Deja vu

[Livvy_rice]

Hi I have posted on here last week with the same symptom. I am full of anxiety over the fear of having epilepsy. My symptoms are - random dreams from years ago / random memories popping into my head for no reason at all, I could be doing something totally mundane and see a flash of these memories and then its gone. I always remember what it is though. My other symptom is deja vu I have been getting it so much recently. Just tonight I have already had it twice, I am so so scared I have epilepsy as I have already used doctor google. I haven't left the house much the last 3 weeks I have taken time off work and stayed in bed all day because I am that scared of having a full blown seizure any day now. Has anyone else had these symptoms or the same fear of temporal lobe epilepsy?

---------- Post added 03-09-17 at 00:05 ---------- Previous post was 02-09-17 at 23:59 ----------

Literally begging anyone who may have had anything remotley similar to please reply to me, my anxiety is out of control

[Fishmanpa]

Ok... you're posting on an anxiety forum so deep down you know this irrational. I urge you to print out a few of your threads and show them to you GP. Perhaps they can help fast track you into getting some help for your anxiety.

Good luck and as always...

Positive thoughts

[Livvy_rice]

Okay so not one person has experienced this?

[MyNameIsTerry]

Remember, you are asking a very limited number of current users on here. If you searched you would find tons on things like this I'm betting. Just before you joined there was a guy posting about Deja Vu for a start.

You probably realise that anxiety makes the mind busy and sees you focus on things you didn't before? And it looks to present you with possible evidence to confirm your fears? Just look how worrying about sleeping causes insomnia for a start. So, your subconscious knows to flag anything connected to your fear to feedback into the fear cycle to validate the core belief built around this current theme.

Intrusive thoughts work just like that too, it's likely you are experiencing these with HA fears.

Your subconscious has access to everything in memory. It can retrieve possibly warning "data" to try to validate itself. It does this with such as intrusive thoughts, as the OCD board often shows. It can also present you with something you regard as Deja Vu but don't realise it's something you've seen before because it was subtle. If you looked at TomT's threads a while back you will see how he misinterpreted seeing faces of people he thought he'd seen before yet it could easily be the case he had but in the background or people with similiar features. His subconscious could retrieve & present information to suggest that because memory has the whole picture in it, not just the bits we thought we saw.

The mind is busier than we realise. More recent research is looking at Mind Pops which are the random unscary thoughts we constantly have. Their triggers can be subtle, a word we see on a page or even a smell.

So, focusing on your fear of epilepsy is typical of Cognitive Distortions because there could be other explanations and without ruling them out too, how do you know this isn't just normal brain functioning that you didn't realise before it became associated with a fear?

[KK77]

Hi I have posted on here last week with the same symptom. I am full of anxiety over the fear of having epilepsy. My symptoms are - random dreams from years ago / random memories popping into my head for no reason at all, I could be doing something totally mundane and see a flash of these memories and then its gone. I always remember what it is though. My other symptom is deja vu I have been getting it so much recently. Just tonight I have already had it twice, I am so so scared I have epilepsy as I have already used doctor google. I haven't left the house much the last 3 weeks I have taken time off work and stayed in bed all day because I am that scared of having a full blown seizure any day now. Has anyone else had these symptoms or the same fear of temporal lobe epilepsy?l

I've been getting a lot of flashbacks recently, as if my mind is reviewing my life, and at first put it down to an increase in meds. I'm not sure this is the case however as I feel it's more a response to increased anxiety and stress. Repressed memories suddenly appear out of nowhere....memories you think you'd totally forgotten. I think the deja vu is strongly connected to the flashbacks and anxiety - feeling you've experienced something before etc.

Your anxiety is telling you this is something bad and to be feared, hence the connection you make with epilepsy and the self-preservation response of thinking you need to be in bed. But remember that if you are going to have a seizure, it doesn't matter whether you're at work or in bed, it will happen.

But it won't. This is the natural response of an anxious mind and it's time to focus on beating and treating your anxiety rather than the symptoms.

[ServerError]

I've experienced déjà vû since I was a child. I always thought it was normal, as we often do with things that happen to us as kids. The thing is, it is normal. It's just something our brains do that nobody has ever really been able to understand. I get really strong feelings of déjà vû in which I feel with every fibre of my being that the situation is familiar or has played out before. Then it goes away and I realise it hasn't really happened before. I also get random "scenes" and images playing through my head.

I've never been diagnosed with epilepsy. I saw a neurologist last year who said it was clearly not epilepsy. I've been told it's psychological and something benign is going on in my brain. Personally, I quite like it.

What you're describing is quite common. The fact that nobody on an anxiety forum decided to share their experiences with you doesn't change that. By all means, go to your doctor and discuss it. It did help me to have this stuff properly evaluated by an expert. But make sure to talk about your fear and anxiety, as this is what will need to be treated.

[anx1ous]

Yep, I have the same exact things you describe, Livvy. For most of the summer I had those deja vu things every day, but now I am slowly starting to utilize my anxiety coping skills. I still have bad days of course, where a little deja vu thought snowballs in my head really quickly to what ifs and stuff, which in turn causes more and more deja vu thoughts and flashbacks throughout the day. I've even had a couple days lately where I don't have deja vu at all, and NO physical symptoms like the blurry vision spots I usually get.

I've also noticed that these symptoms intensify with stressful or new situations (I don't like change, lol!). For example, the recent hurricanes have made me a tiny bit more anxious.