Anxiety Attacks - Are Breathing Problems Dangerous?

[Elsie Brody]

It is important for me to state, right from the outset, that I have no
medical accreditation, nor any professional accreditation in anything
to do with Anxiety, or related, disorders.
What I do have is 13 years personal experience of this awful
affliction, and a vast amount of information and experience gained
both from other sufferers and also extensive reading on the subject.
Concerns about breathing are commonplace amongst anxiety sufferers and
that is what they just should remain, concerns. You are in no danger,
certainly not the grave physical danger that a lot of sufferers
believe. Having said that, the first advice given here is to consult
your doctor to ensure that these breathing issues have no physical
source and that you are not suffering from something which could
actually induce them.
When you have been given a clean bill of heath from your doctor, the
first thing to do is to educate yourself as to how you can find out
what is causing the attack. This is the first step towards it's
control, and any others which may follow.
Feeling short of breath makes sufferers believe they are suffocating
when in actual fact being short of breath, and suffocating, are
totally separate things. Panic can induce the animal instinct in us of
"Fight or Flight" which causes the neck and chest muscles to tighten,
thus making it difficult to breathe but this has nothing to do with
suffocation.
It is a physical impossibility for those muscles to tighten enough for
you to be suffocated. It is most definitely unpleasant, and sometimes
very frightening, but life threatening most definitely not.
We then move on to excessive breathing, or hyperventialting, and the
feelings it induces. Before we go there, you should understand that
hyperventilating, i.e. breathing too rapidly, actually causes a loss
of carbon dioxide which in itself induces panic, stress, severe
discomfort and even the feeling that you are going to die, all of
which can be very, very unpleasant. The good news is you are not going
to die, however bad it makes you feel. You just need to learn to
control your breathing, breathing deeply, and from the diaphragm,
which is a muscle in the lower part of your abdomen. Most will try
breathing from the chest, but this is wrong and can actually
exacerbate the situation. Breathe from the diaphragm, taking slow
steady breaths, telling yourself all the time that you are in control,
and reminding yourself that this controlled steady breathing will
bring evrything back to normal.
This controlled breathing exercise is very, very important, as people
will actually try and breathe quicker when they feel they are out of
breath, which of course makes the situation even worse as a loss of
carbon dioxide will ensue, as covered above.
Learn controlled breathing, realise what controlled breathing can do
for you, and you are well on the way towards you being the master,
rather than feeling that you are being controlled by some monster.
Sufferers also feel a stigma about their breathing issues and will
exacerbate the whole problem by not discussing these issues with
anyone. They feel somehow they are unusual, weird even, so
consequently keep things to themselves. You must understand that you
are by no means on your own as many, many, millions of people around
the world have the same problems.
Learning to face what causes the anxiety, and controlling the
breathing problems, are of paramount importance in gaining back
control. I taught myself to think it was like controlling a skidding
car, so that by learning how to control the skid, I was asserting my
authority over the car. This sounds very simplistic I know, but it
worked for me as, to continue the analogy, it left me with the feeling
that I could always regain control over my driving. When I had
mastered this technique, the fear of skidding disappeared as I knew
that I could control whatever the road may throw at me, and learning
to control one's breathing during attacks is in a lot of ways just the
same. Learn how to manage your breathing so that control is back with
you again and any danger you thought you may be in is removed.
It is also of the utmost importance to understand that most breathing
problems can be controlled and then corrected. And by confronting
one's fears, and bringing reality to bear on their source, thus
proving those fears to be groundless, the breathing problems will
subsequently cease to exist.
The vast majority of panic attacks have no basis in reality, and by
confronting those root fears you can prove this to yourself. In
addition, with the proviso that you have been proven to be medically
sound, breathing problems associated with those attacks cannot harm
you and are easily controlled.