View Full Version : What to do about eye anxiety when you have real eye problems?
So I have eye anxiety. I also have a complicated glasses prescription. So I kind of have reasons to have eye anxiety. A few months ago I barely ever thought of my eyes since I was distracted by HOCD. I still had focusing issues and eye strain, but kind of blamed it on anxiety and tried to ignore it. That didn’t really work. I recently got a glasses prescription change. When I was being fitted for contacts I got told I had quite a change. I was willing to give the new prescription a chance. Unfortunately I got dizziness and eye strain with the new prescription. I tried to get used to it, but couldn’t. I’ve had wrong prescriptions before. It just happens with eyes like mine.
I’m getting another eye appointment. How should I act during my eye appointment? I know I have some pretty serious eye anxiety, but I think I have some pretty serious eye problems as well. Anyone who looks at my glasses prescription would know that. I know my eyes are physically healthy, just worried about bad prescription. How do you know when it’s health anxiety vs. true health problems.
countrygirl
12-01-18, 09:25
I am parially sighted with severe shortsightedness,vitrious collapse and cataracts. 15yrs ago my only problem was rhe shortsight but i found that there was a limit to how strong the lenses could be. So my preacription has stayed same for 25yrs. If they tried to increase strength my brain could not cope and i was dizzy etc. If you are like me you may not be able to adjust to higher strength.
I am parially sighted with severe shortsightedness,vitrious collapse and cataracts. 15yrs ago my only problem was rhe shortsight but i found that there was a limit to how strong the lenses could be. So my preacription has stayed same for 25yrs. If they tried to increase strength my brain could not cope and i was dizzy etc. If you are like me you may not be able to adjust to higher strength.
I’m farsighted, so it’s kind of the opposite for me. Lower strength gives me eye strain and dizziness. They reduced the strength of my right eye.
Eye OCD is the worst. I’m worried I just have weak eye muscles. Things go out of focus for me.
I have real eye problems and also eye hypervigilance/OCD. It's a miserable combination, and one that has recently resurfaced
I have real eye problems and also eye hypervigilance/OCD. It's a miserable combination, and one that has recently resurfaced
How do you manage it? I often can’t tell the difference between real symptoms and imagined ones. I’ve often thought some of my real symptoms were in my head when they were actually real. So I avoided mentioning them because I didn’t want people to think I’m crazy. I did once think flickering lights meant my optic nerve was failing. I just feel like I exaggerate my symptoms. Even though they’re real.
I get retinal vasospasms, which cause little scotomas scattered through my visual field. Sometimes I can go for ages without thinking about them, but when I get a new one, my hypervigilance kicks in and I start noticing all the other things that my brain normally tunes out. It's a vicious circle
I get retinal vasospasms, which cause little scotomas scattered through my visual field. Sometimes I can go for ages without thinking about them, but when I get a new one, my hypervigilance kicks in and I start noticing all the other things that my brain normally tunes out. It's a vicious circle
So far I think my eyes are physically healthy. I just keep getting bad/unhelpful glasses prescriptions. So I often have OCD compulsions about that.
Then you don't have real eye problems. Lucky you :)
Then you don't have real eye problems. Lucky you :)
Guess I don’t. Still don’t have perfect vision.
I have corneal transplants and a crazy prescription. I've lived with this my entire life (and that's probably the root of my health anxiety!), and every so often I do go through a spell where I get worried about my eyes. In those times, because I'm so hyper-focused on my vision, I start noticing imperfections and convince myself my vision is getting worse.
The same thing has happened to me with getting the wrong prescription a couple of times, though for me it's also happened because my prescription is so strong that the shape of the frames I've chosen distorts the lenses, so I need to watch out for that. It takes me a while to get used to new glasses so I recommend doing it in stages, like wearing the new ones at home and old ones at work for a while. If it never gets better, then it may be the wrong prescription, but it's normal to take a while to get used to.
Don't have much advice on this subject as I still have eye worries from time to time (I'd say it flares up for me about once a year) but eventually my mind moves on to something else. You're not alone!
I’ve been getting very anxious about the eye dilating drops not relaxing my eyes again. A few years ago I had an experience where they used weak eye drops that didn’t relax my eyes properly. So it made my health anxiety look worse! I’m getting my eyes dilated again and I really hope my eyes relax properly. At least enough for them to explain why I have all the issues I have! I know some eyes are kind of immune to those eye drops. I really hope my eyes aren’t one of them. But it does make sense why my eyes can’t relax since my whole body and mind definitely isn’t!
---------- Post added at 19:54 ---------- Previous post was at 19:51 ----------
I have corneal transplants and a crazy prescription. I've lived with this my entire life (and that's probably the root of my health anxiety!), and every so often I do go through a spell where I get worried about my eyes. In those times, because I'm so hyper-focused on my vision, I start noticing imperfections and convince myself my vision is getting worse.
The same thing has happened to me with getting the wrong prescription a couple of times, though for me it's also happened because my prescription is so strong that the shape of the frames I've chosen distorts the lenses, so I need to watch out for that. It takes me a while to get used to new glasses so I recommend doing it in stages, like wearing the new ones at home and old ones at work for a while. If it never gets better, then it may be the wrong prescription, but it's normal to take a while to get used to.
Don't have much advice on this subject as I still have eye worries from time to time (I'd say it flares up for me about once a year) but eventually my mind moves on to something else. You're not alone!
