To challenge yourself even more, whilst you´re tuning into the breath, you can purposefully try to make yourself feel anxious about it. If you have a spare few minutes here and there you can practice tuning into your breath. The next step then is to keep practicing this throughout your day. You may feel some anxiety when you do this, that’s fine, just try to allow that to be there and keep bringing your attention back to the breath for 5 to 10 minutes. Purposefully tuning into the breath is key. Keep focusing in on it and if you mind wanders, just bring your attention back to the breath. Try to notice the sensations of the breath in the nostrils, the mouth or in the chest and belly. I want you to really try and notice the whole process of the breath from start to finish. You are going to sit somewhere quiet and purposefully bring your attention to your breath. It helps to do this at home the first few times that you try it and make sure you don´t do it whilst doing something potentially dangerous, like driving a car.
So how does this work in practice? Focus in on the Breath So when it tells you to stop thinking about the breath, you are going to tell yourself that you want to think about the breath. The trick to overcoming this problem is to start doing the opposite of what the OCD is telling you to do. Mindfulness is an overused word and I often don´t like the term, however the skills that it gives us are invaluable when it comes to sensorimotor OCD. This type of thinking though just perpetuates the problem, so what can we do? Mindfulness is key in overcoming breathing OCD The main problem is the fact that we don´t want to be conscious of the breath. Trying not to think about our breathing just makes us more conscious of it. I´m fully aware of this myself as I´ve struggled with breathing OCD in the past and I know exactly how frustrating it can be. They become more and more aware of it and this can cause a lot of anxiety and discomfort. So as the person tries everything they can to not be aware of their breath, what often happens is the opposite. Generally what tends to happen is that the more you try not to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it (don´t think of a pink elephant). The problem occurs because they don´t want their breathing to be conscious, they want it to go back to being a subconcious thing, but when we try to force things like this it often back fires. Previously they may have always been breathing subconsciously and not given it too much thought, but for some reason their breathing has become conscious. So what is breathing OCD and how can we overcome it? I wish I could stop thinking about itīreathing OCD is when someone becomes completely obsessed about their breathing. It most defintitely is OCD though and not only that, it can be particularly infuriating as breathing is obviously (and thankfully) something that we are doing all day, every day. Many people don´t even realise that this is OCD as it doesn’t fall under the more typical themes.
Breathing OCD is a type of sensorimotor OCD where your mind becomes hyper aware and conscious of the breath.
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