Obsession With Breathing? Does Anyone Else Do This?

[SusantheChatterbox]

I have posted some things about my problems with constantly watching how I breathe and how it controls me. Was just curious if there is anyone new in here that may also deal with this. I would be so interested to hear your story about how it affects you and how you deal with it. Thank you for any comments/help ahead of time.

God bless,
Susan

[SusantheChatterbox]

I have questioned this about myself before and have asked if there is anyone else that deals with this also to please share. I have tried to find others in the chatroom who deal with this also but although many have admitted about having the shortness of breath during a panic attack and with their anxiety issues no one has really confirmed they obsess over it like I do. This is so darn frustrating and its getting to the point where I am really tired of trying to stop thinking about it and stop noticing all together whether I am breathing right or not. I am 50 years old and have been doing for at least 8 or 9 years now. Will it ever stop?

[Jim Mitchell]

Hey Susan,

No you're not alone with the so called 'breathing obsession'. I started this obsession about a week ago. I have made a lot of progress and hopefully what I've discovered will help you too.

It's not the breathing that's creating your obsessive thinking. What about breathing should cause anxiety, nothing. It's as crazy as obsesssing over your hands, or your legs moving, or any other body function. The problem is being caused by the fear of anxiety and future turmoil. A vicious cycle is created because the obsessive thinking causes anxiety which exacerbates the obsessive thinking.

Here's four great posts that I've found directed specifically at the breathing obsession. They helped me greatly.

Good luck,
Jim

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Hey guys,

I suffer from bodily thought-obsessions like this too (breathing, blinking,
etc.) but I have found ways to free myself somewhat and hopefully these
techniques can help you guys out.

First of all, I want you guys to know that YOU and ONLY YOU can determine
whether or not you will free yourself of the breathing obsessions. ONLY YOU can
determine if you will live with this for the rest of your life. If you decide
you will free yourself of your breath awareness, then you will free yourself of
it. That is the first step on the road to recovery. The reason you keep
thinking about your breath is because you are afraid -- not that you will stop
breathing because I think you all know that breathing is an unconscious
function that your body will do on its own anyways, but that this will stay
with you forever. You keep thinking about your breathing because you are afraid
you will be aware of every breath for every day for the rest of your life. The
thing is, the fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you fear that you will be
painfully aware of every breath you take for the rest of your life, you will be
aware of every breath you take for the rest of your life. If you don't fear it,
then it will go away. The first step is to take back power. Put yourself in the
driver's seat of this situation. Know that you will free yourself from this
situation you find yourself in.

Second, think about yourself before this breathing situation -- did you ever
think about your breathing? No. The only thing that has changed now is that you
think about your breathing. Take a second and think about your tongue. You can
probably feel the saliva on top of your tongue. In fact, your tongue might even
feel too big for your mouth. Were you thinking about these things before I told
you to? Of course not. But you feel them now and they seem very real. It's all
because of awareness. Think about your nose. Once again, your nose probably
feels funny because you're thinking about it now. Of course, nothing about your
nose has changed. It's just awareness. The same thing is true about your breath.
Awareness of it comes from thoughts. And the thoughts come from fear.

Act on consciously letting go of thoughts about your breath. Involve yourself
completely in situations. Involve yourself entirely in conversations with
family and friends. Leave thoughts of your breath behind. You'll probably find
yourself becoming less aware of your breath with even little exercises like
that. The trick is to keep building on those. What most of you have probably
done is set up a nasty mind-body habit. You think about your breath so you
focus on your breath, and you get scared that you will always be thinking about
your breath for the rest of your life, so you tense up and your breathing
becomes shallow and you panic and so on. Understand that this all starts from
thoughts. Thoughts cannot harm you. Your body will breathe on its own. You can
completely and safely rid yourself of the thoughts that fuel your breathing
awareness.

Also, be careful not to monitor your progress too closely in this journey
because that is entertaining thoughts of your breathing process. Have faith
that by letting go of the thoughts of breathing, you will let go of your
awareness. The journey is by no means easy and it can be bumpy, but it's very
rewarding. And think of the feeling you'll have when you've put forth the
effort day-in and day-out. You will have achieved something amazing all by
yourself. And no other bodily obsession will ever plague you because you'll
know that they all derive from thoughts. And you can let go of the thoughts and
involve your mind completely in something else. I truly believe that all of you
guys can do this.

