Breathing will save your life (and your sanity)

A few years ago I developed panic attacks.  They came at a time when grief was a wild beast in search of prey.  For a few years after that, the panic subsided. The beast was satiated.

Last year in October I experienced a panic attack late one night.  It was after reading an email response to an email question.  The response was no. 

A few weeks ago I had the first of series of panic attacks.  In the storeroom behind my office at work x 2, in my bedroom and then to torment my children (can you read the sarcasm?), at the dinner table.  If you (read in a sarcastic tone) want your children to think you are dying (which you don’t, no one on earth could want that) have a panic attack at the table. 

First, let’s discuss sarcasm.  As the saying goes, sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, that and Beatrice does not understand sarcasm at all.  You learn quickly, as a parent of a Beatrice, that sarcasm is lame.

Secondly, my eldest son really feared my demise as I fought hard to catch my fleeing breath while I gripped the dining room table.   Beatrice, my anxious, can’t stop-won’t stop, sensory seeking child, was a lighthouse in a storm.  As my husband walked to the kitchen to get a block of ice (I read it somewhere, that ice on the back of the neck helps to bring some peace) she stroked my cheek and told me to breathe.  “Breathe, Mommy, deep breaths.”

Beatrice, oh Beatrice, from little we have had to tell her to breathe.  She was that baby-child, you know the one, or maybe you don’t, that holds their breath until they turn blue.  The idea is that that they will release it before they pass out.  Whoop! There have been more occasions, over years, than I have the capacity to keep track of where we have had to calm her down from anxiety or overstimulation (is that even possible?) or ugly defiance.  “Breathe Beatrice, breathe.” 

Alexander battles with some anxiety.  We didn’t entirely understand it in the beginning, he does not “manifest” the way his sister does.  As he has gotten older the times he becomes overwhelmed are more pronounced.  Out of habit, I tell him to breathe.  “Breathe, Alexander” and so he does.

Our youngest, Oliver, has on too many occasions also stopped breathing.  He is not nearly as scary as Beatrice was, but he too has been told to breathe. 

It is a mantra in our home, “Breathe, in and out.  Slowly, deep breaths.”

On Monday, I was having a horrible day.  It has been the pattern for the last bunch of weeks that my days are filled with situations and people that cause my breath to want to flee.  On Monday, while on a phone call to my husband (he is so often my oxygen tank) Oliver ran and smashed into a cupboard door in the kitchen.  He was chasing his sister, with the intent to use his shiny plastic sword on her, when the accident happened and he split the flesh on his eyebrow.   Wounds like that are so deceiving as there is so much blood and my poor husband did his best to stay calm and manage the situation. Emiel is the homeschooling, work-from-home-pastor parent and I am the working-mornings-but-it-feels-longer parent and we share a car.  It took time for me to get home and longer still to see the doctor, but Oliver (after the initial stop breathing, screaming) stayed calm. 

Let me a paint picture for you, Oliver, all of 3 and a ¾ years old, is lying on the doctor's bed.  The doctor tells him to close his eyes, Oliver closes his eyes and the doctor places a gauzes swab over his eye and cleans the wound. As the doctor injects the anaesthetic into bony flesh around the wound he tells Oliver to, you got it, breathe. My sweet boy received two stitches without crying, lying almost entirely still because my child knows how to breathe in and out, intentionally. 

Why I would suggest taking our mantra on:

I don’t know your kettle of fish, but I can imagine, if you are human and I hope you are, that on occasion life gets a little testy.  On those occasions, breathe, in and out slowly, intentionally.  It will calm you down, enough to see that there is hope or to get some perspective.  Perspective is everything, but that is for another post (when I muster the stuffing to write again).  When we breathe intentionally, we slow down enough and slow conscious living is good for the soul. 

I encourage you to do what is nourishing for the soul.   I encourage you to slowly weed from your lives the things that don’t add value and to make space for God-joy. 

I have had a revelation this week, one that was not easy as I have been so sore, that I need to not focus on the sore, but to breathe and in breathing open my eyes and see.  There is so much life and beauty to see and to be in turn grateful for. 

I hope this finds you well,

Philippa