I cannot breathe in deeply. Do I have coronavirus or weak nerves?
It seems that the test with a ten-second breath hold was passed successfully. I didn't cough or feel any tightness in my chest. This means that I do not have COVID-19, but my nerves are naughty. Or … why am I like this? Why are all people like people, and I am "overly scrupulous," as my mother says? And still too dreamy and unadapted to life …
I gasp for air. I am like a carp that a saleswoman in a bazaar caught out of a huge aquarium for a buyer for a New Year's table. If only no one saw me in this ridiculous position. Another two seconds, and a breath should follow. I know, because I already had it.
It seems that the test with a ten-second breath hold was passed successfully. I didn't cough or feel any tightness in my chest. This means that I do not have COVID-19, but my nerves are naughty. Or…
Memory takes me into the past. I'm lying on my bed and waiting for the ambulance to arrive. I can clearly see the worried expression on my dad's face in my mind's eye and remember that this makes it even more ashamed. I would like to shout to my parents: come to me, hug me tight! But they are busy in the kitchen: mom is sorting out the first-aid kit, and dad is waiting for mom's instructions. How lonely I am without their warmth! I cried out the last tear, and all that remains is to sob forcibly. A tin can is rolling in my head. I almost made my parents call an ambulance, but they did not take the hint. Instead of stroking the head and looking into the eyes with a warm smile, they frowned even more and moved away.
This is not my first attack of hypochondria, but it was the first time that it came to the ambulance. The doctor immediately realized that I just needed attention, and was able to reassure me with her indestructible poise and businesslike recommendations. Since then, every time I shower, I remember her advice - she told me to put my head and shoulders under the pressure of warm water to relax.
Why am I like this? Why are all people like people, and I am "overly scrupulous," as my mother says? And still too dreamy and unadapted to life.
Here I have a classmate. Blood with milk! The guys just stick to her. And I still dream of sublime love. Instead, all you hear from classmates is swearing and ridicule. I didn’t even read Romeo and Juliet, although I was asked. What's the point? You will be imbued with a touching plot, and they will make fun of it. I'd rather be ahead of the curve. "They push you into a snowdrift, and you immediately rise like a boxer!" - the friend was surprised when classmates watched us after school to arrange a snow battle. I tried my best not to fall, just not to show weakness and not to cry from resentment. The main thing is to be strong! "I am able to be with grief at a feast with a cheerful face!" - I repeated the lines of the auto-training. No feelings, they make me vulnerable! It is unbearable to hear people laugh at my romantic ideas about life! I've already lived it once. Enough!
So how does this relate to the coronavirus?
“And there’s not enough oxygen for two” - I tried to hide from my friends that these lines from the song “Nautilus” frighten me when they sang it in a discordant chorus around the fire. How does it feel to stop breathing? I was freezing at the thought. The countdown seemed to me. Ten, nine … The clock is ticking, and when the display shows "zero", my life will end. Let not now, but someday it will happen. It is impossible to hide from these thoughts. While I breathe, but, in fact, I no longer live, because fear lives by me.
The coronavirus only triggered the habitual stress response.
The most offensive thing is that there are a lot of people around me who do not even understand what I mean when I try to describe my fear of death. Is it possible that everyone, except me, stoically accepts the inevitability of the end, and only I cannot come to terms with this fate?
Understanding the reasons is what would take at least some of the tension off me. Unfortunately, as a child, no one could explain to me that nature gave me increased sensitivity with an important goal for society, and I was directing emotionality in the wrong direction. And try to figure it out without a hint in this puzzle! I was scared to get close to people.
Who could have thought that my salvation was precisely in communicating with them? Listen to a friend and sympathize with her misfortune, shelter a homeless kitten, take care of a sister who has a cold, comfort a neighbor girl who has burst into tears because of a balloon that has flown away. And having matured, to work as a doctor, psychologist, actress, singer. And the main thing is not to restrain feelings and not be ashamed of tears! To bring down the waterfalls of love on loved ones. That's why nature has endowed me with emotional sensitivity. I learned this at the training by Yuri Burlan "System-vector psychology". As well as the fact that I have a special type of mental - a visual vector that does not forgive a person for the lack of warm, trusting relationships and punishes for neglecting his nature by fears and hypochondria.
Yes, a medical examination is first of all, and it is imperative to make sure that there are no real grounds for concern. Temperature is normal, dry cough does not torment, fever does not hit. It is necessary to check with reliable sources of information about the course of the disease and follow the recommendations of doctors in all seriousness.
But if there are no objective reasons for shortness of breath, but his attacks are evident?
Then it is worth considering the psychological state as the cause. After all, the owner of the visual vector is distinguished by a special suggestibility and impressionability and is able to imagine any symptom and convince himself and others that fears are not far-fetched.
Why does one who was born to increase love writhe with fear?
The traumatic events of my childhood disrupted the natural development of the sensory sphere. I began to shun people and listen to my own heartbeat jealously instead of listening to others. For me, there was a lot of sensual intensity intended for people. And I started to get sick. Rather, to convince myself that I have all the symptoms of this or that disease. An overdose of feelings directed at me by me alone caused a side effect - the fear of death. I began to fear that I was about to die from a rare disease. And then, as luck would have it, shortness of breath was declared one of the symptoms of the coronavirus! All my demons rose up at once and with unprecedented zeal began to throw wood into the hellish fire under the pan with a sick imagination. The boiling potion urgently needed to be neutralized.
Who would have thought that for this I needed to get childhood dreams from the dusty neural mezzanines. Yes, the very ones that made me laugh and tease me flying in the clouds. Daydreaming is not such a harmful character trait, because it is always involved in imagination. A rich fantasy contains a charge of light feelings. Oddly enough, it is daydreaming that allows you to cope with stress and protect any melancholic, twisted by the grip of fears, from attacks of hypochondria.
Why is this happening? The future for a person is always more important than the present, because nature dictates to us the need to survive not only in the current moment, but also in time. Remember the expression: "Hope dies last"? It's just about that. When a person is able to imagine a tolerable fate in the future, it becomes easier for him to breathe in all senses. And the more developed the imagination, the more rosy tomorrow you can imagine. It is best, of course, that these fantasies should not be fruitless, but based on common sense.
Imagination is a kind of vessel that contains feelings. The more voluminous it is, the more joy it can fit in. Problems arise when a crack is found in this vessel. This happens when a child with heightened sensuality from childhood is ridiculed, forbidden to cry, forced to be strong and not show vulnerability to anyone. This happened to me.
Then the feelings dry up. The only emotion that can take root in such an aggressive environment is fear of death. You cannot erase it with anything, because this is the primitive foundation on which, in the process of evolution, the experience opposite in sign was formed - love.
And if love lives in the soul, then there is something to share. Empathy for others is the best fear vaccine.
When there is no room for love in the soul, it is easy to infect a person with panic. He presents the worst case scenario possible and fights in quiet hysterics. In the routine course of life, he is still able to imagine how his tomorrow will turn out, and in times of social upheaval he loses the ground under his feet. Fears literally stifle, and attention is completely captured by the only question: "What will happen next?"
And only an unmistakable understanding of your nature allows you to take a deep breath - and exhale with relief. To establish an internal compass and get out of the thicket of fears - to people. Re-learn to feel someone else's pain. And forget about yourself. And then remember for a while and discover that every corner of the soul is warmed by the sun, and there is no place for fears in it. Too light and joyful.
