Hello everyone,
This is my first post here and I am new to the forums so I apologize if this is in the wrong place or has been discussed before.
Stress has manifisted itself in weird ways with me. Many years ago when I was in foster care, I was sent on a 14 hour bus ride with my "foster brother" to see family related to my foster parents. I really didn't want to go on this trip and was quite uncomfortable aroudn the person I was with. I had always been a very shy and anxious kid and this was a big deal for me. On the journey I developed a painful lower back ache that lasted pretty much the whole length of the visit (about a week). On the second to last day, my back pain went away 100% as I would be coming home in a matter of hours. I am convinced that the back pain was a way for me to avoid activities, especially with my foster brother whom I did not want to be around.
Anyway, fast forward to late summer of last year when I ended up having to close down my business. I started to develop sudden and unpredictible periods of vertigo that would last only a few minutes. These episodes weren't all that frequent and ceased to hit come January. I was with a friend at a restaraunt talking about some personal stuff and as soon as someone sat down at the table next to us, I felt one of these dizzy spells coming on. By this time I had figured out how to prevent them from getting bad by breathing in deeply through my nose, holding it and letting it out. This kept them from getting bad. The other time that I remember a major spell hit was at a party in a hot room crowded with people I didn't really know too well. I quickly made it to the bathroom where the dizziness stopped almost right away with proper breathing. I should point out that I am quite uncomfortable around people I do not know...
The only other time that I have felt any vision distortion come on was when helping a friend move and I was driving through a mountain pass. I was kinda scared as I would move my head from left to right and it would be hard to focus on anything quickly. My first thought was that it was an elevation issue, but 3 trips over that same pass within about a month afterwards caused no problems at all. I concluded that it was probably me being anxious and worrying that the cause of the dizziness might be with my ears and pressure changes from elevation contributed to it. However, this couldn't have been the case since previous and subsequent trips have all been fine. Plus we are only talking about 1100 meters here...
Anyway - I have a new roomate that I am not really getting along with all that well and I am also concerned as to my job security with my new job as there are cutbacks and such... with these stresses I have found that I have been noticing slight bits of dizziness coming on from time to time.
Now, the way I am looking at it is that the dizziness can't really be seasonal as it has happened in the summer. It isn't from elevation pressure changes as I live at sea level and mountain pass trips have mostly been fine except for one. The dizziness only first appeared when I decided that I needed to lose my business down.
So, my question here is that can this be a symptom of severe anxiety/stress/depression? It certainly appears that way to me.
Thanks all for taking the time to read that!
