Swimming and breathing
It's maybe a little trivial question but as I practice swimming, I've been thinking that for half an hour I breathe in quite quickly and intensively and then hold the breath for a second and then exhale longer than I inhale... Does that have a stress reducing effect? :) When I took up swimming a year ago, after quite a long boost, I felt a really strong self-confidence boost, especially right after swimming. Now it's not that dramatic any more but swimming is still just as enjoyable. Thanks in advance!
How do phobias develop and can they be defeated?!
Firstly, thank you so much for creating your podcast and providing so much incredible information to your listeners. My quality of life has improved dramatically over the last year thanks to what I’ve learned from you and your guests! I’m deeply grateful to all of you. My question comes up because I have 3 really annoying phobias. I’ve had one of them for as long as I can remember. Interestingly, my half sister, whom I didn’t grow up with, has a very similar phobia. The second showed up sometime in my teens, I assume as a result of a horribly unpleasant experience (okay, hundreds of spiders hatched in our house - I now do a weird seizure dance and awkward scream when confronted by spiders). The third is the most upsetting and has a bigger impact on my life. It showed up suddenly in my mid-40s, when I was driving to Yosemite and came around a curve to see an expansive view beyond a sheer drop at the edge of the road. I’d driven that same road more than once before, and I’ve driven much scarier mountain roads without a hint of discomfort. But this time, I had a full blown panic attack and *couldn’t drive the car*. I was certain the car was going to fly over the edge of the road. I’ve had the same symptoms ever since then and can’t head into the mountains without having a friend drive. It has even hit me to a lesser degree on a couple highway overpasses. How does something like that suddenly change in the brain? I could see it being a result of trauma, and I did experience the loss of my mom not long before that first episode. But she died of cancer, not a car accident or fall. Could that loss have flipped some unrelated genetic switch? My full sister, whom I did grow up with, has had this very same phobia since she was a kid. (Our brother suffers no such fears!) Most importantly, are there effective ways to reverse phobias? It would be nice to do my own spider-scooping without hyperventilating, but I’d really love to feel comfortable driving amazing mountain roads again.