Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
I posted a couple days ago with a med question about my daughter, 13. Now I am wondering if anyone has dealt specifically with fears about not being able to breathe.
So many of my daughter's fears stem from a fear of not being able to breathe. She is well-aware that anxiety often causes shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, etc. But every. single. time. she gets anxiety (or gets a cold, or tries to play sports, or plays her trombone for a long time) and feels those symptoms, she is convinced on some level that she is having heart problems or that it's dangerous. If you have been through this, did anything help? She sees a psychologist who uses CBT - challenge the thought, what are the facts, what is likely to happen, etc. Last year I also had her try running with me to practice being out of breath, which I am thinking about restarting. Incidentally, her health is just fine.
If anyone has made progress with this specific anxiety, I'd love to hear your advice!
So many of my daughter's fears stem from a fear of not being able to breathe. She is well-aware that anxiety often causes shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, etc. But every. single. time. she gets anxiety (or gets a cold, or tries to play sports, or plays her trombone for a long time) and feels those symptoms, she is convinced on some level that she is having heart problems or that it's dangerous. If you have been through this, did anything help? She sees a psychologist who uses CBT - challenge the thought, what are the facts, what is likely to happen, etc. Last year I also had her try running with me to practice being out of breath, which I am thinking about restarting. Incidentally, her health is just fine.
If anyone has made progress with this specific anxiety, I'd love to hear your advice!
I hope this helps. As for her fear of not being able to breath, it could be coming from so many things. Being bullied at school; pushing herself to get A's in school; childhood trauma such as having surgery at a young age; she could have had the wind knocked out of her once and couldn't catch her breath (this happened to me whenever I fell out of my bed...it was a tall bed!). There are so may possibilities both physical and emotional that can lead to this fear. I also had this fear and I was able to trace it back to childhood trauma. Once I remembered the trauma I was able to heal it and the fear disappeared.
Take care