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Smothering feeling

ljk2016
ljk2016
Hello,

Lately I've been experiencing this like smothering feeling so I feel like I have a hard time breathing all the time and my brain isn't getting enough oxygen. The lack of oxygen, or maybe too much, seems to be affecting my thinking and speaking ability.

How do you all deal with this difficulty breathing and smothering feeling?
Razor91
Razor91
I used to get this, it's a terrifying feeling! I did everything to try and distract myself from this fear. I hated doing breathing exercises because I didn't want to focus on my breathing, I realise now there's nothing wrong with my breathing (apart from Asthma which will trigger me every now and then) Recently I have started to do breathing exercises with my therapist and now I'm less afraid of this feeling and am able to cope better. Took a while to get a good therapist though, many before that made te feeling worse.
SamanthaAnn1
SamanthaAnn1
This happens to me often, mostly only at night. Like Razor91 said, distraction works best. For me anyway. I open up videos on Youtube or read. Listen to calming music, take a bath. Anything to distract me usually works. I find that I get really focused on the feeling and that makes it worse.
bridgie101
bridgie101
To me I get this feeling that I'm in supercold air. Breathing is hard.

But I was in hospital for my heart last week, and they had me on an oxygen monitor. My oxygen levels were at 100% all the time.

I held my breath to see how long it would take the oxygen levels to go down. Unfortunately I set off a siren after about a minute, so I started breathing again, before my oxygen levels in the blood had even reduced.

Nobody came for the siren. I was in Accident and Emergency and nobody came for the siren. Always good to know.... :D :D :D