If you’ve ever noticed that your breath feels off after you receive an unexpected email or while trying to draft a perfect reply, you may be dealing with “email apnea,” a common occurrence for those who rely on email for work or other high-stress endeavors.
“Email apnea is an informal term used to describe the unconscious tendency some of us have to temporarily pause our breathing or breathe more shallowly while we’re locked in to what’s happening on our screens,” Carrie Howard, a licensed clinical social worker and anxiety coach, told HuffPost via email.
“It’s often related to concentration or the stress or pressure we feel around completing a task. It’s not only specific to email. We can also do this when we’re texting, scrolling or engaging in other forms of intense work,” Howard said.
When this breath-holding phenomenon happens during texting or scrolling, it’s colloquially referred to as “screen apnea.” It’s also sometimes referred to as “laptop apnea,” said Jamie Janko, founder of ReWild Breathwork.
“It’s something that so many of us do when we are using a computer or laptop,” Janko said. “Essentially what’s happening there is our attention is narrowing, we’re leaning toward the screen and what we’re looking at, too, is through the lens of the nervous system. The body really reads this as almost a threat, and it braces.”
