For the past year or so, I've had this really annoying and persistent cough that comes and goes whenever I'm nervous (which, as it happens, tends to be a lot, due to my generalized anxiety; I'm almost never relaxed). I don't know where it came from, and I've tried to do breathing exercises (and I think I do a fair bit of exercise too, when I walk to town and back rather than taking the bus), but it never works. Even when I try not to think about coughing, I get this tickly feeling at the back of my throat, like it's closing or something, and I have to do some "perfect" lung-deep cough to get the demons out, so to speak. And I've heard that, if you keep on couging, it irritates some kind of nerves at the back of your throat, which makes you cough even more. So it's just a vicious cycle.
Any help on this matter? It can be so exhausting having to muster up the energy to cough all the time, and my friend even complained about it when I coughed, like, fifty times in an hour and a half exam when I was sitting behind him. Not to mention the awkward moments when a teacher is talking at the front of the class, and I'm just coughing like an afflicted old man. No, none of the teachers have ever spoken up about it, but I still sometimes feel as if I'm being disruptive.
I mean, right now, I don't need to cough, perhaps because I've momentarily distracted myself by, well, making this thread, but other times, especially when my stress and/or anxiety gets at its highest (particularly, when there's something that I feel like I have to do and I don't want to cough because it'll ruin the orderly nature of it; yes, I have OCD as well), I just end up hacking and I just can't stop.
Any help on this matter? It can be so exhausting having to muster up the energy to cough all the time, and my friend even complained about it when I coughed, like, fifty times in an hour and a half exam when I was sitting behind him. Not to mention the awkward moments when a teacher is talking at the front of the class, and I'm just coughing like an afflicted old man. No, none of the teachers have ever spoken up about it, but I still sometimes feel as if I'm being disruptive.
I mean, right now, I don't need to cough, perhaps because I've momentarily distracted myself by, well, making this thread, but other times, especially when my stress and/or anxiety gets at its highest (particularly, when there's something that I feel like I have to do and I don't want to cough because it'll ruin the orderly nature of it; yes, I have OCD as well), I just end up hacking and I just can't stop.
