Shortness Of Breath

One of the things that I recently learned about Social Anxiety Disorder is that it can cause shortness of breath, something which was quite interesting to me personally. I think that a mental disorder which can cause someone’s heart to beat faster or their body to sweat more or for their breathing to be affected it has to be a pretty bad disorder. Its strange how something so much in the mind can affect you so much physically.

The shortness of breath symptom wasn’t really something that I had become that aware of with regards to Social Anxiety Disorder, but then I thought back and had my memory jogged. I remember a while aback when I was going for a walk with family and relatives. Some of these relatives are people who I seem to bring on my social anxiety even more, which may sound a bit nasty but its not at all intentional. They are still kind and caring people but I think its that they are quite successful people and are very smart and social people, and I think that seems to make me more anxious. Anyway the walk wasn’t exactly strenuous or tiring – not the sort of walk that would leave you short of breath by any stretch of the imagination. I was walking with a relative and they were asking how I was doing, how work was going etc and I could just feel myself becoming short of breath, and so seemed to be talking in quite short sentences and could feel myself going red because of feeling embarrassed too.  I’m not sure if they noticed it much, or whether they thought I was being a bit unsociable or abrupt or anything, but it was quite annoying and strange :(

Another time that I experience shortness of breath is when playing football in a “big” environment. When I say big I don’t mean Wembley stadium, or even anything like a stadium. I just mean with people watching, or playing with strangers or something. I first experienced it when playing for the first time for the school football team, and got it ever since then really. When it happened I just thought I was really unfit – but that's a bit stupid because it was like the first few seconds of the football match. It’s such a frustrating thing for me to get because football is probably my biggest love, without sounding daft or OTT. I love playing football, whether on my own or with friends, and just love the freedom and knowing that you’re keeping fit too. It really annoys me that the Social Anxiety Disorder can even affect me in this way too, when doing one of the things that I really love, just because I’m being watched or am around people that I don’t know.

Apart from that it’s been snowing here which is really cool, hardly ever snows here! Enjoyed walking the dog in the snow, hopefully it’ll last a long time :) And also been working, so no change there. Still dreaming of working whilst travelling, or taking a break to go travelling for a few months to try and sort myself out.