Hi everyone. So yesterday I posted on here about how deep breathing and relaxing and focusing on breathing can relieve anxiety due to oxygen levels etc etc. I seem to be improving on defeating panic attacks with this method/technique. However, It seems that during the day in general I don't breathe properly. It's like I don't have a routine in my breathing anymore and my body now automatically hyperventilates and I don't know ho o stop this? I've tried tuning in on my breathing and then breathing properly, thn I instantly don't feel anxious anymore. But in general when I'm not paying attention to my breathing and I'm just readding a book and start to feel anxious - how do I switch my breathing around and get into the habit of breathing normally?
Hope everyone's doing good x
Hi Justine
This is one of the problems I had before I started on meds. I had kind of dealt with the panic attacks when they came, started out severe but after a while I learned to deep breath through them and they would die down, but not the anxiety. The only way to combat it is to not be anxous. For me I tried 6 months non stop to do this on my own, and had a therapist also. Despite all this I was steadily getting worse. My therapist said it was what they call a biochemical reaction, when your body just goes into meltdown. I was getting light headed and hungry all the time and shaking, had no energy etc, what started off as not ever day anxiety led onto every single day, every walking moment and sometimes evenings too.
The only thing you can do is take time out to de stress yourself, take baths, for me walking was a godsend. Practice deep breathing etc. I tried all that I did my very best but I'm on Citalopram now and I'm doing fantastic.
If you dont notice it when you are reading - you are breathing fine,focusing on not breathing right causes alarm bells in your head
It really does. I remember before I ever suffered with anxiety, if I zoned in on my breathing it went all wrong because I guess we get used to automatically breathing we don't know how to do it properly if we focus on it. It's like when I spin an elastic band on my finger, I can do move my finger round automatically but as soon as I focus on the movement of my finger... The elastic band flies across the room because I can't do the movement properly.
I automatically hyperventilate whenever I feel a little uneasy now though which makes me feel worse. So I have to focus on my breathing to feel better and it's hard, but it could become a new skill I suppose.
Thats exactly it,if you focus and try to do it yourself it messes up because usually you breathe without knowing if that makes sense,try to take a deep breath and focus on something else instead of trying to breathe your own pattern 
I try to avert my mind away from concentrating on it, very difficult because it slips back. I try to totally relax and think of green fields and the beauty of my home town in Wales. I make myself go into town and have a tea in a cafe and people watch. It seems once we slip into that mode of anxiety it is very difficut to turn it around. Have a better day, thinking of you. x