Please help! Can't stop hyperventilating!

[Sharon123]

My worst fear is of fainting and I know that hyperventilating sometimes causes fainting. I have OCD which basically makes me experience obsessions around breathing. One of them is when I concentrate on my breathing and I can't stop thinking about it and so I start to over breath and I start feeling really dizzy and my vision gets all weird and start to feel drowsy. I've been to every kind of doctor: Cardiologist, ENT, Gastroenteronologist, Endocrinologist, PCP etc and had numerous tests. and they all say I am perfectly healthy and that it is truly anxiety related. But I am so scared of hyperventilating and fainting that I keep bringing it on. Knock on wood I haven't fainted yet. But I feel super close to each time it happens and I feel really terrified!!! I even went to the Urgent Care while it was happening one time and they said everything looked great!
Also the drowsy feeling freaks me out too!! I hate this so much! I can't go anywhere anymore......

[Carys]

Do you know what happens after you faint (if you did, which seems unlikely as you don't seem prone to it if it's not happened so far) ? You faint and then your body takes over all the involuntary processes, without you trying to alter and control them and regulates everything. You come out of the faint just fine. Thats it. You are scaring yourself that you are going to faint, which is making you make yourself feel more faint, and then thats scaring you further. So, two things - firstly, combat the fear of fainting. Its not that big a deal actually, some perfectly healthy people do it a fair amount with different triggers. Its not life-threatening but if it happened a few times/when its never happened to you before, you'd go get yourself checked out and probably no worrying reason would be found for it in most cases. Secondly a method for calming your breathing.......

Lie down comfortably on your back, close your eyes, put your hands on the area just below your ribs and breathe in slowly and deeply counting for as many seconds as it takes to do that slow deep breathe (I have a certain number of seconds for in and out, but yours might be different), then do the exact same in reverse breathing out slowly and counting. Repeat and keep repeating until you steady your excessive and shallow breathing. Whilst doing this concentrate on your hands rising and falling, make them your focus and feel them going up and down slowly on your torso. When you have done this for a while counting, stop counting and continue to breath in deeply and out deeply and steadily concentrating on your hands rising and falling.

[Iwant2bhealthy]

I had a similar fear a while ago. Together with my therapist we did an excercise where we on purpose hyperventilated to see what happens. We did it a couple of times and guess what? Each time it was unpleasant, but nothing bad actually happened! I would highly recommend you to find a therapist that could do this kind of exposure therapy with you.

Another tool I used for hyperventilation, and obsessing about my breathing is counting the seconds when I was breathing in and out. This helped me to calm and regulate my breathing. My target was 3 seconds breathing in and 3-4 sec breathing out. After 1-5 minutes I was breathing normally again. :)

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