I feel like something is happening to my brain?

[BreatheHopeInMe]

I'm 18 years old, female and healthy.
I've been having hallucinations my whole life, but they were usually visual/auditory/olfactory and occasional not frequent.

My psychiatrist thinks I'm having brain seizures or that it's sleep deprivation (I'm not entering REM sleep at night)

Lately, they've been getting much more frequent. I heard a voice call me a ***** the other day, along with dizziness, almost a complete black out of vision, and confusion. I have derealization issues but I don't think my symptoms are associated. Can anybody shed some light on my problem?

[ggreg]

Dear Breathe,
If you are taking any medications at the moment, they can sometimes cause hallucinations, so have your doc review side effects of anything being prescribed and perhaps change them around.  Also, you can indeed get them from lack of deep sleep, which also some medications can interfere with REM sleep, or could just be a sleep disorder of some kind, ut in either case, I think you should have a sleep study, you spend the night at a clinic and they hook you up to wires and record what you do when you sleep.  If they find you are not getting enough deep sleep or that you're waking up whilst sleeping, even ever so slightly, then your regular physician should give you a checkup and decide what might be doing this, and then he'll probably refer you to a specialist, likely a neurologist.  

Lastly, I think it's neurological, that is, I think you're having mild seizures in your brain, there's many kinds, and one of them is where you are doing something simple, say, around the house, you sort of lose a little time for a few seconds, and then continue with what you're doing, which if untreated, they can get worse to where you wind up with what happened to you, which was you noticed accompanying symptoms consistent with seizure, like the blackout and dizziness and confusion.  A neurologist is the physician to see, he'll decide what kind of seizure you're having and offer medicines to make them stop, he will adjust them until you get along really well practically a whole year without any episodes.

Then there is a chance the neurologist will decide your seizures are not just some regular type seizure that has an origin with perhaps a benign growth pushing on a part of your brain that is creating these mini losses in consciousness, or maybe a bleed from a blood vessel in the brain from high blood pressure, any number of things can cause it, and the bleed can cause a neurological reaction.  A scan of your head will reveal if either of those things are the cause of your episodes, and there are treatments for this.

Hope you can pick through these items, talk things over with a regular doctor, and let him refer you to the right specialist, because you do not want these things to recur too much, or they can long-term hurt your brain to where you will not feel well at all.  I might add that while you wait to see a regular doc, you should ask your family if you were born this way and what did those docs say (they may still have records), or if some car accident, for example, preceded the onset of these things, or if any other family members had this problem.  These would be good to know, because a neurologist would ask you about these items.

I do not think this is a psychological matter, altho various forms of schizophrenia can cause all sorts of wild mind abberations to go on, but your psychiatrist would have picked up on that being an issue.  In fact, he is suggesting lack of deep sleep, a likely possibility..  I, on the other hand, think it's seizure activity, and I think in an abundance of caution, you should receive medicine for it, OR if you are taking medicines, they can drug you up so much that you'll have these episodes you're describing. So, go see a regular doc and let him do some investigations, and have any prescribing doc review your meds.  God speed, child.

[Jules77733]

Has your neurologist ordered an EEG? What treatment have you received for these hallucinations in the past, and has it been effective?

[patient49]

Can you describe the nature of the "brain seizures" you are having, and what you feel like when something is "happening to your brain". Also, if you have been dealing with hallucinations throughout life and also anxiety, I think it is very likely that this new brain concern you are having is related to your spiritual health, and not physical. But then again I am not a doctor and able to evaluate you. This is just my impression. I have weird things happening to my brain and I have had what I called "head-spine seizures" in the past, I thought I had MS or a brain tumor. I found out later that it was anxiety/psychosomatization and fully healed from it.