Vision Issues... Is it all anxiety

Naranja, I think your first port of call is to book an appointment with a good optician. They will be able to have a look at your eyes properly and see if anything is wrong.

If you need to they can also refer you on for additional treatment.

I doubt anything is wrong as due to your description of your problem, it sounds like this is born from anxiety and has then turned into obsession...it's hard to break this sort of cycle, but it can be done.

Hopefully getting the all clear from an optician will do just that and help you get over your worries

I have all sorts of crazy vision issues similar to yours that I believe are directly linked to anxiety. Sucks doesn't it. Just because we know what causes is doesn't make it go away. Only thing that will make it go away is better dealing with our anxiety and time.

I get the same things as you. When it first started I got tons of floaters. More in one eye than the other. Then as time went on the focus issue. There are days when it's hard to even focus on people's faces. I obsess on them as well. I close one eye and then the other to compare. Of course always different. It has been almost 8 months now. My eye doctor says my eyes are fine and my GP believes it is anxiety and will go away.

Hard to believe it is all anxiety.

Naranja

 I started having floaters in my 20s. Back then we didn't have a forum like this and I felt completely alone and scared. I also had severe anxiety with many symptoms. I thought I had a horrible disease but all my test came out normal.    The neurologist told me I'm fine and just to ignore the floaters.  Just to let you know I am now in my 50s and I still get occasional  floaters and yes when I look at the sky I definitely see them. They are harmless as long as the rest of your health checks out fine. 

And yes they can be related to stress and anxiety it's weird but they can. So please try to relax and don't worry so much about it. Just get your yearly physical and Eye exams and if those are OK you're good to go!😁

I went to the docs. She said you become hyperaware of normal bodily functions, it also plays tricks on your eyes. As for the visual snow. It's very rare. It's more of a point that you've read up about it and then you've noticed it. Anxiety heightens it because of adrenalin and had been linked due to anxiety. When I had a panick attack a few weeks ago when I was in bed after hearing a buzzing in my ear I opened my eyes and the room was white and covered in dots. I sat and breathed for 20 minutes and calmed my self down and then opened my eyes and it was gone. As for after images. Every one gets them to some extent, anxiety makes you aware and look out for these things though. Again with the hyperawareness. Your body is looking for the things you've gotten scared of before thus it's in a semi form of the fight or flight response. I never had issues before with my eyes. Although I did need glasses because I was short sighted. I stopped smoking weed and got anxiety. The noticed this stuff once and that was me set into a spiral of obsessions about it. The best thing I can say for you to do is accept them. Just allow them to be and don't give them a negative response. Because that will keep continuing the cycle. It's hard at first and it will be something you need to train yourself to do. Eventually you will stop noticing these things as you become less scared of it.

I have noticed that I have more light sensitivity and sometimes colors out of the corner of my eye or seemingly left over from focusing on something. More common when driving and its dark out (lights from cars). Also in the office with the bright fluorescents. I am pretty sure this is related to the fight or flight stress response. If you look up vision and anxiety, there are tons of pages detailing just that. My Nurse Practitioner is not convinced that anxiety can cause visual issues but the only time I ever had a "floater" which was a fuzzy image in right eye that formed a half moon shape was during my worst panic attack at work. The image disappeared right when my panic attack improved. I think that's more than a simple correlation. I have had a brain and neck MRI/MRA with no issues. Eye doctor said all is well. My left pupil dilates slightly more than right but this is congenital since I've noticed it in old pics. I've noticed the vision issues since switching from celexa to effexor and my anxiety is not completely down since I'm still adjusting. I would suggest finding a therapist or psychologist to talk to about CBT or treatment for anxiety. I do therapy, take effexor, started yoga, go to acupuncture occasionally. I would recommend yoga as a way to improve anxiety most definitely.

I believe it does have to do with anxiety. I went thru this 2 years ago when I got anxiety. I was working on a computer that I could barely see. I had to bring the dimn it the lowest. My vision was way to sensitive and saw many floaters when I stepped outside. I went to the eye doctor and they said my eyes are fine. Floaters go away once ur eyes are seen to many bright things. But they went away once I flushed all my anxiety away. This year I got my anxiety thinking I was gonna have a heart attack after one of my coworkers got one. Well my vision sensitivity cake back and floaters followed it. So yes. I recommend to meditate and be able yo control ur anxiety. I also recommend to read the power of your subconscious mind. It has helped me get rid of my anxiety and I'm happier than ever. God bless.

Hi I am 32 years old male from India ... I am suffering from vision problems since last 3 months ... I was also facing chronic anxiety before 2 months when I developed eye problems ... I got floaters in my both eyes ... I see after images ... Decreased night vision ... Sudden distorted vision in right eye ... Difficulty in reading small text books

Focusing problem and photo sensitivity

I went to 11 different opthamalogists including retina specialists and neurologist everybody says my eyes are perfect and healthy but I don't know what's this?

I also went to psychiatrist also

I am too much worried what happened wrong with my eyes

I'm 48 and just started having weird vision problems all the sudden about 3 months ago. I've been to 3 ophthalmologists who can't find anything wrong with my eyes.Over this time I've had a range of varying vision problems. I'm having after-images (i.e. when I look away from normal lights I see those "artifacts" for longer than I should).Also having blurry vision at times, trouble reading small print, floaters, sensitivity to light and sometimes see something moving out of my peripheral vision when there's nothing there. I also had, what is hard to describe, but something like scattered grey patches in front of my vision.Additionally, I also noticed night vision problems, like dim situations we're too dim, but weren't before this all started. Lastly, sometimes people's faces looked like a TV on high contrast with very little color. Of course, this all makes me dizzy when I move around too long and is all very scary for this to happen all the sudden. It also makes you sound crazy to people when you tell them the strange symptoms and I probably would have thought so too never having this problem either before. It must not be too common either, because the doctors were not able to offer me much in the way of a diagnosis. They referred me to a neurologist who said it could just be anxiety, but would write a prescription for a brain MRI just to help me prove that there was nothing else wrong. Thankfully, the brain scan came back normal and was a big relief. In parallel, I recently started on 15 mg Lexapro about 6 weeks ago, for the first time in my life due to other health anxiety issues, this year of Covid-19, and it seems like some of these vision problems are receding slowly. It is very encouraging, that it might be just anxiety caused, but I don't feel like I'm out of the woods yet or know if it will ever completely go away with continued medication. I wasn't able to get much assurance from medical doctors nor find out much about what was going on from Internet resources, so I was glad to find this site and I wanted share this information with others, who may be going through this in the hope it might help ease their mind and guide them to their own solution.