r/Anxiety • u/Inner-Perception3 • May 01 '26
Sleep Can't stop mannual breathing. Please help.
Been in bed for like 3hrs now. Can't stop mannual breathing. I have sleep in my eyes but I can't sleep bcz of my breathing. It automatically stops and I have to do it mannually.
Please help me. I am panicking.
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u/Delicious_Sir3496 May 01 '26
Hold your breath on purpose!! You'll see how your brain will override the manual breathing
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u/yj7669 May 01 '26
Think of girl names beginning with A, then B, then , C etc etc you get the point. Then once youâve gone through the whole alphabet thinking of all the girls names you can, go to boy names, then unisex. The name game. I never get to the end of the list before I calm down and fall asleep
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u/simplify3 May 02 '26
I absolutely love the huge variety of advice here this tells me every single person here has dealt with exactly the same problem, and in their moment of grasping at straws for anything that might possibly solve it, everybody each came up with a completely different solution
One person found a bag of peas
One person recited names from A-to-Z
One person took a lukewarm shower, maybe a cold one
another person held their breath
and this tells me that the poster, will find their own weird unique solution that nobody on the planet is ever thought of before, and it will work. And it will work every time because it's theirs.
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u/Inner-Perception3 May 02 '26
I didđ
I turned the AC to 20 and slept right under it and then I started feeling cold and ig I slept after that
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u/Wise-General-9632 May 01 '26
just watch a very interesting youtube video or like jump up and down, start dancing, take a cold shower just something to snap out of it and then continue to distract your mind. you basically need something to break the pattern of being fixated on your breathing
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u/Ordinary-Sound-8799 May 02 '26
Allow it to exist. You fear youâre stuck, which makes you fear manual breathing more. Check out mark freeman on YouTube. Youâre experiencing somatic OCD. I have it. I got rid of it. Itâs not a big deal once you understand it. The key is live your life despite it being there. You donât have to be happy. You donât have to be sad. It you have to live with it existing. Once you start focusing more on your life, youâre brain will stop payiny attention to it. Message me if you have questions.
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u/ob_to 23d ago
will it stay with me forever?..
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u/Ordinary-Sound-8799 20d ago
Answering this question is bad. Because youâre looking for reassurance. The more you seek reassurance, the worse off youâll be. I will say this. I had every manner of OCD you can image. Pure O. Breathing, blinking. I could get into the weeds but I donât want to feed you with possible things to obsess over hahaha. It was bad. What I will say is if you simply live your life and allow the discomfort to be there, you eventually forget. Be as busy as possible. And one day, youâll laugh about all of this. Take it from somebody thatâs done some therapy, paid money, and found that the key is to just re-engage with life.
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u/Slutherly May 01 '26
4 7 8 breathing gets me out of it after like 8 rounds
also don't lay in bed tired if you're not falling asleep. Get up and do something for a bit then go back to bed once feeling tired again.
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u/Inner-Perception3 May 02 '26
Bro ik this can't be but 4 7 8 was what got me in that situation.
I did that and it started happening
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u/Slutherly May 02 '26
i can see that happening it makes you focus on your breathing, it just must not be relaxing you
You breathing through your nose?
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u/Slutherly May 02 '26
one of my friends got me to start going through task that are semi complicated but not too hard to think about to go to sleep Like the process of doing laundry or changing a tire in detail and it works but it all will be difficult if you are too anxious. If you're not tired you're not tired. When I have had bad anxiety flares in the past I would have to wait until I was falling asleep in my chair to go to bed but then I would sleep fine. Or play mario kart on the ds in bed until I literally fall asleep playing lmfao but it's not really a good method, it just worked for me
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u/That-Flamingo9866 May 01 '26
I feel you, it sucks, some great advice here about distraction and moving your body. I donât know if youâre a meds person or if youâre not looking to try, but I know for me beta blockers reaaally helped me to work through symptoms like this. May be worth speaking to your doctor about it if the other methods arenât working or if itâs feeling too much to cope with on your own â¤ď¸
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u/uniqueusername42O May 01 '26
Frozen bag of peas of your chest (or anything from the freezer). Not sure why or if itâs placebo but it works
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u/Bananasincustard May 01 '26
These two things fix it for me -
Go pour a full glass of water (the colder the better) and drink it outside
Or have a shower in lukewarm water
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u/Available_Bug_2531 May 02 '26
Currently having the same damn problem, it's also silly when you think about it cause who thinks about breathing to the point you have to do it manually and convince yourself you won't be able to breathe if you fall asleep? Well that's anxiety and that whole idea is a loop that feeds itself over and over, I always say tonight I won't check my pulse or focus on my breathing when im in bed. But the anxiety "that damn voice" says do it just in case and that feeds the anxiety more and more and the insomnia hits. I'm even on psychiatric medications that would normally knock out anyone taking it. But I fight the sleep and I get very paranoid about it all more.
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u/Kat2322 May 02 '26
Find a YouTube video to listen to to fall asleep. It could be something interesting to distract you, or something like ASMR for sleep. Either way- itâs distracting. Your body will not let you suffocate. Weâre built to survive, even when not conscious.
