muscle twitching, muscle spasms, weakness esp on left side. so scared

please take a long slow deep breath and read this.

When I was in my 20s the exact same thing happened to me. I was under long-term severe stress and anxiety when suddenly I developed weakness, depersonalization, fuzzy vision, floaters in the eyes, ringing in my ears, numbness and tingling in my arms and legs, muscle twitching over my entire body even my eyelids in tiny things like that but also in my arms, legs, and just everywhere.

I also thought I had a debilitating disease . all my testing was normal and I just could not figure out what in the world was wrong with me.I was just terrified! And back then nobody was on the Internet so I literally felt like I was the only one in the world with this! The neurologist simply told me to go take a two week vacation and relax.

So I had to deal with this alone and I thought I would die.

i continued with the symptoms. BUT THEN....... I finally put two and two together.

. I realized how long I had been under severe stress and anxiety and how I had terrible things happen in my life. I realized that the body and mind can only take so much stress before it finally breaks down it tries to tell us through symptoms. It’s like the straw that broke the camels back. Every single one of my symptoms Was related to my past and current stress.

I STARTED to take matters into my own hands and first went to counseling which really helped, then I started dealing with things that were causing my anxiety and changed my way of thinking about them. I developed a way more positive attitude about life, started exercising and eating right and listening to meditations for anxiety and stress. There are some great ones on YouTube. I slowly started turning my life around and my symptoms diminished or went away entirely. When I get a little anxious today, some of them may reappear but I basically ignore them and they go away. I refuse to let them control my life.

i Still get floaters in my eyes but they are harmless and I ignore them. They eventually go away.

Any symptoms related to anxiety and stress is not going to hurt you.

Your testing came out normal.

You do not have any of those debilitating diseases and you must believe that because the more you worry the more symptoms you will have. That’s because they are based on anxiety and fear!

testing does not lie! What you have is overwhelming stress and anxiety same as what I had.

I highly advise you to get some counseling on a regular basis. It’s too difficult to go through this alone.

I WANT you do know that I am now in my 50s and doing very well! So please don’t worry.

I had this really really bad and I was able to turn it around and so can you! ❤❤❤

also, get on YouTube and listen to some great meditations for anxiety, panic, etc. I do this every night before sleep. There’s a great one for panic if you search for one called stop panic attacks now. Then scroll down to one called don’t panic. She guide you through it and it really works! You can do this anywhere without anyone even knowing.

Jan!!! i great and inspirational reply... its brilliant to see how someone with similar symptoms/feelings turns out ok and is able to relate everything back to anxiety, because at the time that you feel like these symptoms are happening its very hard to believe they arent related to something physical.

for me, im borderline... i go through days of thinking i have something serious, that the doctors have missed, that the symptoms they are dismissing must have some underlying cause to days where i feel like i can see how my thoughts govern me. its a struggle but realising what anxiety can do you is part of the battle.

many times, in counselling, they will describe how physical symptoms are brought on by anxiety... such as fight or flight, causing panic, sweats, tension, aching etc... and this is good information but it often neglects to talk about the symptoms that are harder to relate to anxiety such as the weakness described in this thread etc but... it can be related... your mind is very powerful and clever, you can convince yourself of symptoms and anxiety causes us to tune in to feelings more than others.

this combination of listening closely to your body and having general anxiety, which can cause physical symptoms without you realising it is what leads to an overall overwhelming daily struggle and helplessness.

my advice is, and i give this to myself, is to take a break from yourself. treat your anxiety like its a seperate part of you and you are telling it to leave you alone so you can have a rest! i find this helps me a little.

then when you are ready, try to distinguish between the subtle feelings that make you worried and some of the other physical that anxiety is causing... like the tension, stress, etc... for these latter ones, chill out, get a massage, take a bath, go for a walk, get some exercise, plan an activity, get some extra sleep and hopefully the balance will fall back into place.

during bad times of health anxiety i get twitching all different places, i use to get a really bad eye twitch from anxiety then convinced myself i had a brain tumor!

i also get really tense shoulders and neck, i also grind my teeth which makes things worse

im constantly worrying about my health with anything i feel in my body and most of my awful symptoms are due to anxiety, it really is an awful thing to experience

hi sgarrido 93.

you and I seem to share a boat! I have lived my whole life completely unhindered, and then suddenly one day got an awful infection that spread from my sinuses into my lungs and then eventually out into all my joints and my heart sack, which was very nasty. From that point on everything went downhill.

the infection actually cleared up very well, but sadly I did not. I had my first ever panic attack in fear of having a brain tumor (or something similar) this was before my infection was properly diagnosed.

since then my anxiety has taken over my body, I have had increasing discomfort and perceived weakness down the right hand side of my body, especially in my wrist, shoulder, knee and ankle. this has recently spread to my right rib, and when I breathe now it feels like it is laboured on the right side of my chest. (I also feel a little bit of a weird bubble under my lower rib cage when I lie down, which scares me particularly), and my breathing is constantly shallow and difficult.

I had begun with fears of a brain tumor, but had a CT, all clear, and headaches went away... soon after I discovered a weird morphological line down my head, and discovered scleroderma, got many many autoimmune blood panels done, confirmed I was fine, then all the symptoms went away. then I read about MS, freaked out a lot, and my hands and feet started tingling, my vision went completely mad, I had severe photophobia to the point where daylight was unbearable etc etc, went to the doctor and she basically said she wouldn't even begin the process of testing for MS because she was so sure I didn't have it, symptoms went away.

at the moment im concerned about another disease, and sure enough my symptoms fit the bill. I guess my point is that everything ive been concerned about has manifested itself in some way, and whenever my brain has moved from one illness to another, my body has too.

i am not the best for advice, seeing as I am not better, but I am sure this is anxiety. as you all know, it can take days to convince ourselves that what were experiencing is anxiety, and only minutes to convince ourselves that its not.

what I can say is, google is the worst tool to use for self diagnosis. Google contains lists of worst case scenarios, and its algorithm is such that if you are on there googling ms all the time, when you search for something else, ms based results will show up with priority. so when you google symptoms, MS is bound to appear because google thinks thats what you want to see.

the reality is, that doctors know much more than google, we can sit on google and research webmd and whatever for hours, and still not know even a microfraction of what a doctor knows. They have things they look for and tests they do during appointments that you aren't even aware they are doing.

anxiety can do anything to your body. your body and your mind are totally one and the same, until recently people thought this was mumbo jumbo, but its science. your mind can do anything to your body, even when it makes no sense at all. I remember when all this began someone asking me if I had weakness down one side of my body, and I GENUINELY didnt, but as soon as I was asked, my leg got weird, and then because I have been totally focused on it it hasn't gone since.

i hope this gets better for all of us, the reality of anxiety is that the symptoms are not curable, but the condition is, and doctors are aware of that. practice mindfulness, practice cbt, do some breathing exercises and minor exercise, and I promise I will too.

we are fortunate in that we CAN get better, and we can defo do it together thanks to forums full of nice people like this one!