[vinbreau]

This works unless your anxiety is being triggered by the vagus nerve in which case deep breathing only makes it worse. Had one related to an illness recently, the vagus nerve makes you feel like you are having terrible anxiety that is made worse at the apex of every in/out breath. Then when you can't breathe deeply you start having even worse anxiety. This is the problem I am dealing with atm.

[specialist]

I also had a mind/body anxiety snafu. I was experiencing that crushed chest anxiety sensation without any emotional triggers.

Turns out I had a pinched nerve in my spine. The pain and nerve stuff caused my body anxiety sensation, which then caused the emotional anxiety.

Resolved with a lumbar fusion.

Which explains why most of my prior efforts to mitigate weren't effective (drugs, meditation, exercise, sleep hygiene).

[Barrin92]

Having gone through years of this during my university years I agree here. The general notion of 'controlling' anxiety attacks can be problematic.

Once your body is full of adrenaline it takes 10 to 15 minutes to physically calm down, there's no shortcut, and often trying to suppress the physical symptoms keeps the cycle going.

What generally works much better is to simply accept that your body is going mad for a few minutes, it's million years old biological systems you don't have any control over, fighting them isn't possible. Keeping a detached mind, breathing normally and remembering that panic attacks don't kill you (the racing thoughts are often the worst thing) helps immensely.