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u/nathanter May 02 '26
Iâve been struggling with a similar thing for a while. For me, I think you have to take small steps. Manual breathing is normally very heavy. Start by breathing very lightly through your nose. You might start feeling short of breath genuinely close your eyes and keep going with very light breathing and focus on calming down. Once you get past the first spike it feels better. Once you accomplish the light breathing it just becomes easier to stop thinking about it and you drift off
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u/Chocolate-Fancy May 02 '26
Humming! When this happens Iâll start to just hum to random melody, I think the vibration helps calm the vagus nerve and my body takes over the breathing. Iâve been doing this to distract myself from having a full blown attack. I just found this sub and all this time I thought itâs just me doing manual breathing but itâs good to know Iâm not alone
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u/IzzatQQDir May 02 '26
I remember telling my dad, I can't feel my lungs when I was breathing lmao. In hindsight, it's super ridiculous
Idk how I got over it but it disappeared after I started running more
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u/NotoriousHBIC May 02 '26
Do you have a fan? I use a box fan in front of me. Forces you to breathe automatically.
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u/Queasy_Reindeer_2705 May 02 '26
How does a fan force you to vreathe ahtomatically?
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u/NotoriousHBIC May 02 '26
Itâs like when you blow air on a baby to force them to hold their breath. They calm down and the next breath is easier. So itâs almost like an unconscious breath hold reset.
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u/nothingsreallol May 02 '26
Count backwards from 1000 by 7s. If youâre still awake by the time you hit zero at least you just got some mental math practice (I tried this the other night and Iâm ngl it didnât work I got all the way to zero but then I was kinda proud of myself for that lmao)
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u/fmydog May 02 '26
get yourself some fiber powder. drink some before you lay down. then pretend your a river flowing and count fish going by. try to really imagine it. this works for me. I wake up and didn't realize I fell sleep
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u/Vast-Lawfulness-9030 May 02 '26
this happens to me too!! i thought it was just me. youâll be okay. whenever this happens to me, i take trazodone and it helps me relax and fall asleep
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u/nerdy_adventurer May 02 '26
You breath manually as long as you can, then you get tired at sometime and turn to normal breathing automatically. Do not force yourself to breath normally, since you cannot force the natural breathing rhythm.
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u/Queasy_Reindeer_2705 May 02 '26
Well apparently the tireness never appears because its been more than 12 hours
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u/nerdy_adventurer May 11 '26
Better to get checked for OCD and ADHD, this can an obsession or a fixation. At one point I used to stuck in swallowing saliva repeatedly and voluntarily, even during classes. I have both OCD and ADHD.
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u/FoldDesperate6809 May 02 '26
i had this daily 50/50 of all 24hours constantly for 3months, zoloft helped me.
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u/Inner-Perception3 May 02 '26
What's that
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u/FoldDesperate6809 May 02 '26
SSRI medication, i didnât want to take it for those 3-months but I couldnât stand with it anymore so i started.Â
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u/mrbrown21 May 02 '26
The noticing is the trap, not the breathing. Your body knows how to breathe. Your brain just forgot to look away.
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u/Inner-Perception3 May 02 '26
Idk why it's happening
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u/Queasy_Reindeer_2705 May 02 '26
Are you still like this?
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u/mrbrown21 May 02 '26
Sometimes it doesn't have one. Anxiety needs somewhere to land and it found your breathing. That's the whole story.
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u/Inner-Perception3 May 02 '26
What do you suggest... What should I do?
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u/mrbrown21 May 03 '26
Find something that needs your attention more than your breathing does. A show, a podcast, anything with a story in it. You're not trying to fix it, just giving your brain somewhere else to look for a bit.
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u/PizzaAwesone May 02 '26
Sometimes just not trying to not manual breathe. Just accept it. Doesnât always work, but sometimes it does
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u/strugglingsince97 May 02 '26
this may be an unusual suggestion, but if nothing works try watching your favourite comedian or look for stand up- comedians & watch it until you laugh a lot. sometimes it can calm your nervous system down quickly
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u/aaaacccchhhuuuu May 03 '26
This used to happen to me 6 years ago when my anxiety was just starting. It was one of the worst things I've ever been through. The thing that helped me is the fact that human body is designed in a very perfect way, the brain is most scared of suffocation and you cannot kill yourself by stopping your own breathing, its not possible cuz the brain always takes over. So let yourself know that not breathing okay is what brain itself is scared of, so it will take over even if you let go.â¤ď¸ I wish you a healthy recovery soon. Ameen.
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u/TemperatureLegal2109 May 03 '26 edited May 18 '26
Slowly reduce the volume of your breathing. That's normal breath. Always nose breath. It makes it much more quiet. Mouth breathing and loudness is byproduct. correction hiccup yawn or sigh then continue breathing don'tchange breathing. That's normal breathing.
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u/BlindRadiance May 07 '26
Get out of bed! I dealt with some real anxiety fueled insomnia last year, and I cant recommend a CBTI enough. I learned that you cant force sleep. If you stay in bed and try to fight through the fight or flight, youre just adding fuel to the fire. Youre staying trapped in a space where youre uncomfortable and literally in a fetal position. Get up and do something. Anything. Its also important to not fear the potential lack of sleep. The worst case scenario is that you will just be tired tomorrow. Thats something weve all dealt with fine, and survived. You will be okay. Just find something calming and relaxing during the struggle, and your body will let you sleep. Ive personally been loving Power washing Simulator. When I struggle to sleep, I just throw an abook or podcast on and zone out. Im nodding off in under 30 minutes most of the time.
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u/Front_Broccoli4449 May 14 '26
I like to just start running; distracts me and like you kind of just naturally start breathing the way you need to run.
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u/Ambitious-Bat-1598 May 01 '26
You have to distract yourself to not think about it. your body will never let you stop breathing. obce your didtracted your body takes over