hyperventilating and muscle tension but can also help with emotional symptoms such as panic and nervousness. One interesting debate has been whether to use relaxation exercises for anxiety or whether they can be counterproductive.
Let’s start with a few examples of relaxation exercises. The most common technique is probably diaphragm breathing, also called belly breathing or deep breathing. Diaphragm breathing has clients breathe using more of their diaphragm, the big muscle that helps the lungs move air in and out of the body. One version of this technique has clients put a hand on their chest and the other on their stomach and try to breathe so that the hand on the chest does not move (or moves minimally) and the hand on the stomach moves more. Diaphragm breathing helps prevent hyperventilating and the other symptoms that go with it such as dizziness. Another technique, one that was a mainstay of my training, is progressive muscle relaxation or PMR. PMR has the client progressively tense and relax different muscle groups until all their muscles are relaxed. Depending on how the muscles are grouped, PMR can take 10 to 30 minutes. Clients will often use a recording to guide them through the muscle groups. Other relaxation techniques include imagery and even some forms of meditation.
Initially, it can seem like relaxation techniques should be great for anxiety because they reduce anxiety. Reducing anxiety, though, might not always be helpful. I’ve written before about how anxiety is a normal part of life and trying to reduce normal levels of anxiety can be counterproductive. If relaxation techniques are being used to avoid anxiety instead of facing it, then they can be unhelpful. Another situation in which relaxation exercises might not help is during exposure therapy. In exposure therapy, a client gradually faces situations that cause anxiety so they can gain experience showing that they are able to cope with the situation and the anxiety. If relaxation exercises are used too much in exposure therapy to the point that the client does not feel anxiety, then it can cancel out the exposure exercise. Situations with mild to moderate levels of anxiety might not need relaxation exercises.
Relaxation exercises still have many uses. For someone experiencing a high level of anxiety, these techniques can help reduce the anxiety to a more manageable level. For people trying exposure therapy but who have a high level of anxiety even for beginning levels of exposure, relaxation techniques can be extremely helpful so they can get started on facing those feared situations. The key is not necessarily using a specific technique but rather finding one that works for you.
As with any specific therapy technique including relaxation exercises, always check with your mental health provider first. You might have to try several different techniques before you find one that works for you. And you might have to try using relaxation exercises in several different situations before figuring out when it helps you and when it does not help.
