Doctor suggests 15-second deep breathing to slow racing thoughts
No need to rack your brain for a way to stop your racing thoughts.
Dr. Daniel Amen, a double board-certified psychiatrist and brain-imaging researcher in California, suggests deep breathing to slow down fast, relentless thinking.
“Four seconds in, hold it for a second and a half. Eight seconds out, hold it for a second and a half,” Amen explained in a Monday TikTok. “So it’s a 15-second breath. If you just do that for three or four minutes, it tends to really calm things down.”
Amen said if diaphragmatic breathing doesn’t work, try intense exercise, which has been shown to increase levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin in the brain.
Fairlee Fabrett, a psychologist at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, says anxiety is often to blame for racing thoughts.
“People who struggle with racing thoughts are constantly worried about what needs to be done, what hasn’t been done and what is next — or they obsess about past, present or future situations,” Fabrett said last year.
“When racing thoughts take over your mind, you can’t stay focused and you feel trapped, which makes you even more anxious and stressed, and the cycle continues,” she added.
Like Amen, Fabrett recommends exercising — perhaps doing a set of push-ups or 10 jumping jacks — to defuse anxiety.
She also proposes acknowledging the racing thoughts to gain a sense of control over them, counting your breaths, distracting your mind by reading or calling a friend and scheduling time to work through the thoughts all at once.
Cleveland Clinic notes that a racing brain can make it difficult to fall asleep.
Behavioral sleep medicine specialist Michelle Drerup last year advised meditating before bed, engaging in progressive muscle relaxation by tensing and relaxing each muscle group in your body, stopping screen time well before bedtime and jotting down negative thoughts in a “worry” journal and positive thoughts in a “gratitude” journal.
“Engaging in gratitude right before bedtime results in a calmer body and more positive pre-sleep thoughts,” Drerup said.
