Tingling body

[worrybear]

Hi All Im new to this forum. Really need to know im not the only one who has this. The tingling all over started just after i had my baby, my doctor did bloods and they were ok so he put it down to stress and it went ok for a few months. Last month something bad happened to a close friend and on top of that ive had alot going on. The tingling all over started up again,everywhere one minute in my back then my leg etc and this time its been around for over a month,ive also been feeling very out of it like my mind and body are doing different things if that makes sense. So what did i do... went to dr google who told me i have ms! This has made me 100% worse because its all ive been able to think about for weeks now! I read the symptoms and then the next day i have another one. My eye was twitching the other day and i saw that was another ms sign and freaked out. I went back to my doctor and she gave me tablets for anxiety (which ive not started yet) and a referal to a counseller.She didnt even mention ms and i was like but why am i tingling so badly! The other day i had an important meeting with my boss and my symptoms were going crazy... tingling really bad,eye twitching,feeling like my feet were wet,tight chest! Im just so fed up of it all now,i just need to vent. Thanks for reading x

[flame1981]

Hey hun,
I have experienced everything you have mentioned shortly after i gave birth to my son. This also sent me onto the MS panic route.
All the sensations u are feeling IS anxiety, please start taking your meds, they really help, and try to relax, easier said than done i know. Once the meds take affect u will feel much better.

All the best xxxxx

[honeyb]

Hey Worrybear
You have all the symptoms that i have, i get the lying in bed in the mornings whilst waiting for my alarm to go off. Like you i'm terrified that it's something more serious and everytime i go to the drs they say it's anxiety. Admittidley i've haven't been to them for a while.

[Annmarq]

Sounds exactly how I had been feeling for a long time. Went to the dr and he did a load of bloods which came back fine so we came to the conclusion it was anxiety no idea why or what started it but our bodies do strange things. I'm on day 4 of Citropram I feel dreadful but ready other forum pages it gets worse before better god I hope so.

[worrybear]

:flowers: Thankyou for your replies
Its hard having these symptoms all the time and not believing its anxiety,the mind is a terrible thing at times. My sister says im my own worst enermy.
I feel them all the time and the more i feel them the more i think its something serious.
I havent taken meds yet because im scared of the side effects.
i just want to feel with it, i hate the spaced out feeling.
xx

[scatterbrain]

Hi All Im new to this forum. Really need to know im not the only one who has this. The tingling all over started just after i had my baby, my doctor did bloods and they were ok so he put it down to stress and it went ok for a few months. Last month something bad happened to a close friend and on top of that ive had alot going on. The tingling all over started up again,everywhere one minute in my back then my leg etc and this time its been around for over a month,ive also been feeling very out of it like my mind and body are doing different things if that makes sense.

Bear, I am really sorry to hear about your tingling. You must be knackered with a new baby and worries about your friend. I have experienced the tingling sensation too, and along the way, I've been utterly racked with the fear of MS. Its just horrible.

I could tell you that MS wouldn't cause full-body symptoms, but instead would manifest in weird sensations in one single specific bit of the body, followed, months or years later, by specific sensations somewhere different. You could probably trawl the internet for similarly reassuring advice. But I don't think that the right approach is to talk yourself into believing what the symptoms aren't. After all, once you convince yourself that they're not MS, who's to say that they aren't a something else? I think that the right approach is to talk yourself into believing what your symptoms are.

Recently, I've been thinking about all the bodily events that don't trigger a string of fearful thoughts and imagined scenarios. For example, I have pretty nasty period pains, and yet I've never thought to mention them to a Dr and I don't take painkillers. They're painful, yet I don't really think about them. This is because I know exactly what's causing the cramps - so when I feel the pain, that's all it is: just a cramp or an ache. It doesn't over-run into the procession of escalating fears and what-ifs that my tingling used to cause me. Another example is feeling sad/weepy. I used to dabble with ecstasy, and then, midweek, I'd feel really low and crappy. PMS makes me feel weepy too. But, because I know that in these cases my weepiness has a chemical cause, its easier to just work with the symptom - to take it at face-value, and not as an indicator of terrible things to come.

