How emotions can affect asthma and other lung conditions

Your body’s response to different emotions can change the way that you breathe. For example, you might start to take fast and deep breaths when you’re feeling emotional. This breathing pattern is called hyperventilating.

Hyperventilating can make your airways narrow and cause symptoms like:

• coughing
• noisy breathing sounds, like wheezing
• breathlessness
• a tight chest.

Emotions like stress can make it more likely that you’ll react to your usual triggers, including colds and flu. There’s lots of reasons for this, including that you might find it harder to manage your lung condition and stick to your medicine routine when you’re stressed. When your lung condition is not well managed, you’re more likely to get symptoms.

In our 2025 Life with a lung condition survey, 1 in 4 people said that emotions triggered their lung condition.

What emotions can trigger your lung condition symptoms?

Emotions and emotional responses that can trigger symptoms include:

• anger
• fear
• stress – find out more about how stress can trigger asthma symptoms and how to manage your stress
• anxiety
• excitement
• laughing, especially laughing very hard or for a long time
• crying.

If you think that emotions are one of your lung condition triggers, it’s a good idea to track your symptoms. You could write them down in a notebook or on your phone as they happen, or record them in your peak flow diary.

You could include information like:

• what emotion you’re feeling and what the reason is for that emotion
• if you have any symptoms when you feel this emotion and what they are
• what helped you manage your emotion.

This can be useful because it can be difficult to connect how you’re feeling with the symptoms you’re getting.

You might start noticing patterns. For example, you may have had more symptoms after laughing for a long period of time or during a stressful experience, like moving house.

Understanding how emotions affect your lung condition can help you manage your symptoms better.

You might find that emotions do not affect your lung condition. Everybody’s triggers are different. 

Get emotional support

Everybody feels emotional from time to time. If you feel overwhelmed or down, talk to somebody you trust about how you feel.

You can find support through:

• talking to a healthcare professional – they can support you to always manage your lung condition well, even when you’re feeling emotional. They can also signpost you to counselling and wellbeing services.
• joining one of our support groups for people with lung conditions
• calling our friendly helpline team – you can talk to us about any aspect of living with your lung condition.

Find out more about looking after your mental health and wellbeing when you have a lung condition.

Manage your lung condition well

Use a self-management plan or asthma action plan. These can help you manage your lung condition. It keeps important information about your condition in one place including everyday advice to manage your condition, how to spot if your condition is getting worse and when to seek support from your healthcare professional.

We have self-management plans for:

• COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)
• bronchiectasis
• pulmonary fibrosis.

If emotions trigger your lung condition symptoms, you may feel tired after this happens. Give yourself time to recover. Your self-management plan or asthma action plan can support you to look after yourself if your symptoms get worse.

Stick to your medicine routine

Emotions are more likely to trigger your symptoms if your lung condition is not well managed.

Make sure you use your inhaler correctly and take your medicines as prescribed, even if you feel well.

Always keep your reliever inhaler with you

It’s important to be prepared and always keep your reliever inhaler with you, so you can take it straightaway if you start to get symptoms.

Try breathing exercises

Breathing exercises might help to ease your symptoms and help you feel more relaxed.

Find out about how to manage your breathlessness, including different breathing techniques to try.

Our Body Breathing support group focuses on breathing exercises and how your emotions affect your breathing.

Our Mindfulness for lung health support group can help you learn relaxing techniques and practice being in the moment.

The NHS has breathing exercises to help with stress.

Share what helps you manage your emotions with other people

It’s important to share what’s helpful for you if you start to get symptoms, so people know how to support you. This is different for everyone and over time, you’ll find what helps you most. For example, it might be asking for space to calm yourself down or doing some breathing exercises.