My awareness of my breathing started a little while ago and there would be days
where I would be conscious of the VAST majority of my breaths for the day.
However, allowing myself to let go of the fears and thoughts associated with my
breath has DRASTICALLY improved my quality of life. There are days where I
barely even notice my breath. Of course I have ups and downs but I am
definitely progressing in the right direction. And I know you all can too. Just
remember -- YOU decide your future. If you are afraid that you will live with
this for the rest of your life, you will. If you have faith and put forth the
hard work and dedication to freeing yourself from this, you will. Good luck to
all of you!

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Hey guys,

Just thought I'd post some other thoughts about dealing with the breathing
obsession.

For one, I think we've all established at this point that the breathing
obsession is fueled by one's thoughts. When you think about breathing, you
notice yourself breathing. The thing is, we are always breathing. So if you
think about your breathing, you will, without fail, notice your breathing.
Sometimes it can seem like you are almost imprisoned by your breathing because
your awareness of it is stopping you from experiencing life. But the thing is,
it's just a thought. If you work not to control your breathing and let it
happen naturally, just know that if you become aware of your breathing, it's
just because of a thought, which is beyond your control.

However, what isn't beyond your control is how you react to your thoughts. For
one, if you think about your breathing, resist the urge to control your
breathing. Do not let the thought cause anxiety in you. As I said in my
previous post, the reason the thoughts keep popping up in your head is because
you fear them. So I think all of you guys on this board have more control over
your breathing than you give yourselves credit for. You ultimately have the
final say over whether or not you will have this breathing obsession for a long
time. If you fear it, the thoughts will recur. If not, they will decrease in
number gradually. A lot of you have said that when you become absorbed in
something, you become unaware of your breathing. It feels good, doesn't it?
That's because you didn't have thoughts about your breathing. So work on
cultivating those moments. Don't be afraid if a thought about your breathing
pops up while you're in the middle of something. Acknowledge it and let it pass
and continue to work on the task at hand. It might seem difficult at first
because of all the anxiety attached to the breathing obsession. But just
acknowledge that the only way you will defeat the breathing obsession is by
gradually decreasing the number of times you think about your breath. And it
WILL happen. This is really no different than when a loved one dies and all you
can think about is that person. The thoughts about it are constant at first
because you miss the person and all you can think about is them. But in time
the thoughts begin to fade and they begin to lose the raw, emotional power they
once had. The same is with this breathing obsession.

Another thing to think about is that in order to work on fighting this
obsession, you must understand that it's actually harmful to check your
progress during the battle because you are re-inviting thoughts of your
breathing into the process. Trust in the fact that your breathing obsession is
fueled by thoughts and by active distraction and resisting the urge to control
your breathing, you will conquer this.

I even hesitate to label this an "obsession" because I don't think many of us
are really obsessed with our breath in the sense that we feel we have to count
our breaths, or we feel we have to control our breath because we feel our body
won't do it naturally. What this mostly is is just a nasty mind-body habit that
we've developed. But habits CAN be broken. Again, the steps are two-fold:
resisting the urge to control our breathing and active distraction. Someone
said they thought about their breathing the most when they were driving. Then
turn on the radio and sing your heart out to whatever is on. Call someone and
talk to them. If you feel that when you're singing, you're noticing your
breathing then just focus on the lyrics. Focus on the road. Focus on a
conversation you're having with someone. It's difficult because you have
conditioned yourself to think about your breathing. But you can think about
something else and soon you will have manifested that behavior in yourself.

On a final note, I think a lot of you are waiting for that one day in which
you've finally become unaware of your breathing. But unfortunately if you wait
for that day, it will never come. It's much like someone who suffers from an
eating disorder -- they diet and diet, waiting for that one day when they'll
be skinny enough. But that day will never come because they concentrate so much
on their weight that they'll never be satisfied. The same here -- don't
concentrate on achieving days in which you're completely unaware of your breath
because those will never happen. Everyone's conscious of their breathing
sometimes. The goal here is to change the continuous thought patterns that lead
us to be aware of our breathing. If we all go forward confidently in that
direction, sooner than we all think, we'll be going to bed peacefully one night
and kinda realize in the back of our heads, "wow, i didn't really notice most
of my breathing today." We can all break this mind-body habit we've gotten
into. We can.

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Hey guys,

I hope all of you are doing very well. I have to say that I agree strongly with
the advice given by Alistair.

