For a while now I've been very aware of my breathing. I'm not constantly aware of it and it usually happens when haven't got that much to do (when I'm just watching a movie or something) or when I'm trying to sleep. Throughout the day I often find myself taking quite shallow breaths and feel like I have to compensate by inhaling deeply, repeatedly, until I can really feel it in my chest.

It's pretty scary being aware of your own breathing. During the times that I'm really aware of it, I for some reason worry that I'm going to stop breathing if I don't consciously breathe. Last night for example. I was trying to sleep but I kept thinking about how I was breathing and not being able to stop the conscious breathing freaked me out. I kept tossing and turning in bed and eventually I had to listen to one song on repeat in order to think more about the song and less about the breathing. Fell asleep after a while. I think I lost about 3 hours of sleep last night due to the anxiety.

For some reason I become very aware of certain things in my body from time to time; my heartbeat, blinking, swallowing, breathing etc. However, it has never bothered me like this before. It's been going on for at least three weeks now and I find myself thinking about it at least a few times every day.

I'm diagnosed with OCD, two other anxiety disorders and depression. I think OCD is complicated and it's the only diagnosis I have that I don't understand. It's very difficult to know what is OCD and what isn't. Anyway, yesterday I read that some people have so-called "sensimotor obsessions" where they experience pretty much the things I've written about here (and/or other things) so perhaps this whole thing is caused by my OCD. I don't know.

Does anyone else experience this? Have you heard of this before? Any advice on how to get rid of it? Is it worth mentioning to my psychologist even if I don't think about these things constantly? When I think about mentioning this to my psychologist I start to worry about a few things. I, for some reason, worry that I'm lying (I've had thoughts about being a liar or making things up about various things for years now) and that the problem will disappear as soon as I mention it to her so that she'll think I'm making it up. It's stupid, I know, but I can't help it.