Paredyshka,
Thank you for your advice on breathing.
Breathing can be very helpful when you are anxious or even angry about something.
When dealing with patients that are having pain (which pain can be very stressful) I will sometimes encourage patients to breathe in through their nose for a count of 4 and out their mouth for a count of four. Repeat a couple of times. I like to think of it as clean air in, bad air out!!
You can start by doing this throughout your day and especially when you are beginning to feel anxious or stressed. When you feel comfortable with the 4-4 breathing you can start to increase the seconds you inhale and exhale for.
To make this even more effective for you (and to test it out), try it before attempting that walk,activity etc that can initiate your feelings of anxiety.
Hope this helps!
Angela
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The Panic Center Support Team
In buddhism, focusing the awareness on one's breath is central to meditation. And in this book I read called "The Relaxation Response" the guy shows how deep abdominal breathing can reverse panic and relieve anxiety.
All the time I am trying to focus on my breath to calm myself. I never considered it could be the source of such stress. Maybe if you could stop fearing it, you could use that concentration to your advantage?
Anyhow, I hope you find peace with your breathing, and learn not to view it as a limitation, but a blessing.
Good luck.
On the night of December 25th of last year I had the first and only panic attack of my life. One of the symptoms (and the most noticeable one) was shortness of breath.
Ever since that day, I've had a constant obsession with my breathing. From the moment I wake up in the morning to the moment I fall asleep at night, it's all I think about. It's just a constant obsession and monitoring of my breathing and depression about the fact that I have this "limitation" (the mechanism of inhalation and exhalation, I realize I've been doing this all my life but only now am I constantly thinking about it). The constant fixation leads me to think about the panic attack and causes me to get depressed about the fact that it happened in the first place.
How can I banish this thought from my mind?
