“I’ve tried meditating and breathing and it doesn’t work”.
As a Brainspotting therapist, my first question is always: “Tell me what ‘doesn’t work’ means.” Cue the eye roll.
My clients who have been with me long enough already know what I’m going to say next: if something “doesn’t work,” that doesn’t mean we’re at a dead end—it means we have more information. And that information matters.
I get it. Most people want “working” to mean that something shifts quickly, the anxiety fades, and you feel better. Relief is the goal. But here’s the thing: everything works, even if it isn’t working in the way you hoped. Tools don’t fail—they reveal. They show us where your nervous system is, what it can tolerate, and what might need more support.
Breathing exercises for anxiety are a tool. But your toolbox needs to be large. And the more unprocessed material you’re carrying—old stress, trauma, chronic overwhelm, years of pushing through—the less likely a single tool is going to feel effective on its own. Especially if that tool is being used to avoid the hard stuff rather than support you through it. So hopefully that answers why breathing exercises don’t ‘work’ for anxiety (and what helps).
So what is the purpose of breathing exercises?
Breathing exercises are designed to help activate your parasympathetic nervous system—the part of your nervous system responsible for slowing things down. It helps regulate your heart rate, soften muscle tension, and give you that “I can breathe again” feeling.
What breathing exercises are not designed to do is make you feel amazing or erase anxiety entirely.
If a breathing exercise takes you from a 9/10 anxiety level down to an 8, it worked. That’s regulation. The frustration most people feel comes from the belief that breathing exercises are supposed to bring peace. They aren’t.
Here’s the difference:
- Trying a breathing exercise when you already feel calm may deepen that calm.
- Trying one when anxiety is high may simply bring you back above water so you can breathe.
Both are successful—but they serve different purposes at different times.
Sometimes catching your breath is enough to create a little space. That space allows perspective to come back online, which can naturally help anxiety soften. From there, other tools might move you from an 8 to a 6. And then we can start getting curious about the trigger—what set this off and why your nervous system reacted the way it did.
If that’s what the breathing exercise supported, then yes—it absolutely worked.
But if you’re hoping “working” means you’ll suddenly feel like someone who doesn’t have anxiety, breathing exercises were never built for that job.
“Okay… so how do I actually deal with my anxiety?”
If you asked 100 people what helped their anxiety, you’d likely get 100 different answers. Medication, therapy, journaling, exercise, EMDR, Brainspotting, boundaries, quitting caffeine—you name it.
So what really helps?
What I know to be true is this: anxiety needs both understanding and depth.
A strong foundation matters. Psychoeducation, nervous system awareness, skills that meet you where you are, and self-compassion all set the stage for meaningful change. Without that foundation, tools can feel pointless or even invalidating.
Anxiety treatment works best when it’s two-pronged:
- Building skills to manage anxiety and feel less afraid of it when it shows up
- Doing the deeper work to rewire the brain so anxiety isn’t running the show as often or as intensely
This is where working with an anxiety therapist can be incredibly helpful. Anxiety therapy isn’t just about coping—it’s about understanding your patterns, your nervous system, and why your brain learned to respond this way in the first place. When therapy takes a nervous-system approach, tools stop feeling random and start making sense. If you are ready for therapist-backed tools you can access anytime – learn more here.
Skills without understanding rarely stick
This is why breathing exercises alone often feel frustrating. Without education about your nervous system—and without space to explore what “doesn’t work”—it can feel like you’re doing everything “right” and still failing.
That’s also why I created a course to teach these foundational skills. Breathing exercises with education, nervous system understanding, and permission to be curious about resistance are a completely different experience. If you’re looking for therapist-backed tools you can access anytime, this can be a supportive place to start.
The deep dive: where anxiety actually shifts
The next step in anxiety therapy is the deeper work.
Everything we struggle with lives somewhere in the nature vs. nurture conversation—and anxiety is no different. Genetics, generational stress, how regulated your caregivers were (even before you were born), trauma, chronic expectations, and environmental pressure all shape how your nervous system responds.
The good news? The brain is adaptable.
Bottom-up therapies like Brainspotting and EMDR aren’t magic cures, but they do help decrease the intensity and frequency of anxiety. They work directly with the nervous system to help the brain process what it couldn’t before. Over time, this creates new neural “superhighways”—paths of safety, regulation, and resilience that become easier to access.
When this deeper work is combined with skills and self-compassion, anxiety often becomes more manageable, less overwhelming, and far less scary.
And that’s the real goal of anxiety therapy—not to erase anxiety, but to help you feel more in control, more connected to yourself, and more able to live your life without anxiety calling all the shots.
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