I don't mean that you shouldblock out symptoms like this, whose causes are known. By all means, accept the way you're feeling, and administer hot chocolate, hot water bottles, painkillers, open air, good novels, films, music, fresh, healthy food - whatever makes you feel better. We need to try and take our anxiety-symptoms in the same way as we take these other bodily ups and downs - as something that comes and goes. We can just take them at face value, rather than as a symptom of something worse. And in the meantime, we can try and make ourselves feel better, but accept that way we feel is real.

Your tingling is a "symptom" whose cause is known. If its symptomatic of anything, then its a symptom of anxiety. If you are feeling tingly, then just accept "I am feeling tingly", rather than "I'm feeling tingly aaaaaand it could be MS", or "I'm feeling tingly aaaand it might develop into numbness" or "what if I start to feel weak/nauseous/faint?" (I know its hard, and you must think that its all very well me telling you what to think! But, coming to this site is a good step in the right direction.)

About five years ago I experienced a sudden onset of tingling in my fingers, toes and tongue, which lasted for a little over a week before gradually receding. The first time it happened I was not overly health-anxious. I was convinced that I had a b12 deficiency, and attributed regaining feeling in fingers and toes to b12 supplements. I think that my doctor might have muttered something about "stress", which I shrugged off. A few years later, I had a sudden "rush" of panic, like a flood of adrenaline, and the tingling started up! It ran its course. I felt terrible while it did - I couldn't eat or sleep or think straight, I felt lost to the world. And this time, I actually did have something worrying on my mind. In retrospect, I can see that I was anxious, and that I was experiencing physical symptoms of anxiety. These days, the tingling comes and goes now. Last week, when I was outwardly happy and with nothing really to worry about, I got a bolt of panic out of the blue. The tingling was so strong it felt like my blood was bubbling through my hands, which felt clumsy and rubbery - that half-dead pins and needles sensation. My mouth went dry, my heart raced, I thought "run! run! run!" But, I think that finally, I've learnt that there's nothing to be scared of, and that the sensations were anxiety. This time they subsided very quickly. No more week-long tingling and insomnia - within 30 minutes I felt basically back to normal. Hot chocolate, whisky and hugs helped! I do still worry about my health quite a lot, but for now I am happy that this time at least my "symptoms" had such a quick turnaround!

This is getting really long, but I'll finish with this. Whatever you think about him, at least one of the things Steven Fry has said was really smart. He told a woman suffering from depression that he'd taken to thinking of his emotions as like the weather. Different weather comes and goes. Its real, and not all in your head. I'm trying to think of all the weird sensations in my body as a bit like this - if I am tingling, then I'm tingling. That's all. Its just like rain. It will go. And while its raining, I'll just deal with the rain, without pondering what it might turn into, or where it came from. If its raining, I don't get stuck into worrying about whether it will snow.

So, what I really want to say to you is, please be easy on yourself while it lasts, but it will go.

---------- Post added at 15:03 ---------- Previous post was at 14:59 ----------

Well, it looks like I accidentally wrote you an essay! I wanted to link to the Steven Fry letter, but I need to have posted more to include links. So, I'll paste a bit of it in here:

Fry wrote:
I've found that it's of some help to think of one's moods and feelings about the world as being similar to weather:

Here are some obvious things about the weather:

It's real.
You can't change it by wishing it away.
If it's dark and rainy it really is dark and rainy and you can't alter it.
It might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row.

BUT

It will be sunny one day.
It isn't under one's control as to when the sun comes out, but come out it will.
One day.

It really is the same with one's moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. They are real. Depression, anxiety, listlessness - these are as real as the weather - AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE'S CONTROL. Not one's fault.

BUT

They will pass: they really will.

In the same way that one has to accept the weather, so one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes. "Today's a crap day," is a perfectly realistic approach. It's all about finding a kind of mental umbrella. "Hey-ho, it's raining inside: it isn't my fault and there's nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow and when it does, I shall take full advantage."

:flowers:

[meunier]

Scatterbrain ... WHAT A WONDERFUL POSTING .... THANKS SO, SO VERY MUCH.