I hope this is anxiety I really need some help

Mental health
1

Hi, new member here,

I was diagnosed with anxiety as a child and I have been fighting with it ever since, its always come and gone quite quickly apart from one experience when I was a teenager when I believe I had a panic attack which kicked me into a panic disorder or GAD as it felt like I had a 4 month long panic attack, school and sports eventually shook that feeling away and I finally got back to normality, it was a horrible experience.

Now I am suffering from something even worse, First, my head just felt a little out of sorts (enough to make me anxious), this was followed by an indescribable throbbing, agitative pulse of energy in my head which just made me want to get up and move (or smack my head on something) seriously, its really difficult to describe, but it’s kind of like a burst of energy. I have had little bouts of these before, but this seemed to go on, panicking me more and I felt I lost control of my thoughts during the process. This has been coming back every now and again, especially when I think about it, and when it’s not there I feel like I am back in my GAD again. To top this off, I have been getting these shocks in my head (I believe they are brain zaps), pretty continuously everyday these are terrifying me just as much, making me question, is it a simple partial seizure, an aneurism, a tumour, am I dying? etc. im also getting minor dizziness, headaches and nausea which seem to move around the head as well as pressure in my head.

most of these symptoms seem to go away or at least subside a little when I take my mind off it and sometimes when I support my neck in a certain way.

I have just started a new job after working form my old company for nearly 5 years just for relevant info and yes, COVID-19 has really stressed me the f*** out over the past 12 months but I was pretty convinced I was coping.

I do not take any anxiety meds so the shivers/zaps are not from withdrawal and I have been to the GP who said it was stress and to come back in a couple weeks if it doesn’t go.

I am quite clever (not tooting my own horn here) and understand the mind can play very nasty tricks on you and that my pre-disposition for anxiety makes it sound like that’s pretty much all it can be, but these sporadic zaps and the headaches are convincing me that something could be quite wrong in my head and it has completely ruined my life over the past week or so.

I should also note I don’t feel a huge amount of stress when thinking about the job situation, but I suppose my subconscious might?

I guess I am just looking for some re-assurance that it’s all due to my anxiety and that some other poor soul has gone through this before.
Please Help.
Thank you

2

sorry you’re feeling this way but yes, stress and anxiety and even underlying anxiety can cause your symptoms. I’ve had the brain zaps also without being on medication. The fact that you have a history of panic attack and anxiety is very telling. Head pressure, throbbing, dizziness, weird sensations have all been with me on and off for a long time. I’ve had MRI, MRI, EEG, and all normal. like you, I’ve had anxiety since childhood and for no apparent reason.
But you are right, the mind can become our worst enemy if we let it.
of course you can go through testing if it eases your mind, but anxiety and stress is most likely the culprit. when you think about it, it’s no wonder that we get headaches and head pressure and brain zaps. The body can only take so much before it let us know through symptoms, that we have too much stress.
I will tell you one more thing that when I was in my 20s, I suddenly experienced many symptoms at one time. Those included numbness in tingling, foggy weird feeling in the head that’s hard to explain, Head pressure, I had vertigo a couple of times,floaters in my eyes, ringing in my ears, weakness, pressure in my chest, and several others. I was terrified! I thought I had MS or something else. My dad took me to a neurologist who did an EEG. It was normal. He basically told me to go take a vacation.
I actually came to my own conclusion about this. from all the pent-up anxiety and stress from age 5 or so when I started school, everything just came to a head and my body couldn’t take it anymore. Those were physical manifestations of long-term stress and anxiety. it’s like the straw that broke the camels back! my symptoms lingered on and off for years and to this day I still get some in a much milder form.
I am doing a lot better these days but I still have to keep my thoughts in check. if there’s one thing I learned it’s that we absolutely MUST take control of our thoughts! There’s a saying that goes… be careful what you think! and don’t believe everything you think. Our attitude about life is extremely important to our mental health! Counseling helped me also. The mind will try to trick us into negativity but it doesn’t have to happen.
i do hope you feel better soon. you’re going to be OK! Relax your mind as much as you can. there are some great talks on YouTube about anxiety and how to manage our thinking! Take care

3

Hi, thank you so much for replying, I’m sorry to hear you suffer too but its such a relief to hear I’m not the only one, Its like my thoughts become out of my control and these pulses of energy in my head (and the zaps), make me want to tear my hair out.

I think I’m going to give it a week or so as the doc asked before I go back and say I want my head looking at, if for nothing other than peace of mind!

I will try some of the talks on YouTube as I just want this gone, I honestly feel like the kid in primary school again with this constant fear of loosing control of my thoughts or something worse around the corner.

I can almost rationalise with myself sometimes and think I wouldn’t be experiencing all these different symptoms one after the other if something was physically wrong, I would have a symptom that worsens or several all at once, and thinking about them wouldn’t make them so much worse, but other times I just go into a frenzy of fear and I end up with my head in my hands barely able to cope with these sensations.

I’m glad to hear you have learned to control your mind so to speak, would you say that is what made the biggest difference for you?