Why Do I Forget to Breathe?
Why Do I
Forget to Breathe?
Dear Brewtiful,
I don't know how to explain this without sounding completely unhinged, so I'm just going to say it.
Last Tuesday I was sitting at my desk, perfectly fine, drinking my coffee, doing literally nothing alarming, and I suddenly became aware that I was breathing. Like, really aware. I noticed the inhale. Then I noticed the exhale. And then my brain went: wait, are you doing this manually right now? Because it feels manual. Should it feel this manual? When did breathing become something you have to DO?
And then I forgot how to breathe for the rest of the afternoon.
I was not anxious before this happened. I am very anxious about it now. I've googled "why do I forget to breathe" approximately seventeen times. The results range from "totally normal anxiety thing" to "could be sleep apnea" to "carbon dioxide buildup" and now I'm also worried about carbon dioxide. I didn't wake up Tuesday morning thinking I'd spend the day manually managing an organ that has supposedly been doing this on its own since 1994.
Please tell me I'm not dying. Or at least tell me I'm not the only one.
— Breathing Manually in Brampton, 30somethingYou are not dying. You are also, and I cannot stress this enough, not actually forgetting to breathe. I know it feels like forgetting. It feels extremely specifically like the moment you realise you don't know how to walk normally anymore and now every step is a conscious decision and you're doing it wrong. That is the exact same thing and it is also not dangerous and also yes, I have had it happen with walking, and yes it is terrible.
But before we get into the mechanics of why your brain just did that to you, I want to acknowledge something: there are very few anxiety experiences more specifically cruel than the breathing awareness spiral. Because most anxiety spirals at least have the decency to be about something external. The breathing spiral is your nervous system turning on you and saying what if the thing keeping you alive stopped working while you are trying to answer emails. Deeply unnecessary. Fully not helpful. And apparently very common, which is either comforting or makes the whole thing worse depending on your relationship with collective suffering.
Can you actually forget to breathe?
No. Genuinely, no. This is the first thing to understand and also the most annoying thing to hear when you're in the middle of it.
Your breathing is controlled by your brainstem — specifically a region called the medulla oblongata, which is genuinely one of the best medical terms in existence — and it operates completely independently of your conscious mind. If your carbon dioxide levels rise too high, your brainstem forces you to inhale. You do not get a vote. You cannot override it. Your body will breathe whether you are paying attention to it or not, whether you are asleep or awake, and whether or not you have convinced yourself that you are somehow now in charge of the process.
What you are experiencing when you "forget to breathe" is not forgetting. It is the opposite. It is remembering — too hard, too suddenly, in too much detail. Your conscious brain has hijacked an automatic process and is now attempting to run it manually, which is like a passenger grabbing the steering wheel of a car that is already being driven by a professional. The professional can handle it. The passenger is making everything worse and more stressful for everyone involved.
What you're experiencing is sometimes called breathing hyperawareness or functional breathing disorder — a phenomenon where anxiety directs your attention to an automatic process, making it feel effortful and manual. It is extremely common in anxious people and is essentially your nervous system doing the thing it always does, which is finding new and creative ways to make your body feel wrong when nothing is actually wrong.
If you find this happening a lot, it is almost certainly connected to your vagus nerve being dysregulated — which is also the explanation for approximately forty percent of other weird body sensations you've probably been Googling at 11pm. Worth a read. We'll get to that.
Why it happened at your desk on a Tuesday
The breathing spiral almost never happens during an actual emergency. It happens when you're fine. Tuesday afternoon. Eating lunch. Half-watching something. Perfectly comfortable. And your brain, which has evolved over millions of years to detect threats and is finding nothing to work with in your current environment, decides to generate one internally.
This is sometimes called the centipede's dilemma. A centipede walks perfectly well on a hundred legs without thinking about any of them. The moment it is asked to think about which leg comes after which, it trips. Your breathing is the same. It works perfectly until you notice it. The noticing is the problem, not the breathing.
