Breathing Deeply

The other day my massage therapist was working on my rib cage and man, it sure hurt. She commented that when a person has spent an extended period of time in freeze mode then, due to shallow breathing, muscles and ribs tend to stick to one another. I have 56 years of doing that so no wonder it hurt to have those tissues worked on. She was working on my mastectomy side where there isn't a lot of extra tissue anyway.

I've been working on my breathing. Spending some time daily practicing breathing deeply. I'm hoping there are long term benefits to be had. At the best of times the low oxygen level in my blood is borderline for qualifying for government sponsored oxygen supplementation.

Sometimes in sessions with my therapist big emotions surface and she reminds me to breathe through it and let the feelings flow through. My default is to hold my breath and panic. Disassociate. I am slowly learning that it's really true that I survived a shit ton of trauma and that there is nothing to be afraid of in the here and now.

Since starting medication I can wake in the night now and calm my amygdala down by reminding it there is nothing for me to spend time worrying about so go back to sleep. And most of the time that is exactly what I do. The more times I can remind myself I am safe, either in the night or the day, the more I have a chance of living in the now. The more chance I'll have of redirecting my thoughts when I get triggered by something in the past.

The more I can shift from freeze mode, the more automatic it will become to breathe deeply.