Forgetting to breathe

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I have had this happen to me when too fixated on something and snap out of it gasping for breath. The same as when I have held my breath intentionally.

There was a bestselling novel entitled "Waiting to Exhale". Metaphoric to be sure, but based upon a real thing. On how all us will unconsciously momentarily hold your breathe while you're tense and in anticipation about something.

In fact when that book came out , never read it, but I loved the title because it described perfectly how I felt while listening to mom tell me anything that was important. Dad would always be blunt, and to the point. No problem there. But if mom needed to say something serious to me you had to sit there and listen to a LONG tedious story, and do so without any notion of why she is talking to you, and if you allowed yourself to relax you're mind would wonder off from her boring ass story. When I was a little kid I would be deep into my own daydreams by the time she got to her point, and she would be angry at me for not listening to her. So I learned to "wait to exhale" while she talked to me, so I wouldn't relax until I got the ...reward....of hearing WTF her point was (always something bad).

I noticed I tend to hold my breath when trying to concentrate (what am I a sniper?). It has taken many months of noticing and correcting to stop it. I have always struggled with breathing correctly in general.

Hi there, this is something that I am increasingly aware that I do. It's not stopping breathing, as clearly I would expire, but very shallow breathing that I suspect over time has resulted in a chronic brain fog.

It seems like a combination of poor posture, shallow breathing, anticipation or anxiety contributes to a cycle of stress responses in the body.

The writer Linda Stone has called this "Email Apnea or Screen Apnea" and there's a good article about it that I'll link to below:

Email or Screen Apnea

Never, but I hyperventilate when I'm anxious.

I forget to breathe sometimes if I focus too hard.
And partially because my nose literally won't let me breathe or even focus for long.
Had to sneeze or breathe harder because whenever -- swelling, too much mucus, whatever symptom happens to it for no apparent reasons, and being aware of it irritates me almost every time.
Especially when I'm supposedly asleep when on a bed.

So breathing through the mouth -- only to get irritated throat and eventual cough.
At worst, breathing both ways are severely irritated and raw, it just hurts to breathe along with headaches and overwhelm.


I really just have issues with this body's upper respiratory for most of my life. It's a wonder why I hadn't got asthma or lung issues.

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