Help

[Serenade18]

I am brand new to this whole anxiety thing. I am a 22 year old college student and I've never really dealt with this before, but I feel like it's kinda my whole life recently. Anyway, today I had this weird tingling sensation near my left temple, like above my ear, and I started freaking out about it because I have this deep-seated fear of having a stroke. So of course, as I'm thinking about/researching it, it started to spread and get worse, and now my jaw feels kind of stiff on both sides. All of this in the past 30 minutes or so. I'm pretty sure I'm just working myself up. Anybody have experience with this?

[Serenade18]

Honestly, not really. I just always immediately think it's the worst possible thing.

---------- Post added at 14:50 ---------- Previous post was at 14:48 ----------

But I was hoping that maybe somebody else has had the same kind of sensation and found that it was just anxiety. That might help me convince myself it is.

[Serenade18]

Thanks for taking the time to reply! I appreciate it. I've had several panic attacks recently and I have a head cold right now, so I'm sure it's not anything to worry about, but the anxiety says different.

[ServerError]

But I was hoping that maybe somebody else has had the same kind of sensation and found that it was just anxiety. That might help me convince myself it is.

It won't. You think it will now, but it won't. If it helps at all, it'll be for a few hours, and then the worry will come back and you'll start questioning whether the other people were really having the same symptom or if they understood you properly or if it was fine in their case but not in yours. I speak from personal experience and nearly two years on the forum.

If you're prone to anxious thought and if this leads to regular intense suffering, you should seek treatment on that basis.

[au Lait]

Definitely anxiety. You had a sensation that caused you to feel anxious, and feeling anxious caused more sensations (the jaw tightness) which in turn caused more anxiety. It’s the viscous cycle of anxiety. The caveat of health anxiety is that not only do we experience the uncomfortable and frightening anxious sensations, but we’re also prone to misinterpreting those sensations as signs of something other than anxiety. But that’s all it was. You are fine.