Constantly focused on breathing all the time.

This is my first time posting so I'll try and articulate aswell as possible. My father passed away last year and ever since I have had a ton of stress and what I believe to be anxiety pouring over me. I have never come forward to anyone about this. Coping on my own is a struggle so I'm trying to get some more opinions. I constanty am focused in my breathing to the point where the feeling is constanty interrupting my thoughts and daily activities. I feel like I'll stop breathing so I focus on breathing and seem to pull myself into bouts of shallow breathing. I keep thinking to myself that I need to stop but even focusing on the fact I need to stop makes me aware of my breath. Not only that but my chest feels tightish with each breath. It's gotten to the point where I'm constanty thinking about this and how to stop it, meanwhile I can't focus on sleeping, music, work or anything else without these thoughts taking me ovet. I feel like I'm losing control. I don't know how to deal with it all so I try to ignore it all. However I just can't keep living life with this feeling looming over me. I want to have my old mindstate back but I just feel I can never relax and am always pacing. Any thoughts or suggestions, this has been ongoing progressively since I lost my father. I also clench my teeth and randomly figdget to try and divert my thoughts to no avail. I just feel totally lostt.

Hey, welcome to the club!

Are you fearful of your breathing, for example, worried that it feels unnatural/worried your shallow breathing will make you pass out? If so, this would be the symptom of an anxiety disorder mixed with hyperventilation.

Are you just obsessed with your breathing levels, for instance the amounts you're breathing, the part of your body you're breathing in from? Are you trying to control your breathing continuously throughout the day? Is it a conscious process to you? If so, this would probably indicate you have some form of sensorimotor OCD (which is just another expression of anxiety despite its exotic name).

I would like to say I used to do something similar except it wasn't my breathing but my heartbeat. I still on occasion fall into the compulsion to check my blood pressure, check my heart rate repeatedly. I mean I was adamant about finding something wrong, funky blood pressure, tachycardia, and for quite a while I sported a nice bruise around my upper arm from using the BP cuff in excess of 5 times an hour every waking moment.
The body is an amazing thing; just like your computer it has all these super neat background processes you are not made aware of usually. Your brain is firing like spark plugs, your digestive system is doing the worm, sucking out stuff it metabolizes to recharge your energy. Your immune system is re enacting the battle of the bulge, defending your body against all manner of nasty creepy crawlies, and your heart is the dj of your soul, busting out some funky fresh beats as it moves your blood around to all the places it needs to go and back home again.
A body that amazing and alive can easily handle autonomic breathing without you trying to control it somatically. Your lungs will keep doing lung stuff even while you aren't looking.
Trusting people, yourself, your body, your mind, the world around you is perhaps one of the Achilles ' heels of the anxiety monster. So let's slay that asshole in the foot, you and me, and the rest of us spazz masters.

I got the breathing the heartbeat, and of course; terrible clenching. The last one I could never overcome. Heartbeat is low when I am not stressed and my beta blockers help too. Breathing , I learned from Our lovely Jon how to do it, does not give me much trouble lately. Just the sleep is son of a gun, to fall asleep:(
Welcome to the forum:)

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Originally Posted by sae

I would like to say I used to do something similar except it wasn't my breathing but my heartbeat. I still on occasion fall into the compulsion to check my blood pressure, check my heart rate repeatedly. I mean I was adamant about finding something wrong, funky blood pressure, tachycardia, and for quite a while I sported a nice bruise around my upper arm from using the BP cuff in excess of 5 times an hour every waking moment.
The body is an amazing thing; just like your computer it has all these super neat background processes you are not made aware of usually. Your brain is firing like spark plugs, your digestive system is doing the worm, sucking out stuff it metabolizes to recharge your energy. Your immune system is re enacting the battle of the bulge, defending your body against all manner of nasty creepy crawlies, and your heart is the dj of your soul, busting out some funky fresh beats as it moves your blood around to all the places it needs to go and back home again.
A body that amazing and alive can easily handle autonomic breathing without you trying to control it somatically. Your lungs will keep doing lung stuff even while you aren't looking.
Trusting people, yourself, your body, your mind, the world around you is perhaps one of the Achilles ' heels of the anxiety monster. So let's slay that asshole in the foot, you and me, and the rest of us spazz masters.

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I can't even imagine using a BP machine that many times. Hurts my arm after one!

Good post, though. Very true.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jessed03

Hey, welcome to the club!

Are you fearful of your breathing, for example, worried that it feels unnatural/worried your shallow breathing will make you pass out? If so, this would be the symptom of an anxiety disorder mixed with hyperventilation.

Are you just obsessed with your breathing levels, for instance the amounts you're breathing, the part of your body you're breathing in from? Are you trying to control your breathing continuously throughout the day? Is it a conscious process to you? If so, this would probably indicate you have some form of sensorimotor OCD (which is just another expression of anxiety despite its exotic name).

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This^ I feel obsessed with my breathing, I focus on it like its a constant proccess, this I need to stop it's literally driving me insane. It actually makes me angry and upset that my mind keeps going back to this proccess when I know all of my life up unti last year this was never an issue, nor was general anxiety. I jsut don't know how to appraoch this or how to stop it. I try and smoke weed sometimes to take my mind off it all, of course to no avail.