Visual disturbances

[Flapj]

Visual disturbances are another common anxiety symptom for me. They are the perfect attention getter and when my anxiety is turned up and my lizard brain looking for things to focus on, there is no better way of getting my attention. I've had nearly everything: floaters, flashes, zig zags, bright spots, migraine aura, trails/after images etc. The one thing I have never had (knock on wood) is a blind spot or loss of peripheral vision. As luck would have it, those are the symptoms that truly warrant prompt medical attention. Multiple doctors, including eye doctors, have explained the other items to me as "normal," "common," and nothing to worry about. The causes vary, but aging happens to be a common cause. Some persistent flashes can be a sign of a retinal detachment, but transient flashes usually aren't.

I think the issue is our hyper focused mind. When feeling anxiety, our minds are primed to notice even the small things - things we normally wouldn't pay attention to. I've been alarmed by a reflection off the beveled edge of my glasses. Now, that's excessive.

Do you have visual symptoms of anxiety?

[kyllikki]

I have had tunnel vision and flashes very briefly during some high stress periods, and I pretty consistently have floaters (they don't bother me at all.) But I do want to caution people that not everything that happens to your eyes is stress! I appear to have blown out my eye muscles staring at two screens for the entirety of spring 2020- spring 2021, to the point where the muscles themselves don't function properly any more and my eyes are mis-aligned, causing bad depth perception and brief / angle-dependent double vision. In turn, I frequently feel slightly disoriented and very much "off kilter", which triggers my anxiety, and then the two go round and round like two bulldogs caught in a laundry bag. I knew I had a problem when I could consistently trigger the feeling by looking at certain parts of my visual field. I think that's the difference between real issues and stress: the real issues don't come and go.

So really, while I know a lot can and should be viewed as harmless, it's also a very good idea to see an ophthalmologist when you have issues! It took two visits to mine for her to really figure it out; on visit #1 she was way more concerned that it looked like I had glaucoma (I don't, thankfully -- it was a single high pressure reading and a repeat measure was fine!)

best wishes...

[Panicstations39]

Hello. I'm wondering if anyone has ever experienced a light travel across their vision regularly? It doesn't block out my vision and it only lasts seconds but can happen several times a day. I have some other visual disturbances such as static mostly in dim light and the dark, some small twinkles now and again and I feel like I'm more sensitive to sunlight than others all since my operation years ago and I've always accepted them but then this light came back after not happening for years and I'm so worried! I've seen two ophthalmologists and neither can see anything wrong but I had surgery for a detached retina many years ago. But because I was anxious the second doctor sent me for a visual field test which I've had but no results yet and I've just booked an appointment for an appointment in a neuro physiology department for a test to see how my retina reacts to light I believe. My anxiety is through the roof, I feel awful. I made the appointment this morning for the 15th Nov and now I feel like I can't function worrying about the test. The second doctor I saw thinks they will come back fine and he said he is doing it to reassure me that the light I'm seeing is just an effect of the surgery I had on my retina years ago. I just can't seem to hold that thought in my head and I am terrified they are going to find some autoimmune disease linked to my eyes which he briefly mentioned.
Sorry to jump on someone else's post, I have posted my own but I don't know if it worked as I'm new here xx