angelasun
30-12-17, 22:59
Hey everyone! I recently recovered from an episode of severe health anxiety about MS and these sorts of threads really helped me at the time so I thought I would post my symptoms for you all:
1. Cold patches (mostly one side, mostly in the same places)
2. Burning, hot patches (mostly one side, mostly in the same places)
3. Tingling/prickling (mostly one side, sometimes all over the body)
4. Facial numbness (one side)
5. Hand numbness
6. At one point, whole one sided body numbness
7. Extreme fatigue
8. Extreme sudden fatigue
9. Migraines and tension headaches
10. Urinary leaking during my period
11. Short breath
12. Dizziness/vertigo/dropped foot
13. Flickering in my peripheral vision as if someone was turning the light on and off really quickly, but this happened once in natural light
14. Perceived all body weakness
15. A bout of really bad facial pain on one side
16. Sensations of waterdrops on skin. Feeling as though my clothes were wet when they touched my skin (one side)
17. Eye pressure, pain when moving eyes
18. Muscle fasticulations, as if worms were moving under my skin
My symptoms also didn't exactly correspond to moments of stress/non-stress, nor did they gradually and evenly disappear. Some days would just randomly be really bad, other days not, until slowly everything settled and I felt normal again. This took about a month, during which I removed most major stressors out of my life.
I also got two MRIs, a brain and cervical spine one with/without contrast, which revealed absolutely nothing.
What helped me:
- Reading about similar experiences and not googling any symptoms (hard I know). A tip: if you're going to google symptoms because the urge is too great, I would recommend adding the word 'anxiety' to the end of that google search. So instead of just typing 'tingling' into google and getting every horrible disease in existence, type in 'tingling anxiety' and get information that will make you feel better. Also, get someone to block key words from your search engine.
- Avoiding reassurance seeking: this was really important, because I realized that asking those around you who don't have any medical knowledge and most likely don't have as bad of anxiety as you just don't understand, and their words will fall on deaf ears. Even worse, you'll be spending time dwelling on the very thing you should be trying to distract yourself from. If you have to, ask people who've gone through similar experiences, or who have anxiety.
- Distract yourself as much as possible. Whenever I felt any symptoms, I would distract myself by doing some really hard math problem or something. Whatever works.
- Exercise: I can't even begin to tell you how beneficial this is. Even if you feel weak, stressed like hell, ravaged with anxiety, try to go outside and take a walk.
- EAT. In my case, half of my symptoms were because I was too stressed and nauseous to eat. It might be hard, but get in as much food as possible.
- Create outside stimulus to distract yourself from your own body. Sights, sounds, textures, smells, etc. Exercise helps a lot with this
- Realize that some of your symptoms may be caused by some minor medical condition. For me, the facial pain, eye pressure and pain, facial numbness, and migraine was all caused by a sinus infection, which I didn't realize I had because I didn't have congestion, until I described my symptoms to my mom who has them frequently. The urinary incontinence was due to the pain of my period, and my relatively weak bladder from a history of UTIs. The chance of you having MS is much much lower than the chance of you having a couple of minor health issues at the same time.
- Understand that anxiety is a serious condition that causes severe responses in your body if it is bad enough. This is the nature of somatic conditions. When you are extremely stressed, your body is under a constant state of arousal. When that energy isn't expended into fleeing from a predator, it goes elsewhere and ignites the other systems in your body, primarily the nervous system.
- Let your body recover, don't push your body to recover. Once you realize that your symptoms are due to stress, it can be really frustrating when they don't go away immediately. That frustration will then turn into further fear and worrying, and the cycle begins again. Your body is chemically off-balance, and it doesn't readjust itself immediately. Be patient, and try not to worry about new symptoms or sensations that don't seem to disappear. Don't compare yourself to other people's situations on this forum. Your body is unique to you and you only.
I hope this helped!! Good luck
1. Cold patches (mostly one side, mostly in the same places)
2. Burning, hot patches (mostly one side, mostly in the same places)
3. Tingling/prickling (mostly one side, sometimes all over the body)
4. Facial numbness (one side)
5. Hand numbness
6. At one point, whole one sided body numbness
7. Extreme fatigue
8. Extreme sudden fatigue
9. Migraines and tension headaches
10. Urinary leaking during my period
11. Short breath
12. Dizziness/vertigo/dropped foot
13. Flickering in my peripheral vision as if someone was turning the light on and off really quickly, but this happened once in natural light
14. Perceived all body weakness
15. A bout of really bad facial pain on one side
16. Sensations of waterdrops on skin. Feeling as though my clothes were wet when they touched my skin (one side)
17. Eye pressure, pain when moving eyes
18. Muscle fasticulations, as if worms were moving under my skin
My symptoms also didn't exactly correspond to moments of stress/non-stress, nor did they gradually and evenly disappear. Some days would just randomly be really bad, other days not, until slowly everything settled and I felt normal again. This took about a month, during which I removed most major stressors out of my life.
I also got two MRIs, a brain and cervical spine one with/without contrast, which revealed absolutely nothing.
What helped me:
- Reading about similar experiences and not googling any symptoms (hard I know). A tip: if you're going to google symptoms because the urge is too great, I would recommend adding the word 'anxiety' to the end of that google search. So instead of just typing 'tingling' into google and getting every horrible disease in existence, type in 'tingling anxiety' and get information that will make you feel better. Also, get someone to block key words from your search engine.
- Avoiding reassurance seeking: this was really important, because I realized that asking those around you who don't have any medical knowledge and most likely don't have as bad of anxiety as you just don't understand, and their words will fall on deaf ears. Even worse, you'll be spending time dwelling on the very thing you should be trying to distract yourself from. If you have to, ask people who've gone through similar experiences, or who have anxiety.
- Distract yourself as much as possible. Whenever I felt any symptoms, I would distract myself by doing some really hard math problem or something. Whatever works.
- Exercise: I can't even begin to tell you how beneficial this is. Even if you feel weak, stressed like hell, ravaged with anxiety, try to go outside and take a walk.
- EAT. In my case, half of my symptoms were because I was too stressed and nauseous to eat. It might be hard, but get in as much food as possible.
- Create outside stimulus to distract yourself from your own body. Sights, sounds, textures, smells, etc. Exercise helps a lot with this
- Realize that some of your symptoms may be caused by some minor medical condition. For me, the facial pain, eye pressure and pain, facial numbness, and migraine was all caused by a sinus infection, which I didn't realize I had because I didn't have congestion, until I described my symptoms to my mom who has them frequently. The urinary incontinence was due to the pain of my period, and my relatively weak bladder from a history of UTIs. The chance of you having MS is much much lower than the chance of you having a couple of minor health issues at the same time.
- Understand that anxiety is a serious condition that causes severe responses in your body if it is bad enough. This is the nature of somatic conditions. When you are extremely stressed, your body is under a constant state of arousal. When that energy isn't expended into fleeing from a predator, it goes elsewhere and ignites the other systems in your body, primarily the nervous system.
- Let your body recover, don't push your body to recover. Once you realize that your symptoms are due to stress, it can be really frustrating when they don't go away immediately. That frustration will then turn into further fear and worrying, and the cycle begins again. Your body is chemically off-balance, and it doesn't readjust itself immediately. Be patient, and try not to worry about new symptoms or sensations that don't seem to disappear. Don't compare yourself to other people's situations on this forum. Your body is unique to you and you only.
I hope this helped!! Good luck