As Sean says, these may be hyperventilation-mediated panic attacks.
If we hold ourselves tense, which we often do when stressed or anxious, this can make it difficult to move air in and out of our lungs via the usual method, of using the diaphragm and instead, we use the intercostal muscles in the rib cage to the same effect. (Thorassic breathing)
This has several effects. We are so used to feeling the diaphragm moving, that when it isn't, we can think we're not breathing, which although is untrue, is alarming if one believes it.
If we think we're not breathing, we can 'over compensate' by thorassically breathing even harder. This has several effects. We're not used to breathing like this and the muscles can soon become tired and sore, the chest pain can be misinterpreted as a heart attack. You can actually shift quite a lot of air this way and if you're simpli lying in bed, then you'll be shifting too much air for the activity your engaged in. This can extract more CO2 from your body (normally dissolved as carbonic acid) than is optimum. This is completely benign and reversible, but it temporarily raises the pH of your internal chemical environment. This can feel weird, hot , dizzy, pins and needles, hearing can go a bit, etc. If you feel further alarmed by this, then adrenalin gets released, leading to increased heart rate, etc.
The whole CO2 thing is the reason why people are sometimes advised to breath into a paper bag; you'll soon have a bag full of moist CO 2 rich air, and breathing this quickly restores the pH, etc. But you don't need to do this, you can just cup your hands over your mouth or better still. Just stop hyperventilating.
We normally train people to. manage this by teaching them to deliberately hyperventilate, and swith back and forth between this and slow, shallow diaphragmatic breathing. (Not deep breaths).
This helps to demystify the process and makes it much easier to spot hyperventilation early on, rather than when the uncomfortable sensations develop.
We also encourage people to really push hyperventilation to it's limits, so they can demonstrate to themselves that with some very rare exceptions, you can't harm yourself this way. Discovering this makes the whole process a lot less scary.
I often use the anaolgy that if you knew nothing about astronomy, a solar eclipse would be truly terrifying, the sun god is dying, it's the end of all life, etc. But just some rudimentary knowledge turns it into a completely different experience.
Anyone struggling with these symptoms is advised to approach their GP; they will first want to rule out anything nasty, with a view to referral to a Clin Psych or appropriately trained CBT therapist, as it's much better to tackle this with a good teacher.
Little logic there. but then anxiety isn't logical. That's the point. In many ways it represents a failure of logic.
