Tingling/numbness/burning

[KL1995]

I started going through a very stressful period in my life about 6 months ago.

One month in i started taking Zoloft, it seemed to help and i calmed down a fair bit, but still had the intrusive thoughts.

Roughly 2.5 months after my high anxiety started (1.5 months after starting to take Zoloft), i felt tingling in my fingers, it would only last a few minutes then would leave, and later return.

I stayed on the Zoloft for another month and then decided to ween myself off of it over the period of a couple of weeks, as i thought the Zoloft could've been the cause of the tingling. i stayed off the Zoloft for 6 weeks but the tingling did not stop.

Around week 6 i started to also get tingling in my toes which made me really anxious and i started having panic attacks. I went to my doctor and she put my on Prozac... i didn't want to be on medication again, but i can't function without it when the panic attacks start.

The tips of my fingers are now constantly burning/numb. I also get really sharp pains in my hands and have tingling in my left elbow and knee that come and goes.

I went back to my doctor and informed her of my worries of some neurological disease. She was 90% sure that anxiety was the cause, but just to ease my mind she ordered an MRI and Nerve Conduction Studies, which both tests came back fine, along with blood work to exclude other diseases.

My doctor believes anxiety is causing all of these symptoms. Has anyone else experienced similar symptoms?

Kim

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi Kim,

I've had tingling in my body now since my first breakdown, about 9 years ago. It is worse when my anxiety is worse and if I get up and move about, it goes. Does yours?

Adrenaline causes tingling around the body which is most noticeable in the extremities. That's a well documented one. Exercise and deep breathing helps to force your body to metabolise adrenaline into other chemicals it needs. Also, some get this in their chest too (I had it arms, legs, chest as well) and something that may be relevant is that adrenaline is being pumped around the body but also that small amounts of adrenaline are kept around the organs for when it needed and this is absolutely normal, so maybe there is a link there to feeling it in places like the chest & stomach?

If your anxiety increases, your adrenaline has. If you have a panic attack, your body is flushed with adrenaline at a very high peak and this can take hours for the body to metabolize it into other chemicals and this means lower levels are still in your blood.

Paraesthesia is also common with many disorders/conditions, including anxiety, panic attacks and other mental health disorders. It may sound scary but pins & needles are one form of these, which everyone has many times in their lives. This may be the numbness/burning part? Since this is such a general thing, this one is connected to all sorts of physical conditions so be wary of looking it up and remember that it also covers the most basic pins & needles we all get. One of the most common causes is compression of a nerve, something we have all done by leaning on something at some point. Poor posture, dehydration, hyperventilation, etc are all known causes of this and we can all have those too with our anxiety.

[KL1995]

Hi Terry,

Thanks for your post.

The tingling in my knee and elbow leaves when I move about, but my fingers doesn't really change. I do think after a stressful few days it seems to be worse in my fingers.

It's crazy what anxiety can do!

Kim

[MyNameIsTerry]

Tell me about it! To navigate the weird world of anxiety we need a handbook with all the strange things we can experience to cut down on the panic!

If it goes when you move about then I would think either adrenaline from anxiety or something compressing a nerve (poor posture, leaning against something pressing in). You get tingling with sciatica, and the tingling can be in your foot & toes, and that's a compression issue. That's just an example of something that is quite minor and how you can experience tingling at the nerve endings. The body is covered in nerves and you don't always experience sensations where you would expect.

I have found the more you work on recovery, the more things like this just go away on their own or become background issues. We can be so sensitised to bodily sensations, even normal ones we have always had, that they suddenly appear in Anxiety HD! (a channel I wish I could unsubscribe from! )