IWasAnxious
09-09-2007, 03:13 AM
Hi, after having few anxiety symptoms for ten years they are now coming back. I link this to feeling very low with an infection that's proven hard to clear up. It has parallels with my first bout of severe anxiety that occured in my teens so I offer my story to those who find it hard to link their problems to any cause - it might ring some bells.
Fist posted on another thread but reposted here...
I 100% believe anxiety attacks are often created by very physical symptoms and that people can often be made to feel anxiety attacks are somehow entirely psychologically generated. By doing this, health professionals sometimes miss out the opportunity to discover what physical aliments or stimulant caused the episodes.
I am on this forum because I'm currently suffering again with bad dizzy spells , spaced out feelings, and have been close to blackouts on occassion. Ten years ago I was diagnosed with anxiety/depression and derealisation and depersonalization disorder. I suffered badly between the aged of 16 and 18 with blackouts and near blackouts, wooziness and a sense of spacey detachment like I'd taken LSD (I've never touched illegal drugs). I felt physically wiped out most of the time.
There were also loads of other anxiety symtoms that were also distressed - sharp, nervy pains could strike anywhere in my body like I'd been zapped by a raygun that would bleach me of any colour instantly and make my think I was having a stroke. I was in a real state.
Strangely, my 'anxiety' just seemed to disappear soon after starting college. For someone tagged with scary labels like 'depersonaliszation' that's pretty remarkable. Even in stressful situations I just wasn't getting anxiety symptoms!
HOWEVER, if i was run down due to flu or a bad cold or some illness, or had overdosed on caffiene or been eating crap for several days then - yes - 'anxiety' symptoms came back. The woosy attacks, the spaced out, unreal feelings. The only difference was I now linked these to the physical stimulants not to 'I'm going mad/I've got a brain tumor/heart condition'.
It was recently when suffering from an infection that's proven hard to clear up that I think I know what happened when I was 16. I'd been stuffed full of several antibiotics and my bowels didn't settle for a very long time. Food went straight through me, I had diarrea long after stopping the drugs, I felt shattered.
I now have little doubt that I wasn't processing food properly and what was dubbed 'anxiety' was really something more like the side effects of large amounts of antibiotics and what they did to my system. No wonder I felt spaced out, near fainting and detached. I probably had something akin to hypoglycaemia, a messed-up body chemistry.
I learned later that common antibiotics can sometimes trigger psychological changes. I once took very mild codeine painkiller. I was physcially shaking and trembling and freaking out in 20 minutes.
No doubt when I was a teen there was real anxiety there too - I was terrified at what was happening - but the initial trigger was physical, not self-generated psychologically.
I have a big-workload, high stress job but that doesn't give me anxiety attacks. But too much coffee, a virus, refined sugar, too much booze, a crappy diet, certain drugs certainly do!
If I had to self-diagnose myself, I'd say I'm a person hypersensitive to changes on my body chemistry and those changes lead to anxiety-like symptoms.
Fist posted on another thread but reposted here...
I 100% believe anxiety attacks are often created by very physical symptoms and that people can often be made to feel anxiety attacks are somehow entirely psychologically generated. By doing this, health professionals sometimes miss out the opportunity to discover what physical aliments or stimulant caused the episodes.
I am on this forum because I'm currently suffering again with bad dizzy spells , spaced out feelings, and have been close to blackouts on occassion. Ten years ago I was diagnosed with anxiety/depression and derealisation and depersonalization disorder. I suffered badly between the aged of 16 and 18 with blackouts and near blackouts, wooziness and a sense of spacey detachment like I'd taken LSD (I've never touched illegal drugs). I felt physically wiped out most of the time.
There were also loads of other anxiety symtoms that were also distressed - sharp, nervy pains could strike anywhere in my body like I'd been zapped by a raygun that would bleach me of any colour instantly and make my think I was having a stroke. I was in a real state.
Strangely, my 'anxiety' just seemed to disappear soon after starting college. For someone tagged with scary labels like 'depersonaliszation' that's pretty remarkable. Even in stressful situations I just wasn't getting anxiety symptoms!
HOWEVER, if i was run down due to flu or a bad cold or some illness, or had overdosed on caffiene or been eating crap for several days then - yes - 'anxiety' symptoms came back. The woosy attacks, the spaced out, unreal feelings. The only difference was I now linked these to the physical stimulants not to 'I'm going mad/I've got a brain tumor/heart condition'.
It was recently when suffering from an infection that's proven hard to clear up that I think I know what happened when I was 16. I'd been stuffed full of several antibiotics and my bowels didn't settle for a very long time. Food went straight through me, I had diarrea long after stopping the drugs, I felt shattered.
I now have little doubt that I wasn't processing food properly and what was dubbed 'anxiety' was really something more like the side effects of large amounts of antibiotics and what they did to my system. No wonder I felt spaced out, near fainting and detached. I probably had something akin to hypoglycaemia, a messed-up body chemistry.
I learned later that common antibiotics can sometimes trigger psychological changes. I once took very mild codeine painkiller. I was physcially shaking and trembling and freaking out in 20 minutes.
No doubt when I was a teen there was real anxiety there too - I was terrified at what was happening - but the initial trigger was physical, not self-generated psychologically.
I have a big-workload, high stress job but that doesn't give me anxiety attacks. But too much coffee, a virus, refined sugar, too much booze, a crappy diet, certain drugs certainly do!
If I had to self-diagnose myself, I'd say I'm a person hypersensitive to changes on my body chemistry and those changes lead to anxiety-like symptoms.