MozartFlowChart
05-31-2015, 01:38 PM
Hi everyone, I am new to the forum. Thank you in advance to anyone that reads this and offers a response. I have turned to this forum because I feel like hearing from other anxiety sufferers would help me understand my situation much better.
To put a long story into relevant terms, I was suffering from GAD, mild agoraphobia, health anxiety, OCD, trichotillomania, chronic gastritis as well as a lot of stress. Then out of the blue, one of my best friends died unexpectedly. Since all of this, I've had the following symptoms:
-burning sensations all over my body (mostly arms and legs)
-muscle pain
-lethargy
-Greatly increased health anxiety
-Constant need to check breathing
-Increase in mucus and ear ringing (also a clicking noise in my head when I jog)
-Random increase in right eye floaters
-higher blood pressure
-random sweats
-Severe depression
I have done a lot of reading on anxiety and I am aware that these are all symptoms of anxiety. However, this is ultimately where I want opinions. When my friend first passed, I was thinking about him constantly and I was extremely tense for a couple weeks. I literally could not calm down. But after those first couple weeks, I became significantly more at ease with it. My friend passes my mind every day, but my whole day doesn't centralize around him. Ultimately, it got to a point where I thought my physical symptoms were CAUSING the anxiety, not the other way around. I understand this is rather delicate; for many people with physical illnesses have severe depression and anxiety as a result of their illness. With that being said, there was a time period where I felt "over my friend enough" to not be getting the physical symptoms I was getting. I was 100% convinced I had MS for around a month. This caused a great deal of anxiety. I had a brain MRI that came back clean.
I have had multiple medical tests done and I can't seem to stop going to doctors. I've had standard blood work, thyroid testing, EKGs, MRA of chest to check for stroke/aneurysms, brain MRI, testing for body inflammation, Lyme's testing. I've also had my eyes checked twice - both times the eye doctor said my eyes are fine and the floaters will go away with time. All of my doctors think this is caused by stress and anxiety. I am currently seeing a counselor for this.
The one constant that I cannot shake is the muscular feelings. All of the symptoms above can definitely be seen as anxiety related. But sometimes I'll go an entire day feeling relatively calm, but my muscles will hurt. I'll get burning in my legs and feet and I simply can't understand it. My doctors have said that this is anxiety/depression, even though I am not necessarily having bad thoughts throughout the day. Can this really be the case? I notice these sensations even when I'm falling asleep at night.
This has been going on for around 2 months. I feel like if I believed with 100% certainty that this was stress/anxiety related, then I could begin to make strides to face it and work through it. The health anxiety is completely running my life right now. Every time I tell myself that it is stress/anxiety, I'll have a really good day. But I will get muscle soreness/burning that will cause me to doubt the diagnosis of anxiety and then get more anxiety. I am in a giant spiral that is seemingly getting worse.
Does anyone have any opinions on this? Just to be clear, I am not trying to undermine anxiety as a diagnosis. I 100% believe this COULD be anxiety/depression and that both of these are highly debilitating illnesses. My problem is believing that it is in order to work through it.
Thank you.
To put a long story into relevant terms, I was suffering from GAD, mild agoraphobia, health anxiety, OCD, trichotillomania, chronic gastritis as well as a lot of stress. Then out of the blue, one of my best friends died unexpectedly. Since all of this, I've had the following symptoms:
-burning sensations all over my body (mostly arms and legs)
-muscle pain
-lethargy
-Greatly increased health anxiety
-Constant need to check breathing
-Increase in mucus and ear ringing (also a clicking noise in my head when I jog)
-Random increase in right eye floaters
-higher blood pressure
-random sweats
-Severe depression
I have done a lot of reading on anxiety and I am aware that these are all symptoms of anxiety. However, this is ultimately where I want opinions. When my friend first passed, I was thinking about him constantly and I was extremely tense for a couple weeks. I literally could not calm down. But after those first couple weeks, I became significantly more at ease with it. My friend passes my mind every day, but my whole day doesn't centralize around him. Ultimately, it got to a point where I thought my physical symptoms were CAUSING the anxiety, not the other way around. I understand this is rather delicate; for many people with physical illnesses have severe depression and anxiety as a result of their illness. With that being said, there was a time period where I felt "over my friend enough" to not be getting the physical symptoms I was getting. I was 100% convinced I had MS for around a month. This caused a great deal of anxiety. I had a brain MRI that came back clean.
I have had multiple medical tests done and I can't seem to stop going to doctors. I've had standard blood work, thyroid testing, EKGs, MRA of chest to check for stroke/aneurysms, brain MRI, testing for body inflammation, Lyme's testing. I've also had my eyes checked twice - both times the eye doctor said my eyes are fine and the floaters will go away with time. All of my doctors think this is caused by stress and anxiety. I am currently seeing a counselor for this.
The one constant that I cannot shake is the muscular feelings. All of the symptoms above can definitely be seen as anxiety related. But sometimes I'll go an entire day feeling relatively calm, but my muscles will hurt. I'll get burning in my legs and feet and I simply can't understand it. My doctors have said that this is anxiety/depression, even though I am not necessarily having bad thoughts throughout the day. Can this really be the case? I notice these sensations even when I'm falling asleep at night.
This has been going on for around 2 months. I feel like if I believed with 100% certainty that this was stress/anxiety related, then I could begin to make strides to face it and work through it. The health anxiety is completely running my life right now. Every time I tell myself that it is stress/anxiety, I'll have a really good day. But I will get muscle soreness/burning that will cause me to doubt the diagnosis of anxiety and then get more anxiety. I am in a giant spiral that is seemingly getting worse.
Does anyone have any opinions on this? Just to be clear, I am not trying to undermine anxiety as a diagnosis. I 100% believe this COULD be anxiety/depression and that both of these are highly debilitating illnesses. My problem is believing that it is in order to work through it.
Thank you.