Flickering in peripheral vision????

[cattia]

Excuse me posting so much lately. I'm completely losing it here and am about to start medication because I'm spiralling over everything. Twice in the past week, I have had a distinct flickering in my peripheral vision, like a light is flickering. The first time it happened I was outside so I know there was no artificial light involved. This is sending me back to my old familiar fear of partial seizures associated with brain tumour. I also have an eye twitch on the same side which I've had on and off for weeks but it wasn't twitching either time I saw the flickering. I wasn't feeling particularly anxious at the time (well no more than usual at the moment) and I haven't had a headache. The fact that this happened twice this week is about to send me over the edge.

[Gary A]

I think the fact your eye has had a twitch on the same side is too much of a coincidence for that not having something to do with it. The muscles surrounding your eye can quite easily become affected by high levels of anxiety, and I'd wager that you are simply experiencing a twitching of the muscles that contribute toward aye movement.

Partial seizures would involve very vivid hallucinations within your entire visual field, and if the seizure activity is happening in the visual cortex, which of course is where it would need to be happening in order to produce visual hallucinations, it would affect both eyes.

The optic pathways of your eyes cross over at a point in the brain called the optic chiasm, so the optic fibres from both eyes are kind of intertwined within any part of the visual cortex. As a general rule, anything involving only one eye is very rarely associated with a fault in the brain.

[cattia]

This is so reassuring, thank you so much Gary. I really need to start my medication, even though I'm scared to. I can't go on like this!

[maianixon]

That sounds a lot like an anxiety symptom, I used to have the same. The best thing you can do is to not focus on it and to not look for it - i know its really hard but its the only way, otherwise you're just further training your eyes to see things they shouldnt and will only get worse. so really try to focus on "real things" in your vision and ignore the flickering lights they're just something caused by anxiety and harmless :)

[Gary A]

Taking meds can be daunting, but what have you got to lose? You're already broken up by anxiety, so what's the worst that could happen? Take your meds, you have an illness, you need to start treating it.