Anxiety does this constantly with automatic processes. Breathing is just the most alarming one because it is the most survival-adjacent. Some people get it with swallowing. Some people get it with blinking. Some very unfortunate people get it with their heartbeat, which is a particularly excellent way to convince yourself something is medically wrong when it is actually just Tuesday and your nervous system is bored.
I have had the breathing spiral so badly that I once sat in my car for twenty minutes before driving anywhere because I was convinced I was doing breathing wrong. Not that something was wrong with my lungs. That I was operating them incorrectly. Which is both completely irrational and somehow the most logical-feeling thing in the world when you're in it.
What snapped me out of it: I put on a podcast, got annoyed about the topic, and forgot to keep monitoring my lungs. My lungs, meanwhile, continued operating exactly as they had been. Without my input. Like professionals.
How to stop focusing on your breathing
The worst advice you can give someone in a breathing spiral is "just stop thinking about it." That is not advice. That is a wish. Here is what actually works:
Stop trying to breathe correctly
The moment you start trying to breathe right, you have entered manual mode and you will stay there. Your body does not need your help. Let it do its thing. The goal is not better breathing — the goal is less involvement from your conscious brain. These are different goals and only one of them is achievable.
Redirect outward, don't suppress inward
Trying not to think about breathing creates the thought. Instead, redirect your attention somewhere external and specific. Count objects in the room. Read something out loud. Start a task that requires your hands and your eyes at the same time. Give your conscious brain something actually interesting to do and it will stop auditing your lungs.
The "just annoyed enough" technique
This sounds ridiculous but it works: find something mildly annoying to think about. A comment someone made. An email you haven't answered. An opinion you disagree with. Mild annoyance is remarkably effective at evicting breathing awareness because it activates a completely different part of your brain and redirects blood flow away from the part that's catastrophising. You need to be just annoyed enough to be distracted. Not furious. Just pleasantly irritated.
Move your body
Walking, specifically, resets breathing to automatic almost immediately because your body needs to synchronise your breathing with your stride and it handles this without asking you. You don't know how to breathe while walking — you just do it. Use that. Go get a glass of water. Walk to another room. Your lungs will sort themselves out within sixty seconds and your brain will have moved on to thinking about whatever is in the other room.
Check your hydration and your cup situation
Dehydration makes anxiety symptoms significantly worse, including breathing hyperawareness — and if you're someone who drinks more coffee than water (hello), your nervous system is probably already running a little hot. We have opinions about Stanley cups and hydration that are relevant here. Sometimes the breathing spiral is your nervous system telling you it is running on caffeine and vibes and needs water.
The bigger thing underneath
If the breathing spiral is happening regularly — more than occasionally, more than just a weird Tuesday — it is almost never actually about the breathing. It is about a nervous system that is stuck in a low-grade state of alert, scanning for threats, and finding them in places where no threats exist. Your lungs are just the first thing it lands on.
This is the vagus nerve dysregulation situation, and it explains a genuinely absurd number of symptoms that seem unrelated — the breathing thing, the heart awareness thing, the digestion weirdness, the random waves of unease that arrive for no reason at all. The vagus nerve is your body's longest nerve and it is responsible for regulating basically everything about your rest-and-digest state. When it is dysregulated, your body is essentially always slightly braced for something that isn't coming, and it finds creative ways to express this.
The breathing spiral is not the problem. It is a symptom of a nervous system that has decided the world is slightly more dangerous than it is, and is monitoring your body accordingly. The work is not learning to breathe better. The work is learning to feel safe enough that your brain stops auditing your organs in your downtime.
Which is, admittedly, more work than just breathing. But it is the actual work, and it is worth doing.
You are not forgetting to breathe. You are remembering too hard. Your lungs are fine. Your brain is being dramatic. This is fixable, and in the meantime: get some water, find something mildly annoying to think about, and let your medulla oblongata do its job. It has been doing it since 1994 without your help. It does not need the supervision.
