Extremely Worried!!!

[MAM090982]

Can anxiety cause easy bruising, numb chin, and vibrating muscles/twitching muscles/muscle spasms?

[willheal]

Bruising can happen from injuries that we had forgotten about or never realized happened. Would you say it's a lot? Were you doing something that could explain the bruising? Is there a lot of them, or are they constantly there, or are they super-big? You might want to use that to gauge if you need to go see a doctor. Bruising just happens sometimes, you know? They should just start to heal up in a few days and your skin will start to look like new again.

You can get some interesting sensations with anxiety. I've had sensory and muscle issues for so many years I barely remember what it's like to feel at rest anymore. I just took 4 advil for my neck and back because I have some bad muscle tightness right now that's not letting me lay down. You get some buzzing/twitching/superficial tingling/numbness feelings from starting/stopping SSRIs or anxiety. Personally I err on the side of some new sensation being anxiety most of the time. I know some people do the opposite and go to the doctor right away with any new sensation (I respect their decision, but personally I would not be able to cope this way.) Do you get new symptoms from anxiety a lot? Does the numbness or twitching occur more often when you're excited or anxious, usually happening at the same time? Do you witness yourself doing other things when these symptoms come on that might tie them to the anxiety? (Like biting your nails or tapping your feet, etc?) Hopefully this might put the sensations into some perspective.

Edit: Noticed the other post in general discussion. Glad you got some responses right away though!

[JohnC]

Bruising easy can also be caused by blood thinners if you are on such a med.

[MAM090982]

No injuries. Not a lot, mainly on my thighs, and a few on my arms. Not super big, mostly just tiny ones. There is no pain or redness behind them. I have stopped a medicine a few months ago, as well as stopped my natural herbs. Could this cause twitching, spasms, and muscle vibrations? As I speak my left foot feels like their is a cell phone in it. I was the type to run to the doctor or ER every time something new appeared, but I am trying to be better. Right now I am also suffering from Vertigo. It has changed my world. It is worse than anxiety, for me. I have recently been getting new symptoms. A lot has happened in my life and I am not sure if that has affected the new symptoms or not. I also have lost 46lbs and wonder if that could be a contributor? Sometimes I will not be anxious at all and a symptom will come on, and that freaks me out, because isn't anxiety when you are anxious? I bite my nails on a daily basis, multiple times a day, unfortunately. Thank you for your advice. I appreciate it. Knowing anything about Vertigo?

[MAM090982]

On no meds at this time. :(

[willheal]

Stopping SSRIs and other anxiety medications will cause the all the muscle tremors and vertigo especially. Doctors usually try to step down the dosages to lessen those zappy/twitchy feelings not kick in, but it can still happen and continue on.

I usually get the physical symptoms first and then the mental symptoms come on and because I feel justified in worrying out about it. Then I won't keep myself in check, which leads to the cycle of it getting progressively worse and then the hypochondria kicks into high gear.

I like to drink kava tea. I know about the liver thing and honestly I hate the taste, but it is a muscle relaxant and helps with those symptoms. In the absence of medication I feel like I am treating myself physically and the idea of that helps calm me mentally.

[MAM090982]

How long will the muscle twitches last for after getting off of the meds?

[willheal]

It is around 1-3 weeks I think. It took only 2 weeks for them to stop when I first stopped taking Paxil.

[MAM090982]

Thank you. Mine has been a lot longer.

[willheal]

I know the feelings one gets are different depending on drug & quantity & how fast it was tapered, too. If you're getting symptoms more than a month after you might just be typical anxiety feelings. Personally I can't even tell if any of my current anxiety symptoms were from medicines I used to take because some of them overlapped; I was on a few SSRIs but then I had about a year break of symptoms in 2012. That made me convinced me everything I had felt was just all anxiety and not side-effects. (this confidence quickly faded when the anxiety came back the following year.)

Just for completeness: Aside from Paxil I've also been put on/taken off Xanax for the past 2 years. Now every time I stop even the lower dosages (0.25-0.5mg/day for 2 months) I get vivid dreams, sweating, nasty muscle tension and neck/jaw pain, tingling, tinnitus, and this weird metal taste in my mouth. There's a lot of bad perceptual feelings because you're hypersensitive to everything. That lasts about 2 weeks then I have heightened anxiety mixed with an occasional zappy sensation for another 2-3 weeks after. It's way more brutal than the Paxil and I can imagine with different brain chemistry some of these withdrawal symptoms could probably go on for a longer time. Also note that some of those symptoms are really common in regular anxiety disorders too. Yikes, that's confusing.

The doctor may know better if this is characteristic of the medicine you were taking or if it's more likely just the result of anxiety. Hm, hopefully that gives some insight rather than being completely confusing! Sorry, it takes some patience and figuring out sometimes. Like a puzzle that keeps changing as you're doing it, it feels like.

