Head pressure, flashing lights- how much can HA cause anticipated symptoms?

[Emilym80]

Hi all,

I've been at a festival today and there's been quite a lot of strobe lights/flashing. As my current fear is epilepsy/seizures this worried me a bit. I haven't been diagnosed with epilepsy and the lights aren't causing me what I think are typical seizures (jerking/convulsions/weird sensations/absence) or I wouldn't be posting here! However, they did make my eyes hurt and feel a bit strained. When I noticed the lights, I immediately thought "what if I have a seizure?" typical HA stuff. When I saw them they did make me feel a bit hot around the face the first time- the second, another band used them quite a lot and, at one point, very rapidly for about 10-12 seconds and I felt and am still feeling some weird head pressure- not a headache, just an odd feeling inside my head at the front of my skull- as well as feeling a little foggy which does happen to me sometimes when I get anxious. I didn't feel especially anxious in the typical way though, no feeling of fear or anything like that.

I guess I'm just wondering if I could be experiencing these symptoms because I was anticipating them? I know you guys can't diagnose me but I was wondering if maybe you've had similar experiences with anticipating things and then having physical symptoms from them. I first became worried about the flashing today when I was watching a TV show on my phone where there was a sequence with flashing images, not lights, for about 6-8 seconds. My mum, who works with kids, told me that phones/computers hardly ever cause seizures, but I guess I chose to ignore that, haha. It's also probably worth mentioning that I saw a gig less than two months ago with near-constant strobe lighting and didn't have any of this other than a bit of eye strain and headache afterwards. I wonder why... maybe because I was fixated on my heart at the time!

I'll probably see my GP about this just to be safe when I'm back from the holiday (about 10 days' time) but in the meantime I thought I'd just seek some reassurance about the power that anxiety can have. Unfortunately I've been trying to get CBT sessions since January but it's been difficult getting a time with someone and I've had to change counsellors a few times, so once a worry like this develops it kind of runs rampant as I really don't have much of an idea of how to control my anxiety.

Anyway, I'll stop ranting- thanks guys

[Mindknot]

Yeah anxiety can sort of cause anticipated symptoms - it also is pretty nifty at exaggerating anything that you are actually feeling because you become hypersensitive to certain sensations. I'm no medic, but if I were to pull apart the things that you have reported:

1/ eyes hurt / strain - if you think about how your eye adjusts to light and dark, well it all uses muscles to contract and dilate your pupil. It's fast, but it's hard work for the muscles to keep up with the changes produced by strobing lights. If you've been staring at bright flashing lights for a while, it's no surprise that your eyes hurt. Our eyes typically deal with ambient and reflected light to assess our environment, we now have a lot more objects (computer screens, tvs, phones) that emit light, and this is proven to cause eye strain too. So your eyes a doing a lot of work there with strobing lights - they probably are tired and you are noticing the difference more due to anxiety.

2/ weird head pressure/brain fog - sounds like a bit of derealisation (as I understand it) probably your anxiety. It doesn't necessarily have to be a thought that you are actively having at the moment that triggers it, could be discomfort - standing at a gig, staring at lights... could be that you have these worries in the back of your mind, even so 12 seconds isn't long, again you're over-focusing on it because of you have become hypersensitive to those sensations through anxiety.

I hope that helps, just remember that your anxious thoughts are playing mind & symptom games with you.