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Mysterious shortness of breath: What has helped you?
Lung Health | Last Active: 5 days ago | Replies (3422)Comment receiving replies
@jezzy- Welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. And thank you for sharing your eye-opening journey. Many of us do have possible underlying causes for SOB but as yet have not found the connection. Learning to "control" the times at its worst must feel like you've climbed Mt. Everest! Being grounded is a means of controlling yourself that is so essential to good health and self-care. There are many exercises that can help with this, and here are a few.
https://www.healthline.com/health/grounding-techniques
Sometimes I don't even realize how uptight I am and when I finally do I am beyond just sitting down and putting my feet on the ground and calming myself. What has worked the best for you?
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The thing that has worked most for me is just going with it and not fighting against it. I've just exposed myself to the feelings and tried to hang out not taking the deep breath (which when I first started wasn't for long at all and was basically hell). After 6 months I'm an expert at it as I no longer associate that feeling with being anxious and needing to take a deep breath to relieve it and my brain has let go of it. Also just getting back into exercise, life in general and brushing it off (again easier said than done but just stick with it). As I said previously I honestly believe I had a form of Sensorimotor OCD so what I've basically done is a form of ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention) which in a nutshell is facing you fear and refraining from doing the compulsion (in my case the deep breath). It took me a long time to accept there was nothing medically wrong with me and that it was in my head but it's 100% worked for me.