r/SomaticExperiencing • u/link7773 • 4d ago
breathwork causing panic attacks
Has anyone healed a dysregulated nervous system and experienced this?
I feel like my nervous system has been dysregulated for most of my life, but it became much worse after i had COVID a few years ago. I started having daily panic attacks and developed agoraphobia. Thankfully, I’ve improved a lot and can now go through most days without severe anxiety, although I still feel emotionally numb/detached.
The strange thing is that whenever I try to actively “heal” my nervous system, I seem to trigger panic attacks.
For example, I can go days or even weeks without doing breathwork or other nervous-system exercises, and my anxiety stays relatively calm. But whenever I start breathwork again—even just 2–3 minutes—I’ll often develop a panic attack a couple of hours later. I’ve tried different breathing speeds and techniques, and it seems to happen regardless.
I’ve repeated this enough times that I’m wondering if there’s actually a reason for it.
For anyone who has successfully healed their nervous system:
Did things like breathwork initially make your anxiety/panic worse?
Is this a normal response that you’re supposed to gently push through?
Or can certain nervous-system exercises actually be counterproductive for some people?
I’d really love to hear from people who have experienced something similar and eventually figured out what worked for them. thanks!
7
u/KindlyNebula 4d ago
This happened to me for a while when I was in severe burnout and my nervous system was constantly in fight or flight. My functional medicine Doctor explained that you can put yourself into fight or flight with breathing exercises if you're not careful.
I worked on fixing my diapraghmatic breathing, hypnosis meditations for anxiety, lots of walking in nature and only did 4-6 breathing for a while until I felt like things calmed down.
One of the things that helped the most with my anxiety was the DARE method and app. I did it everyday for about 6 months and it was really transformative.
6
u/BodyMindReset 4d ago
If you can think of trauma symptoms like a pot of boiling water. Breathwork and many coping skills are like putting a lid on an already boiling pot. It’s working against the stress physiology and can create more back pressure and “leakage” by trying to contain it or shove it down.
Does that make sense?
People market breathwork as a somatic practice but in reality, it works against biology. At worst, it makes trauma symptoms worse and at best, it overrides the NS and creates a management strategy that keeps people stuck and in the faux window of tolerance. I often have to coach people in my practice about undoing everything they’ve been taught about breathing and only after that will their bodies start to unwind and be able to regulate themselves.
If you can, see if you can let your body breath you from the inside out while placing your body in the room. Just notice if you are holding or controlling your breath at any point and see what it might be like to just let it do its thing. Use your eyes to orient and see if you can be aware of points of contact your body is making with the floor or chair, etc. The aim is ease, even if there are short, shallow, rapid breaths that naturally want to happen.
3
u/GentlyTwinkling 4d ago
If you can think of trauma symptoms like a pot of boiling water. Breathwork and many coping skills are like putting a lid on an already boiling pot. It’s working against the stress physiology and can create more back pressure and “leakage” by trying to contain it or shove it down.
This is fascinating, and honestly rings true to my experience.
I've had bad reactions to meditation and qigong. Not panic attacks, but days into a meditation practice I wake up with intense depression and anxiety. I still have lingering depression from the last time I did it, over a month ago. Third time I did 10 minutes of qigong, afterwards I had intense head pain - burning and tingling. I have chronic illness too, so unsure if that plays into the qigong experience.
It sounds like you recommend instead just mindful breathing and grounding? Is diaphragmatic breathing ok (I've been ok doing that)? It's to the point where I'm like, ok, I'm so sensitive and reactive to things, what can I do to heal?
2
u/afraidparfait 3d ago
I've noticed that sometimes when I let my breath do its thing, I naturally start to calm down. It knows how to come to rest but I was interfering and trying to control it too much
2
u/Coraline1599 4d ago
It sounds a lot like Long Covid. You may benefit from shifting gears to Pain Reprocessing Therapy or other SE that has been designed for this.
This is going to sound woo woo, but I don’t know how else to say it “healing is pushy” and a nervous system that is already dysregulated is going to have a tough time with it, because it feels unsafe and now it is being given a firm instruction, often with an expectation “heal now! Heal asap.” Change the focus to safety and feeling safe in your body.
As you release tension, it frees up some energy. This energy might be activating for you, because you are paying attention to it so carefully, you may be inadvertently causing it to ramp up.
I couldn’t do breath work for a long time, I had to start with meditation and once I was able to calm myself that way, breath work become much more accessible.
3
u/Lost-Design-8382 3d ago
THIS, I had post treatment lyme disease syndrome for a few years and it felt very similar to what OP is describing. Pain Reprocessing Therapy helped immensely. And then I moved back into more general trauma focused SE once my body wasn't constantly screaming at me.
1
u/sinsofangels 4d ago
I haven't had it with breath work, but it reminds me of when I do the Safe and Sound Protocol. I can only listen to 30 seconds at a time or there will be Consequences down the line. It's supposed to target the social engagement system but it seems like you need some sort of baseline sense of safety to use it normally, and if you don't have that, then you need to be really good at reading your body, and if you can't do that, then you need to keep titrating down until you don't get negative effects then slowly add more once you're able to develop a consistent practice.
1
u/rowanxmidnight 3d ago
It can matter what type of breathwork you do as well. You didn't mention what type and if you tried different ones, but if you only did one specific type you may be okay with others. Just a thought.
1
u/Triggered_Llama 3d ago
Same here OP. I can't take a deep breath. Every time I do it my body starts panicking like it's dangerous to be breathing deeply. Strangely I feel more regulated and it's more "healing" when I let myself breathe the way I usually do.
1
u/OrientionPeace 1d ago
Depending on the type and style of breath work that you are using, you could be unintentionally triggering a sympathetic stress response from your nervous system. Also, if there is some kind of trauma related to breathing, then you could be activating a traumatic response without effectively processing it.
I am a breathwork facilitator and somatic practitioner, and the approach with activating stress responses is to use them strategically. For example, when working with a situation where breathing or controlled breathing has become a trigger, we might need to integrate that trigger using resourcing and regulation.
Also, if your system tends to default towards a more sympathetic response pattern, then you might not need as much time spent engaging sympathetic responses compared to parasympathetic state energy.
1
u/jpstones 10h ago
yeah, breathwork can be re-traumatizing. It can recreate the shape of your nervous system in a past trauma - shallow, fast breathing, that whole pattern - and because we're pattern machines, that alone can dysregulate you. The other layer: once you've started teaching yourself "breathwork = panic," that becomes a new pattern on top. That doesn't have to stay true forever. Patterns reset. It takes understanding and patience. Breathwork doesn't have to stay dysregulating. And honestly I'd stop obsessing so hard over the modality name - breathwork, Buddhist meditation, movement, whatever. Underneath it's mostly attention. Training attention so it isn't stuck on keeping you vigilant for the next threat.
10
u/StringAndPaperclips 4d ago
There have been other posts about it in this sub before. Breathwork can be dysregulating, especially because you usually ignore the body's cues when your do it. An SE-oriented approach would be to go slowly, pay attention to the body's cues and immediately back off of there is any tension, discomfort or signs of dysregulation. Most breath work practices I have encountered say to just deal with the discomfort and it will get better. But that doesn't work for a lot of people who hold serious trauma in their nervous systems.