My mind generally moves onto sexuality worries which are almost as bad as my eye anxiety. But a lot of my vision symptoms remain because they really do get my prescription wrong. I do know my anxiety about my eyes is a bit out of proportion at times, so it’s hard to balance things.
---------- Post added at 20:55 ---------- Previous post was at 19:54 ----------
I’m having some stupid anxiety about them removing or reducing the astigmatism correction from my glasses. It helps me see a lot, but for a long time they didn’t catch it and I had to deal with mediocre vision because of it. I bet eye doctors hate having me as a patient. I often don’t bring up symptoms because I believe it’s all just anxiety.
---------- Post added at 21:53 ---------- Previous post was at 20:55 ----------
II need to try to be the best at being a patient. The doctor does know a lot more than me, but I know a lot of things the doctor doesn’t know since he can’t look through my eyes. I guess I need to find the most effective way of communicating and try my best not to self-diagnose.
I keep panicking that they’ll never find the right prescription and I’ll be left with eyestrain and weird vision for the rest of my life. I have this issue where my vision goes spacey and out of focus, but not blurry. I don’t know if it’s me going crazy, a weird vision issue or just the wrong prescription. I also feel like things just look too small, so I have forward head posture to try to fix that issue. I still don’t know if this is a legitimate vision problem or just me going crazy. Eye anxiety is making me feel so crazy.
One thing that’s bothered me for a while is that my eyes feel different. My left eye (the bad one) feels more relaxed than my right eye. So I wonder if all the eyestrain in my life is to blame for my eyes being so different. I wonder if my eyes are actually more equal than my prescription shows. I told one of my eye doctors this weird theory(I’m dumb) and he adapted my prescription so my left eye would be undercorrected and feel less lazy. Doing that made my eyes do even more weird stuff, so now I’m back to having a bigger difference. My eyes feel different, but at least they see more similar now. I think I’ll keep it that way and try to avoid crackpot theories at the eye doctor. I’ll let the doctor decide what’s going on with my eyes. I guess it shouldn’t bother me that my eyes feel different as long as they can see the same and I have no depth perception issues.
---------- Post added at 01:17 ---------- Previous post was at 00:20 ----------
What should I do if he doesn’t think my prescription is wrong or should be causing eye strain? This is one thing I’m really worried about. I’m 21 and I can barely keep the computer screen or books in focus.
I’m worrying about the dilation drops not relaxing my eyes again! The last time I got my eyes dilated I pretty much noticed no change in vision. If this happens no one will ever take my vision concerns seriously!!!
It seems like my vision problems are mostly in my head :sad:. How do I fix them? What therapy can I do?
Catherine S
19-01-18, 00:24
It seems as though all of your threads need to be merged into one if they are about the same issue, it's much easier for us to follow. Instead of always creating a new thread, just add to an existing one and bump it to keep it in view.
As for what you've been told by the eye doctor. You need to trust him. He wouldn't miss anything serious, it's more than his job is worth to do that. As others have said, anxiety creates tension and this can really affect your vision. Not sure what else we can tell you really.
I’m thinking I should just get lasik on my left eye, so I can forget about my vision. I know they’ll run some very thorough tests. Maybe this is just my anxiety talking.
Do you think lasik will improve eye ocd or make it worse?
My eye OCD is terrible. I keep testing different prescriptions compulsively. I know I’m not an optometrist and I definitely don’t have a controlled environment or the proper equipment. As I’m learning more about this topic I’m learning about how much I really don’t know. I’m trying to embrace not knowing. I just keep obsessively reading case studies and academic papers I don’t fully understand. I kind of enjoy it since it’s an interest, but I also have to deal with the OCD. I want to be an optometrist in the future, but I don’t know if that would be a good job with my eye anxiety. I should just stop testing my own eyes because it always leads to spikes.
Are you seeing an ophthalmologist or an optometrist? One is an eye specialist, the other prescribes glasses. I used to have major anxiety about my vision. Since I overcame HA I have had no problems with my vision. So to answer your question: yes more than likely your eye issues are due to you focusing so much on your vision. If your eyes have been tested by a specialist then I’d go as far as to say it is almost certainly the reason. btw if they reduce the amount of drops they use to dilate your eyes it wears off a lot quicker. I know that because they do it for me.
Are you seeing an ophthalmologist or an optometrist? One is an eye specialist, the other prescribes glasses. I used to have major anxiety about my vision. Since I overcame HA I have had no problems with my vision. So to answer your question: yes more than likely your eye issues are due to you focusing so much on your vision. If your eyes have been tested by a specialist then I’d go as far as to say it is almost certainly the reason. btw if they reduce the amount of drops they use to dilate your eyes it wears off a lot quicker. I know that because they do it for me.
I think it’s a terrible combination of both. My anxiety makes a lot of it worse. But I definitely have a complicated glasses prescription that most people have problems with. I think my anxiety and hyper focusing on my eyesight along with my complicated glasses prescription makes me very hard to test. So I keep getting bad prescriptions. I’ve had moments where I was too distracted by HOCD to care about my eyesight. I still had vision problems. I acknowledge some of it is anxiety which is why I’m posting here and not just on vision forums.
I’m just worried I’ll never get a good glasses prescription.
So I just got a new prescription for reading glasses and my optometrist told me to come back in a month to get retested when my eyes are less strained. I just ordered them. My anxiety is way lower now.
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