Imagine for a minute that it's been a stressful day at work/school and you get home and are suddenly filled with a sense if dread - a sense of dread that's overwhelming and completely irrational. The more you try to understand or explain what your feeling to yourself or others, the more stressed you get and the more you worry.
Now imagine you're in the scenario described above and you look down to the fitness tracker on your wrist. You push the button on the side until you get to the heart rate display. The number is in the low hundreds. You keep the monitor on the heart rate display and start to take deep breaths. As you do so, the numbers slowly drop to the mid 90s. You continue taking deep breaths and the numbers on the screen drop quicker and eventually settle in the low 80s. You take another deep breath and the dread is not as overwhelming and you are starting to feel calmer and more in control.
To be fair, the above scenario describes your stereotypical panic attack. Not every panic attack or anxiety flare up is the same. What is the same is that there are different ways to handle each episode. The stereotypical advice for someone having a panic attack or anxiety flare up is to take a deep breath and calm down. Like its as simple as that. But honestly, it might be.
One of the most encouraging coping methods I've found for anxiety flare ups has been to take deep breaths - to take deep breaths and to actually see my heart rate slow down. My Fitbit charge HR has been key to actually being able to see myself calming down. Now is the Fitbit marketed to help people with anxiety calm down, no. The intended function of the Fitbit is step tracking and the added heart rate monitor tells you when your heart rate is in the fat burning zone (provided you know what that zone is).
While not the marketed intended use, the Fitbit heart rate monitor can be a very effective training tool when it comes to slowing both your breathing and your heart rate. Personally, it's a lot easier for me to calm down when I can see that I'm actually able to successfully clam myself down. The key is not giving up when the numbers on the display. Just like exercise, fitness, and athletic training, calming down and maintaining that calm takes practice - practice and training. And just like fitness and athletic training, practicing and training to calm down and stay calm is not only healthy, it's worthwhile. Again, every panic attack or anxiety flare up is different and every person who experiences these episodes has different preferred ways of coping with them. Physically watching your hear rate return to normal is just one of many. Some people prefer to meditate and others would rather go for a run. If a Fitbit or similar device can help someone calm down by tracking their run and providing visual results, then it can do the same for someone who needs to acutally see their heart rate slowing. Sure a Fitbit may be just one device, but its one device with multiple functions to help maintain a healthy and less stressful life.
