Balance disorders and panic attacks

[Remus]

Since February I got an inner ear infection (labyrinthitis) It gradually got worse and peaked beginning of June, the bizzare thing about it was that it brought on anxiety and extreme panic attacks, due to the disequilibrium, vision distortion and spinning/loss of balance attacks. I have had this illness three times in my life now, like tonsillitis, it keeps recurring

I've joined a few forums to explore this illness ( as you do :roll: ) It seems the majority of people who suffer this and other ear/balance disorders suffer extreme anxiety. neurologists explain this as the brain working overtime to compensate for the balance loss, causes the brain to become exhausted, hence depression and anxiety

The difference to panic disorder I noticed was that there is the dizzy attack first and then the panic attack follows, as most panic attack sufferers know, usually panic comes first and we "invent" all other symptoms afterwards.

I wonder if there may be a few people here who may have a balance/dizzyness problem, being diagnosed with anxiety disorder.

here is a good page with a explanation in "laymens terms"


http://www.labyrinthitis.org.uk/page3.htm

 

[Skyespirit86]

I jumped when I saw this thread because my panic disorder started after getting labrynthitis. It frightened the absolute life and soul right out of me. I was lying in bed one night (I was 18 roughly and had been suffering social phobia and anxiety before but had never had a panic attack) just thinking to myself and suddenly I felt like something had hit me over the head. I couldn't focus, I felt a falling sensation and like there was something seriously wrong with my brain.I thought I was having a stroke or something. I ran downstairs but my mum wasn't interested, she even started shouting at me, accusing me of being selfish because I was trying to get her to not leave me, and she wanted to go to bed. I was so frightened, I went and lay on the settee in the living room, thinking this is it, I'm going to die, and no one even cares. I found one side of my head felt heavy, and if I lay on that side the spinning got worse. It didn't occur to me it was my ears. It was obviously a very severe attack because I swear to you I didn't know where I was, and after a few minutes it was making me throw up.
I came on a few times again over the coming weeks, making me more and more scared of being inside my own head. I got a tense feeling in the back of my neck, I felt paranoid, and because my ears were recovering there was this lingering dizzy feeling, and a feeling I would faint.
I became physically frozen up, even now I feel unbalanced, and am phobic about dying. I don't relax my neck or my eyes properly, and have lost my sense of reality. I have troubel concentrating, and I feel weak, and lethargic. I thought what I was feeling was something evil. I developed terrible psychosis, and became agoraphobic.
I am going out now but suffer extreme panic attacks. I don't go anywhere without some degree of fear. If I have to go on transport my panic levels become unbearable but I have been so brave and done many things despite these feelings, such as long distance travel on my own, just sitting there in a state of complete terror. I get so tense I feel like something is 'tipping' me backwards, I'm losing control of my body, I lose sensation in my face, and in my arms and legs until I don't feel real any more. I have no centration and find it hard to do things.
But noone ever knows, and if I try and tell them noone ever understands. People make such light of it, it makes me despair and just succumb to depression. They think I'm not making an effort, that I have read an article about panic attacks in a magazine and am now a hypochondriac about it....that I'm just attention seeking...

I think I was born an exceptionally sensitive person which is what made me react so badly to the situation. I am very sensitive to other things such as cigarette smoke, alcohol, and bright white lights. They often make me ill and I think its related. I think my brain and body over react to dangers. Cigarette smoke doesn't do anyone any good but just smelling it shouldn't make you feel so bad... Alcohol is normally not too bad but if I mix drinks or take it while on tablets then I feel like I have just drunk poison and I go downhill FAST. Smoke makes my brain feel like its being fried on a barbecue, I get a hot and floaty feeling that threatens to make me VERY ill, and it has done. If I don't get away from it when I start to feel like this I will become very faint, get vertigo and then start being violently ill. I get the same thing with bright lights. I feel as though something is bearing down on my head, a weird buzzing pressure and then I get the same sickness as with the smoke. In fact once when I got ill from sitting under lights I rested my head against a wall and I could actually hear my head buzzing, and it sounded like the vibration electricity makes (and it was my head, not anything electrical in the wall).

 

[Rachel_1]

Hi

Almost every panic attack I have is triggered off by going dizzy/lightheaded. I don't know if the dizzyness is caused from hyperventilating without realising it. I have tinnitus but don't know whether that is related to the dizzyness.

 

[Remus]

might be worth getting an ENT doc or neurotologist to check it out to rule out an inner ear disorder, the one thing I noticed was that I got tinitus all the time and a blocked sensation in my right ear.

I'm on a forum for other people with blance disorders and they all mention the severe anxiety they get with a "dizzy" attack.

I have suffered anxiety most of my adult life but the balance disorder anxiety and its trigger seem very different indeed. The main thing I nothiced is that when I walk down the road there world bounces up and down.