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A colleague mentioned this quote to me last week, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
Anxiety is excitement without a full, trusting breath
The quote comes from Fritz Perls, a rebellious psychiatrist who founded Gestalt therapy in the 1940s. He spent his career challenging people to stay present with their emotions rather than intellectualising them away. He believed that most of our suffering comes from resisting what we’re actually feeling, and that anxiety is just excitement that we’ve strangled with shallow breathing and fear.
He’d often demonstrate this in his therapy sessions, getting clients to breathe full…