Travis88 said:
i do, my eyes get blurry and i think that leads to dizziness
At F***ing last - someone who mentions dizziness in the same sentence as S-A!
I have dizziness - and I blame my S-A and personality etc. on being like this.
All my life I have felt sooo remote, dizzy and alien, but upto the year 2000 I assumed that maybe everyone was like this a bit, and it was just that I was way out on a limb with it more than other people. The remoteness and detachment was so restricting on me that I could never drive a car, and it made me feel confused and "different" when in groups of other people - hence my S-A.
I mentioned this to my therapist, but she had all her own ideas on my problem and didn't want to complicate things by listening to anything I had to say about it...
Around the year 2000, my remoteness came more overpowering, the dizziness part of it more pronounced. I became so remote and disoriented in my surroundings that several times, outside, I would stagger onto the road, and bump off passing cars, lampposts etc.
I saw another therapist, and she suggested that I visit a doctor to see if there was a physical cause of all this.
Eventually (in 2002) I saw a doc., and he gave me blood tests for diabetes, thyroid problems etc., but he could not find anything.
Then last October I had a real bad turn. I woke in the middle of the night, and the room was whirling around like a helicopter's rotor. I could not stand up, I had to crawl along the floor to the bathroom, where I threw up.
In the morning I phoned the doctor, but he flatly refused to come out to visit me at home. The nurse said it was not their policy to come out for anyone less that 60 y.o.
Later on I got over it enough to get to the doctor's surgery. He did not know what was causing my problem, so put me down for a consultation at the local hospital, which meant a 3 month wait. I was very bad over Christmas and in January, but it cleared up a lot by the time I want to the hospital in mid March.
They gave my a lot of visual/audiometric tests, with sounds in my ears, flashing lights and such. When the medical technicians had gathered all the data, they told me that I would have to wait another 3 months until a specialist "got round" to reviewing it all. I am still waiting...
I believe that S-A does not just come out of fresh air - something must cause it. The definition of Social Anxiety is just a list of symptoms and does not attempt to explain what is underlying it. This is why there's so much variation between one sufferer and another, why some people can sort it out themselves, while others may need various forms of therapy or medications; or may indeed be incurable. Unfortunately the medical profession seems to lump all cases together, which is confusing to the victims.
I find several hurdles when I try to deal with the medics:
GPs are not prepared to deal with someone who is handicapped with S-A. I am sure that the doctor I dealt with back in 2002 has written me off as being neurotic and paranoid, and has marked this down on my medical notes. Because he failed to find anything wrong, he assumed that I was a hypocondriac and had made it all up.
I am sure that this is why they refused to give me a home visit when I was ill.
These days, doctors tend to be too specialized, and none of them are capable of seeing the global picture of the patient's problems. "Body" doctors look for a medical cause, and "head" doctors look for a psychological cause. It is left to the patient to run about between the two, and try to piece it all together. At least, that's my own experience, here in the UK.
Johnie.