The basis for any kind of obsession, in this case a breathing obsession, is
fear. All of you on this board have to ask yourselves what exactly you're
afraid of in regards to your breathing. Are you afraid that you feel like you
can't breathe? Are you afraid that you feel like you'll have this obsession
forever? Because we all have thousands upon thousands of thoughts throughout
the day. But if any one keeps popping up, it's because we fear it.

The secret to stopping any obsession is to break the cycle of fear. Think about
someone who meditates on a daily basis. They spend an amount of time focusing
on their breath. Yet, do they become obsessed with their breathing? No. Why?
Because they don't fear it. Think about a singer. They work with breathing
exercises. Do all singers obsess over their breathing? Of course not. The key
to gaining a degree of control over an obsession is to remove the fear element
from it.

Are you afraid that you feel like you can't breathe? Don't be, because your
body's unconscious mind has the capacity to breathe on its own. Are you afraid
that this will stay with you forever? Don't be, because everything always
changes. Think of something in the past that you thought would never change but
did.

Right now your thoughts are heavily skewed towards breathing. A lot of you
probably wish you had "normal" thoughts like everybody else, like, what to make
for dinner or chores that need to be done. You probably all had these thoughts
before you became obsessed with breathing. Well, nothing physically has changed
between those two times except for fear. Really, what are you afraid of? If
you've already gone through days where you've noticed every single breath,
what's there to be afraid of? You didn't die. You didn't "go insane." I think
you'll all find that once you begin to give up the fear, the thoughts will
begin to subside. Let your mind be as chaotic as possible. Let any thought in
your mind arise and don't be afraid of it. If your mind tells you to control
your breathing, don't be afraid of the thought. You know deep down that
breathing is an unconscious function. Thoughts can't hurt you. If you think
that you'll always be obsessed with your breath, don't let the thought hurt
you. It's not true -- everything always changes; nothing is ever permanent.
Sure, it might be a while before all the thoughts regarding your breathing calm
down. But if you reliably stick to not fearing your breathing, I think you'll
notice that it will disperse fairly quickly. Soon, your mind will resume
thinking the "normal" things it thought before.

Getting rid of an obsession is not really an active process where you monitor
progress and are aware of when you've reached your "goal." Because ultimately
the way of achieving your goal is to not be aware of progress or anything to
even do with the obsession. The way to achieve progress is to be strong in the
face of your fear, let your mind think about breathing and just let time be the
ultimate healer. With time, the thoughts about your breathing, if you don't
fear them, will disappear. And if you follow this rule of thumb, you can't let
any obsession hurt you. Because it's all based on fear.

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Hello!

For the first time I am on this page, and I readed first and few last posts. I
have this problem for short time and I completly cure that. I find this because
I study psychology, and this phenomenon is interesting for me...I do not want
to be noring, so I explain how I cure myself. First look this:

1. approx. 6 500 000 000 people breathing in this moment, in and out.
2. approx. 500 000 000 people are over 70 years old, and they still breathing
3. you are still breathing if you looking now this post
4. do strong hitch with your head and thinks this: Did you thined on breathing
in that moment when you hitch? No? But you did.
5. whole your body is one machine, you move your hands, your legs, your
eyelashes, your mouth...your lungs.You move always more that 3 organs on
your body in this moment: eyelashes, lungs, mouth...you can control
everything that, and thinking about that, but you can not prevent their
normal functions.
6. your parents, your friends also breathing
7. dogs, cats, cows...are breathing. They can not know what is for exp. earth
or who is Brad Pitt. But when you reading this last sentence, when you saw
earth you have its pictures in your minds, as picture of Brad Pitt. But
animals can not conceive, they can not even reading this. But they
breathing...
8...there is 100000000 facts like these.

Cure is:

1. do not press thinking about your breath when that come, think about that.
You can not think about your breathing more than 5 minutes. There is always
"one breath" which you forget.
2. You never forget your breathing. "Normal" people are also aware of their
breathing, but they not gived it so much focus like you. You can be aware or
not, you will still breathing normal.
3. go, doing everything you want, talk, read, run, you will breathing, but you
also move your legs, hands...why you do not think about moving your legs?
4. You can not find cure for obsession and say: I am complete forget! But when
you say that, you still remember that. If you are atill on this topic you
did not find cure.
5. Go from this forum, and never come back...that will be your cure.

Sorry for my english it is not so well, because I am from Europe.

I want you luck.