After ruling out the obvious causes, clinicians should consider that many clients are yawning because they are experiencing anxiety related to their experience in session. This provides an excellent opportunity to educate that yawning may be an indicator of anxiety, not just fatigue.
When your friend stifles a yawn as you chat, don't be offended. Instead, take it as a compliment. For, far from being a sign of boredom, yawning may signal empathy.
One is that when we are bored or tired, we just don't breathe as deeply as we usually do. As this theory goes, our bodies take in less oxygen because our breathing has slowed. Therefore, yawning helps us bring more oxygen into the blood and move more carbon dioxide out of the blood.
However, almost paradoxically, it is theorized that yawning is not a sign of sleepiness or boredom, but actually a reflex that your brain induces to wake you up or make you more alert. Yawning is associated with some hormones that are released that briefly increase the heart rate and alertness.
Anxiety. Anxiety is a common trigger for yawning. Anxiety affects the heart, respiratory system, and energy levels. These can all cause breathlessness, yawning, and feelings of stress.
Yawning excessively is a condition where a person yawns more often than normal. This condition is caused by various reasons, such as boredom, sleepiness, or stress. Excessive yawning can also be caused by an underlying medical condition, such as sleep apnea, anxiety, or depression.
Researchers believe that yawning related to anxiety could be a coping mechanism to bring on a calming effect. Other effects of yawning include lowering brain temperature. That's right.
The findings suggest that yawning is a form of empathizing with people experiencing a feeling, which—in the case of yawning—usually means stress, anxiety, boredom, or fatigue. (See "Your Heart Can Sync With a Loved One's.")
When you hyperventilate, your body starts to feel like it's not getting a full breath. As a response, it tries to yawn, because yawning expands the rib cage and sends a signal to your brain that you did indeed get a full breath. In that sense, yawning is trying to tell your body to relax.
Contagious yawning has been suggested to be a potential signal of empathy in non-human animals. However, few studies have been able to robustly test this claim.
Although subjects imitated all facial expressions to large extents, our studies show that only contagious yawning was related to empathy. Subjects who yawned in response to observing others yawn exhibited higher empathy values by half a standard deviation.
When people yawn in classrooms or in front of other people, it actually represents an attempt for them to maintain attention and focus. And it indicates that they're actually paying attention to you."
Although not fully understood, yawning appears to be not only a sign of tiredness but also a much more general sign of changing conditions within the body. Studies have shown that we yawn when we are fatigued, as well as when we are awakening, and during other times when the state of alertness is changing.
Scientists used to think we yawn due to a lack of oxygen. But more recent research in the 1980s disproved this theory since breathing in more oxygen or carbon dioxide didn't affect how often one yawns.
One possibility is that contagious yawning serves as a way of showing empathy. While all vertebrate mammals experience spontaneous yawning, only humans and our closest relatives, chimpanzees, seem to experience the contagion effect—a sign that there may be a deeper social meaning to the experience.
Yawning has been thought to be associated with depression because of the common symptom of increased sleepiness and fatigue. Patients who have depression typically have sleep problems and tiredness leading to increased yawning.
Psychopaths lack empathy for others as a general rule. A study in 2015 found that scoring highly on a checklist for psychopathy was associated with a lower chance of catching yawns.
After review of the literature and personal observation, it is concluded that yawning is a complex arousal defense reflex located in the reticular brainstem with a peripheral and central arche, whose aim is to reverse brain hypoxia.
Make yourself yawn
“Brain temperature rises during times of stress and anxiety,” Gallup said. “And yawning naturally occurs before and during stressful situations, promoting relaxation and better cognitive functioning.
Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms associated with anxiety, panic disorder, chronic stress, depression and other mental health disorders. Chronic anxiety leaves the body and mind in a constant state of tension and high alertness.
Follow the 3-3-3 rule.
Look around you and name three things you see. Then, name three sounds you hear. Finally, move three parts of your body — your ankle, fingers, or arm.
feeling tense, nervous or unable to relax. having a sense of dread, or fearing the worst. feeling like the world is speeding up or slowing down. feeling like other people can see you're anxious and are looking at you.
Yawns are considered a sign of boredom or sleepiness, and that could be what early humans were communicating as well. However, early humans may have used yawning to signal their alertness to others, bare their teeth to aggressors, or serve as some other communication tool.