Physical symptoms - my anxiety story

[Mrsriley79]

Hi everyone,

I just wondered, and I know there are quite a few posts on symptoms of anxiety, but I just wanted to put mine out there.

So I’ve had anxiety for about 14 years, it has its ups and downs. I’ve had so many health scares, and also so many health problems, and been through some quite distressing situations, but I’ve been diagnosed with OCD, health anxiety, generalised anxiety disorder, and post traumatic stress disorder.

Anyway, i always have some kind of worry and concerns, it’s just who I am, but usually I can get about my days with too many negative thoughts, and hardly any physical symptoms. I’m known well at my doctors for having high anxiety, but thank goodness it’s been really low the last 5 years.

Roll forward to September last year, when I had pain in my low back and convinced my self that my previous ovarian cancer had returned, so I checked in with my oncologist and she ran checks, sadly took far too long as she left and went to a different country and was stuck there due to Covid and so my results were lost, it took until April to finally get more checks and the all’s ok from a new gyni. By this time my anxiety had sky rocketed, and I still had continued pain in my back, and I started to roll all symptoms I was getting into one and sending myself bonkers. I convinced myself it was bowel cancer, bladder cancer, muscle degenerative disease, kidney cancer, you name it i had it, by this time a few physical symptoms of anxiety started to show and no matter how much I told myself it prob anxiety , my brain insisted it was more symptoms of this illness I had that was escalating.

So the last two month, I’ve felt completely out of control, I’m exhausted, tense, feelings of low blood sugar, pangs in my chest regularly, some times with every thought I have. I’ve booked to see the doctor, but I have to wait 2 weeks. All this time tho, I’ve tried so had to not fight my anxiety, enjoy my family, my children and my hobbies, try to see the good things and tell my self my thoughts are causing my issues. And what’s worse is that when I try to relax or have a good day, it feels like my body will suddenly find something else to frighted me with..

The last two weeks has been the most frightening of all, my vision has started to play up, I really find it hard to explain. Suddenly, Im feeling like I can see, but I can’t see what I’m looking at, and it’s really scary. I’ve booked in with the optician on Tuesday, but I’m going mad with worry. I can see, and theres no blind spots, I have dark floaters but they don’t worry me, what worries me is the feeling of seeing, but not actually looking at what I want to look at, it really is so hard to describe. I can read, I can see everything, but I can’t see to actually look right at what I want to look at. I hope this makes sense.
Is this anxiety?? I’m trying so hard not to stress but it’s becoming absolutely ridiculous, over the months, my husband and mum think I’m just a hypochondriac, but it’s all so real to me, Just because I have anxiety it doesn’t mean I’m immune (this is what I tell them)

Am I actually going mad, or about to lose my vision, maybe tumour or brain pressure. It’s very scary. I really fed up and I just want to be happy with my life .. 😩

Thanks for reading

[AbyssalStars]

I'm not sure if I have ever experienced the type of sight things you are describing, but I have had quite a few of the others. I have had chest pains/tightness, electrical shooting pains, terrible burning sensations, numbness of the extremities, a feeling of "pressure" in my head; all of which were caused or at least exacerbated by my anxiety. The reason I could tell these were anxiety related was that as soon as I got out of my most recent anxiety attack (which can last up to a month each time) the symptoms disappeared. Poof! Like magic.

In the past, sometimes my anxiety would get so bad that I could induce psychosomatic seizures. By flipping an anxiety "switch" in my brain, I could literally make myself lose control over my muscles, and they would twitch and spasm and start performing repetitive motions.

So I think that it is definitely possible that your current sight issues may be caused by anxiety. Based on what you described, it almost sounds like some weird form of derealization to me.

Is your field of vision at all effected? Like, is there a black spot at your focal point? I know you said that you can see "everything" but can't seem to focus on it. Is it because there is a black spot or fuzziness? Is it possible that you have some other type of eye issue, like near or far sightedness?

[Carnation]

Mrsriley, I had something like you described a couple of weeks ago with the sight issue thing. I posted a thread about it. My experience was just momentarily but wanted to reassure you that it may be more anxiety than something more scary.

[Mrsriley79]

Thankyou, I’ve not had a eye exam in over a year, also I have binocular vision dis function. I’ve a appointment in the morning with optician. Xx