DIZZINESS and anxiety or something else?

[plala]

This is my first time posting on this, or any board, but I am at a loss for answers. This all started 1 and 1/2 years ago. I believe that all of my symptoms started after my mom had a health scare - thought she possibly had MS - turns out she does not - but her sister died at a very early age of complications from MS. At the same time my grandmother was diagnosed with bone cancer. At the time I did not feel affected physically by these events, but was very anxious about both things. I also had just had my first child 6 months prior to this. Soon after the issue with my mom and grandma I began to experience constant dizziness and lightheadedness, which has continued on for the last year and 1/2. When the symptoms first began I had all of the bloodwork done, along with a CT and MRI - all which came back normal. So I was left with no answers, but still the floor shifting, lightheaded, dizzy feeling. I then got pregnant for the second time and still continued to experience the dizziness - I tried to attribute it to the pregnancy, but now my baby is two months old and the dizziness and lightheadedness are at their worst. I have been seeing a counsler - the suggestion of my dr. after all testing last year came back normal - she thinks I may have signs of OCD because I am obsessed with thinking I may have MS or some other terrible disease and am constantly looking online for symptoms and answers. The dizziness is ruining my life - I feel like I am going to lose my balance constantly, but never actually have. My question is, could this terrible dizzy feeling really all be caused by anxiety? Why no other symptoms of anxiety? Why is it continuing to get worse? Just because all of my testing was normal one year ago does that mean it couldn't have changed in the last year - possibly now showing MS or something else? Thank you for your help.

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

It all sounds like anxiety, and a very common type of somatization.  If your tests are still normal, ask your doctor for some antianxiety medication, I would start with klonopin as the first trial.

[JeffG10]

I think you have something called dispersonalization or disrealization. I had the same thing happen to me, very anxious, and i had a dizzy weird feeling, but i knew it wasn't really dizzyness, i could see fine and sometimes it wuld look like things were moving but i knew they really weren't, i got all the tests done, MRI, CT, Bloodwork, all came back emmaculate, so i started searching for anxiety caused dizzyness, and bam, disrealization and dispersonalization came up, and it showed my exact sypmtoms, go to this website depersonalization.co.uk, and check out the sypmtoms and see if you have some of these, i'm not doctor but it sounds like you could have this since your healthy and you said you had anxiety...

[plala]

Thanks for your reply Jeff - do you still suffer from this? If not, how did you overcome it? Yes, I did mention that I suffer from anxiety - at least that is what the dr.'s think...I am a little skeptical, but the more research I do, the more I think it is probably true. Also, I did say I was in good health otherwise, but I am not convinced that all of the testing I had done last year may not show something different now a year and 1/2 later - that is part of the problem...I never seem to be satisfied with what I am being told by doctors - mostly because the dizziness has not gone away. Thanks for your reply!

[JeffG10]

Yes unfortunately i do suffer from it, it's not fun at all, and has actually consumed my life for the time being, i go into my own house and it doesnt look like it's my house at times, i would ask your doctor about it, maybe they can give u some insight on it.

[plala]

So are you suggesting that I do try and get all of the testing done again just to be sure that there is nothing worng - and if tests show nothing I can be fairly sure this is all being caused by anxiety? I am not sure that my dr. is going to want to run the whole array of testing again being that I had it done 1 and 1/2 years ago - although I keep thinking things could have changes in that time... Thanks for the quick reply!