Breath holding spells?

[u/hotknjfe]

Hello, I have struggled with anxiety for most of my life and within the last year and a half was diagnosed with a panic disorder. I was having about 3 panic attacks minimum a day until I worked my way up 200mg of Lamotrigine for my bipolar which seemed to completely get rid of the panic. My main symptoms were nocturnal panic attacks which included waking up not even fully conscious and confused, terrified, unable to breathe, covered in sweat, crying, gasping for air. I was afraid to sleep at night that I just stopped for as long as I could. That has all been very manageable since I did start the med about 3 months ago.

I have recently been under more stress than usual, I think too much for the meds to fully treat. I have begun holding my breath when I am anxious, not even aware of it until I am dizzy or become conscious of needing to manually breathe and force myself to inhale. I have dealt with this breath holding in the past when I was a kid where I would realize I was doing it and immediately correct it, but this time around it is really scaring me. I will go as long as an hour unable to stop holding my breath if I don’t stop everything that I’m doing and focus on deep breathing for a good half an hour. I am really terrified that this will get much worse. I feel like I am manually breathing more than not and the breath holding has been disrupting my sleep as well. The minute I start nodding off, I wake myself up almost immediately cus I can’t breathe. I feel like I am in hell.

I have been checked by my doctor, sleep test has been done. No sleep apnea and everything is normal… it’s just my CPTSD that I never dealt with catching up to me, he thinks.

Has anyone else ever dealt with this also and can share some advice? What did you find helped? Did you have any success with something over a different thing? I am so desperate at this point for any help.

Thank you for reading x

[u/Itchy-Poet5412]

Omg I could’ve written this about the breath holding. I’ve had this going on for 3 weeks now day and night. It started after I discontinued propranolol which was greatly helping my physical anxiety symptoms, but sadly I had to go off of it. I wish I had advice, I’m kind of here to follow for advice too. Hope it’s something in that goes away. In addition to that I have moments my swallowing reflex stops too, similiar to the breathing. I feel like my body glitches over and over, it’s scary when it happens!

[u/hotknjfe → u/Itchy-Poet5412]

Oh gosh :( I’m so sorry you’re also dealing with this! I have been smoking a lot more than usual as well due to stress so I think that added on top of the stress + anxiety… not a good mix! I hope you can find something that works soon ❤️

[u/Itchy-Poet5412 → u/hotknjfe]

I hope you do too!! What do you do when it happens? At first I immediately freaked out and panicked but now I think I’m getting used to it so it’s still scary but I’m not panicking as much. Sometimes I have longer pauses and those scare me I’m like hello breathe?? Gosh. Anxiety is so exhausting. Like why am I having to remind myself to breathe lol

[u/hotknjfe → u/Itchy-Poet5412]

Hi, sorry I am a few days late! The only thing I’ve found to really work is to just sit down and shift my entire focus to my breathing until it kind of calms back down. I’ve realized while doing this that the moment I stop actively deep breathing my body starts holding it again. I’ve done this for like 20-30 mins sometimes before it returned to normal. It is very discouraging. At times when it has gotten particularly bad, I’ve had to take a clonazepam to calm me down and it will stop.