What is this?

[mikeinlondon]

For the past three months I've this horrid sensation that whenever I sit I feel suffocated. More specifically it feels like a belt is tightened around my abdomen. When I breath in there's resistance and it feels hard to inhale. My abdomen feels so tight and there's significant bloat (gas). My massage therapist says that my abdominal muscles are so tight.

My brain has been playing the devil recently and I'm in no doubt that this is TMS. It's a nasty sensation and although I know I'm not in danger (i.e. a life threatening symptom) it reduces my quality of life dramatically.

Has anyone felt a similar sensation?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

 

[Diana-M]

Yes! I’ve had it. Many times. It’s caused by adrenaline and anxiety. If you haven’t read a book by Claire Weekes, I highly recommend it. She’s a lifesaver! She’ll explain everything. I listen to parts of her books every single day.

Here’s two of her books free on YouTube:

 

[mikeinlondon]

Hi Diana - Good to hear from you again. Do you mean 'Hope & Help for Nerves'? I heard the audio book last week. It's a good book. However, these symptoms have been with me constantly (24/7) for the past three months. I experience it even if I'm not anxious and I feel at calm. I feel the biggest abuser in my life right now is my subconscious brain and I want a divorce from it! Just need to find a good lawyer who can process the legal separation. The relationship we used to have was a good one and now it has turned into a cruel selfish partner and I don't want to be part of it any longer! It's not serving me anymore.

 

[Diana-M]

I feel the biggest abuser in my life right now is my subconscious brain and I want a divorce from it

Ha! I hear you! When you get an overly sensitized nervous system, you don’t necessarily feel anxious. People have different symptoms, including yours,and they can last for months.

 

[Cactusflower]

For the past three months I've this horrid sensation that whenever I sit I feel suffocated. More specifically it feels like a belt is tightened around my abdomen. When I breath in there's resistance and it feels hard to inhale. My abdomen feels so tight and there's significant bloat (gas). My massage therapist says that my abdominal muscles are so tight.

My brain has been playing the devil recently and I'm in no doubt that this is TMS. It's a nasty sensation and although I know I'm not in danger (i.e. a life threatening symptom) it reduces my quality of life dramatically.

Has anyone felt a similar sensation?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

Mike, I have similar sensations, maybe a little higher, it's right around where my ribs begin both back and front. This sensation comes and goes and has lessened over time. I use a Physio therapist and he has suggested it's all from anxious breathing, and I think he's absolutely right, agreeing with @Diana-M . Meditation has helped, and now I am also doing Qui Gong because you breathe with co-ordinated movements which makes you more aware and slows the breath, and takes your mind off of your stress and physical obsessional thinking because it involves so many other movements. You might find it enjoyable and relaxing (it's not very taxing). If you click on my avatar photo you should find my page with a list of options for movement - all of which incorporate the idea of slowing the breath and easing anxiety. Play around with some techniques and perhaps you'll find something enjoyable.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I wish I had a dollar for each time since 2011 that a newcomer to this forum has made the claim that they aren't anxious. My older half-sister with the mysterious heart palpitations was the most recent person in my life who made this claim and when I repeated it to her two adult sons they both just rolled their eyes.

You're not alone in this denial of the obvious, @mikeinlondon! If you want to make real changes you're going to have to accept that anxiety is not just normal, but that it is hard-wired into us. Without anxiety we would never have survived to become the apex predator of the planet.

The problem now is how badly this works for us in the modern world.

All the many forms of TMS go hand-in-hand with excessive, irrational and unnecessary anxiety. We could even call it EIU Anxiety. The number of people with EIU Anxiety has been quietly on the rise for decades, and very obviously on the rise in the most recent ten years, which is why Nicole Sachs says we are now experiencing an epidemic of fear-based symptoms.

Denial is just another form of repression, and the work we take most seriously here is based in the truth about Dr Sarno's theory of emotional repression. And it is my firm belief that you can't do the emotional work required to deal with unconscious emotional repression if EIU anxiety is taking the place of rational mindfulness.

If listening to the audio book of Hope and Help for Your Nerves did not make an emotional impression, you might need to get the book and read it more slowly, allowing yourself to be vulnerable to the ideas she presents and how they relate to your experience. I seriously don't know of any better resource for conquering anxiety, even though it was written in 1969 and even though the language is a bit quaint. Dr Weekes simply gets to the heart of anxiety without wasting time, and provides the easy tools needed to control it.

Emotional experiencing is required in order to do this work effectively for the long term. It has to be absorbed much deeper than just intellectual understanding.

 

[BloodMoon]

Hello, fellow Brit!

More specifically it feels like a belt is tightened around my abdomen.

I agree with what everyone is saying in reply to you about anxiety. In addition, I would say that the sensation that you describe (above) is also indicative of anger/rage. Unless my experience of anger/rage is different to everyone else's (and I reckon it won't be) what happens to me physically when I am consciously aware of being angry and would like to express it or I am about to express it, is a feeling of like a belt tightening around my abdomen, just as you describe; it's an automatic 'girding'. It's a physical tension/bracing that happens just before you express anger; the 'girding' is in preparation to propel the 'explosion' of expressing the anger/rage. If the anger/rage is expressed and released the 'girding' subsides, but when it's not expressed and released it can stay with you. TMS is 'tension' - that's, of course, what the 'T' stands for in TMS - and Dr Sarno said that TMS is caused by rage/anger. And so often we are not consciously aware of our rage/anger, but I believe that our bodies nevertheless still 'gird' in response and recognition of it. In addition to what is angering and enraging you, look too for what has and/or is irking you... even the niggling irritations in life are rage/anger/anxiety making. Don't dismiss anything irksome as being too trivial to be enraging you... just because we feel we 'should' be okay with something that in the great scheme of things is relatively minor and 'no big deal', our brains far from always see it in that way.

 

[Bonnard]

I feel the biggest abuser in my life right now is my subconscious brain and I want a divorce from it!

Ha!! I will testify on behalf of your divorce if it goes that far. I will be your character witness.

I used to talk to my brain a lot out loud -- I would scream if I was in a remote area (out-of-the-way forest trail; beach in the winter or on a super windy day, etc.). I never thought divorce exactly, but I had some colorful ways to yell at my subconscious brain.