[MAM090982]

That is how I feel. I was on one med, off another, then trying another. I was on Lorazepam. It really gave me bad side effects and withdrawals. Perceptual feelings are scary! So you can be hypersensitive to sound, sight, smell, touch? Is that from coming off the meds, or anxiety in general, or both? Anxiety is very confusing, and scary, because it seems so real. My major issues is I google everything. I scare myself crazy, that I think I am literally going crazy.

[JohnC]

Dam google.

[Dahila]

How did you withdrawals form lorazepam looked?

[Aimseykins]

Oh man, I have used Dr. Google so many times and only caused myself to worry more. My fiance and I made an agreement that I would NOT use Google any longer to search for anything, because I was spending HOURS on it and none of the information that I have ever found indicated what was actually going on (seriously, Google will reinforce the fact that I think I have cancer, am having a heart attack, might have diabetes, etc. and based on testing- NOPE). I understand how you're feeling, all the symptoms are quite scary and overwhelming, especially when so many of them manifest at once.

[willheal]

That is how I feel. I was on one med, off another, then trying another. I was on Lorazepam. It really gave me bad side effects and withdrawals. Perceptual feelings are scary! So you can be hypersensitive to sound, sight, smell, touch? Is that from coming off the meds, or anxiety in general, or both? Anxiety is very confusing, and scary, because it seems so real. My major issues is I google everything. I scare myself crazy, that I think I am literally going crazy.

I think it's both anxiety and switching off meds. Usually people with anxiety are highly sensitive people in general, but also coming off benzodiazepines like Lorazepam will increase your sensitivity in a brain chemistry kind of way. It's just temporary but it can take a while to normalize for you to get to your baseline.

Benzos like Lorazepam, Alprazolam, etc, decrease electrical potential between the neurons. It makes them fire less, so random stimuli that would normally trigger a panic attack lessens & disappears. It's also why you may find it easier to think or maybe feel less emotional or other discomfort too. The faster the benzos act, the more quickly your brain chemistry adapts to their presence to maintain it's "normal" state. When stopping these drugs, the electrical potential of your neurons go way up past your baseline for a while until your neurochemistry readapts to their absence. That is why the anxiety goes up after stopping drugs like Lorazepam and you start getting other perceptual disturbances, nerve and muscle pain, twitching & zapping, etc. In general your brain adapts faster to their presence than their absence, which is why they are so physically addictive.

When I was seeing a psychologist he also told me this too: Some people get Symptom Shifting where your old symptoms will start to fade and new ones start to emerge. If you can recognize them right away it is an opportunity to cut them off before you start to rationalize them as being something more than anxiety. The goal is to get your mind to associate your new symptoms as "just anxiety", rather than thinking everything is wrong. I have a problem with not catching them in time and it makes them spiral out of control. After you lose that control it takes huge amounts of reassurance to reverse what your mind already believes is true so it's always better to catch the new symptoms early. (It's also why fighting through anxiety seems to never work.) Sometimes it's like anxiety two steps ahead of you. It knows your next move, what your biggest fears are, and what other symptoms you'd have to experience to truly believe you have X or Y illnesses. And the more you try to outsmart it the more complex your phobias and sensations get.

I wasn't able to deal with my phobias on my own so I joined to confide in the forum. It feels anonymous enough where I can share all of my problems with confidence, and sure enough a lot of people here experienced what I felt before. Some even went in for medical testing for the same things I felt and just got clean bills of health. It's kinda become my new coping mechanism & the constant reassurance is a wonderful thing.

[MAM090982]

Thank you willheal. Your post was great. I understand your fears completely. I do need to learn not to google symptoms, not to let the anxiety symptom win, and learn to live with these side effects, until they dicipate. I too joined this forum and it is helping, especially from posts like this. Thank you so much for your very informative post, greatly appreciated.

[Anxiouskat]

You have recently lost 46 lbs and bruise easily? I may be way off target here but this happened to me about a year ago and I'm only figuring it out myself now. Did you lose the weight on purpose? I have emetophobia, didn't know at the time but was very low on iron and bruised very easily. I still don't have a great relationship with food, and I fight it daily but docs always say I just have anxiety lol Like I said, if I am way off point forget I even posted this, I just wish someone had pointed it out to me earlier.

[pharmacharak]

Hello,
Yes anxiety cause for some symptoms like vibrating muscles, muscle spasms, wrinkle on forehead and so on...

[Fight the stress]

It might be all the meds, remember we are natural beings and these medications we take are nothing close to natural. Makes me wonder how people the native americans and older civilizations felt with any anxiety they had or if they had such a thing?