What do I do when I can't breathe?

Do you ever feel like you don't know how to breathe any more? I'm not talking about an organic disorder, something like pneumonia or bronchitis or lung cancer. Those are valid reasons for having difficulty breathing, but they're not exactly what I mean when I talk about it here.

And I don't mean precisely panic attacks, either. Sure, they qualify as a psychological disorder that results in the feeling of the inability to breathe, amongst other things. But there's a subtle difference between that and the experience that I'm talking about. In a panic attack, the panic – I believe – descends upon you, resulting in a multitude of physical symptoms including the sensation of difficulty breathing.

But with what I'm talking about, the sequence of events is reversed, a vital difference even if it might not seem significant, given that the plethora of symptoms involved have vast similarities and might easily be mistaken one for the other. No, what I'm talking about involves a mental process before a physical one ever appears on the scene. That is, when it happens to me – because it does happen to me, and a damned nuisance it is, too – then the first sign of its appearance is a thought.

Yes, just a stray thought across the surface of the mind, because that's all it takes as warning of an imminent attack. Even the thought that, 'Well, I feel quite well, it's quite a long time now since I last had an episode' is sufficient. Yes, ironically, the observation of feeling well and not experiencing the weird 'breathing issue' is enough to spark off an episode of that issue. Brains are funny, right? Especially the neurotic and messed-up variety, I know.

I believe it's known in some quarters as 'overbreathing syndrome'. And it can start off just as simply as that. 

Nothing here constitutes medical advice and is merely personal observation!  obv. 

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