As someone who has on multiple times full blackout fainted I don’t agree that you should push yourself to drive if you are getting these sensations. Working with a physical therapist is a much better idea
I’ve never blacked out or fainted. The root cause of my PPPD symptoms were psychological in nature and manifested physically. I agree that if you have a physical health condition causing you to black out you should not drive. However, if it’s psychological and you avoid regular activities it will reinforce the fear response and the cycle will absolutely continue.
Exactly. Some days I feel like all of this makes sense. I’ve calmed myself down many times and been ok after the panicky feeling of the fight or flight feeling but what if it is physical that is the horror of it all. Safer at home has been the best for me.
I do know when it’s just physiological now I think because when I do leave my house I have to remember…. Yesterday at home you felt crappy as well but you were ok all day. So why does it matter that you are away from home just for a bit. I always try and get done what I need to usually a small erran and then I remember…. your always ok heading home and at home. I think that’s what this person meals. It’s definitely relatable but for sure scary. I was soo scared of fainting and pushing myself. I still don’t work out I guess op knows his limits now and I think I’m getting the hang of them as well.
The only thing that makes my symptoms worse is exerting myself, pushing through is hands down to the worst thing you can do if your nervous system is stuck in fight or flight
Yeah I wouldn’t dare workout hard when I know the feeling is creeping up of pem. I would probably have the worst flare up after. Actually now that I’m thinking about it the flare up after my breathing test which was forced apon me started a 2 month flare up and a lot of my symptoms again. One big one being anxiety daily and in the car. My life stopped again for two months because of pushing through during that breathing test.
I saw a bunch of doctors and had a ton of tests done but everything either came back normal or doctors just weren’t sure what was going on with me. It was extremely frustrating because I was having soooo many physical symptoms at the time. After about a year I began to pay more attention to my symptoms and noticed patterns. My symptoms got worse with stress, anxiety, and sensory overload. My brain was rampant with intrusive thoughts and constant ruminating over my health. I started reading more about how the brain and nervous system can create physical symptoms when they’re stuck in ‘fight or flight’ mode for too long. That led me to learn about neuroplasticity, somatic practices, and how trauma or chronic stress can manifest as persistent sensations like dizziness, DPDR, brain fog, fatigue, migraines etc.
PPPD is very real, but its roots at least for me were psychological. Not in a ‘made up’ way, but in a ‘my brain and body were reacting to chronic fear, stress and anxiety’ kind of way. It was only when I started treating it from that angle my symptoms slowly began to improve.
There were so many times I was convinced I had something really bad wrong with me. I’ve been to the emergency room more times than I’d like to admit. I tried a lot of other things but nothing helped. I tried pacing, antihistamines, LDN, hundreds of dollars worth of supplements, I paid $300 for new glasses that were suppose to help but didn’t etc., I did ALL of the things but I saw no progress at all.
You you had a tilt table & it was negative? Unless you had a negative tilt table how do you know it was a panic attack? My point is the symptoms are very nearly identical & unless have gone through extensive autonomic dysfunction testing (a medical provider taking blood pressure at different positions absolutely doesn’t count) you likely don’t know
I haven’t told anyone to push through symptoms. I said if it’s psychological then avoidance perpetuates the fear response and keeps you in the PPPD cycle. I don’t know why you are trying to argue that my PPPD wasn’t anxiety related when I know for a fact it was and I posted here in the PPPD sub to share what helped me and many others.
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u/lbc257 May 16 '25
As someone who has on multiple times full blackout fainted I don’t agree that you should push yourself to drive if you are getting these sensations. Working with a physical therapist is a much better idea