Feel like can’t breathe normally / will stop breathing

[Alice1990]

This is an issue I had before the Covid 19 news hit, however it’s come back pretty badly.
I often feel like I silently can’t breathe. I say silently because I’m not obviously struggling for breath or breathing heavily.
It’s very distressing and the last thing I want to be dealing with during this crisis is getting symptoms like this as my mind keeps wondering and worrying that I do have the virus or something else is going on.
Can anyone offer some advice or reassurance? Such a lonely time at the moment.

[textsfromthemoon]

I've felt this exact same feeling before and I've seen other people on the forum here mention it too. For me it is 100% an anxiety thing, one thing that always reassures me is to realize that when i'm not anxious/not thinking about it my breathing is always completely normal. When I start to feel that way I always try my best to distract myself, if I'm at work I try to focus really hard on what I'm doing there or if I'm home I try to watch or do something I enjoy but that I have to focus on and then before I know it I realize my breathing is totally normal again. I'm sorry you're dealing with this right now, but I hope this helps a bit!

[james2012]

I'm going through this at min it's very horrid to have I'm worrying about copd. Cancer.