Odd Anxiety Symptoms: Aspie/Autie or Schizophrenia

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05 Mar 2009, 11:36 pm

I have been having some odd anxiety symptoms that dosnt seem to be normal and I was wondering if it might have something to do with autism or the onset of schizophrenia.

I have a savier phobia of needls and docters. And about 2 weeks ago I had to have my wisdom teeth surgery. To say none the less that it was extreamly tramatic. I could not stop thinking about what they did and I would have
vived flashbacks that would not end acompanied with neverending pain where they put the needle in me. No matter how many pain killers I took it would not go away. The mental pain and fear was so bad that I was thinking that killing my self would be the only way out. Until finaly the stress was too much that I fainted and was taken to the hopital. And I thought "finaly! They can give atleast some medication to stop my mind from tormenting me!" Oh, and they did alright. They gave me something that they said "would take the edge off" and all it did was make my body weak and slugish enough to take blood aout of me with out much of a fight on my part. The very thing I was afraid of and that brought me there for its releife in the first place! That medicatiaon just makes you more complient! It didn't take my fear away at all! And the docters and nurses were so rude to me and uncaring!

So I had to stay overnight because the psycholigist wasn't there until the morning and all he did was ask some questions and made me take some tests.

So basicly that extra trama I had to go thru was unnesiscery.

But the qustion I ask today is that I have been having some odd symptoms that's been affecting my cognitive part of my brain that don't seem to be under the anxiety/ptsd symptoms.

For instince:I have been having a lot of problems talking. I notice my speech is getting slower and it has been incressingly dificult to talk to people. Like I would say a sentance but I would say words out of order and even pause right in the middle of what I was saying because I can't remember the conclusion.

Its been dificult to remember thing unless I have to make a consience effert to do so.(Like prepare what I'm going to say if someone askes me a certin question) like just today I forgot the name of my co-worker who I have been working with for the past 2 monthes!

its dificult to do focus both mentely and sightly. I have to repeat words back to remember them and I would ask questions that I already ask just to make sure I got everything that was said. And with my eyes I have been useing my whole eye range to look at something. Even while typing this I'm not really focusing on anything spusific. Just looking with all my eyes.

My cordanation is off aswell. I have been bumping into things a lot and I fell that I'm walking oddly. My movements are blunted and not as sharp as they used to be.

And certin sounds would make me feel sickly odd and very tired.

But right now I'm taking so medication that's helping with my anxiety. But even with that I am still expireincing these odd symptoms.

I'm worried because these symptoms corrolate to the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and I'm wondering if this is just normal behaiver for someone on the autistic spectrum to have when in tramatic situations and int the wake of them. Or should I be concern about it?


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05 Mar 2009, 11:42 pm

Could they be medication side effects? Some medications do cause those things. Those things do sound troubling, though, and I really recommend talking to a doctor about it--not a psychologist; a doctor, a neurologist if you can get one. You are right, though, that these symptoms can be caused by anxiety--it's very much like the way you might throw up just before a big speech because you have stage fright; anxiety expressed in physical symptoms. However, jumping straight to a psychological explanation isn't the best idea because if there's some other cause, it can get worse if it's not addressed.


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05 Mar 2009, 11:45 pm

My speech gets really unorganised and sluggish when I'm nervous. I have poor coordination and problems with remembering things too.
I'm not sure if it's schizophrenia. I don't know much about it.
It could be that your autistic symptoms are worse when you feel anxiety.



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05 Mar 2009, 11:58 pm

Callista wrote:
Could they be medication side effects? Some medications do cause those things. Those things do sound troubling, though, and I really recommend talking to a doctor about it--not a psychologist; a doctor, a neurologist if you can get one. You are right, though, that these symptoms can be caused by anxiety--it's very much like the way you might throw up just before a big speech because you have stage fright; anxiety expressed in physical symptoms. However, jumping straight to a psychological explanation isn't the best idea because if there's some other cause, it can get worse if it's not addressed.


I had these symptomes befor the medication. But they are a little less promanent since the medication but they are still there.

But I am going to see a therapist this thursday so we can work thru my phobia to eventualy get me to the docters that I hate oh so much.


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05 Mar 2009, 11:59 pm

I'm familiar with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and they often look the same as autism-- the withdrawal, the difficulty speaking and processing-- all come out with autistics under stress. Unless you've been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, I don't think you have anything to worry about. I do have an MA in psychology, so I'm familiar with most of this.

I think your anxiety symptoms are normal considering what happened at the dentist. it's traumatic for me to go to the dentist too, so I tend to always get put to sleep first. Try sedation dentistry. It isn't much more expensive than regular dentistry.

Hope this helps!


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06 Mar 2009, 12:04 am

pensieve wrote:
My speech gets really unorganised and sluggish when I'm nervous. I have poor coordination and problems with remembering things too.
I'm not sure if it's schizophrenia. I don't know much about it.
It could be that your autistic symptoms are worse when you feel anxiety.


That's what my husband and I think it is. But I'm just worried that it might be something more since I never had such a severe anxiety episode and that I'm still having these odd symptoms even though everything else seems to be okay. Unless my medication wares off and it makes it dyficult to funtion both physicly and mentally


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06 Mar 2009, 12:12 am

whitetiger wrote:
I'm familiar with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and they often look the same as autism-- the withdrawal, the difficulty speaking and processing-- all come out with autistics under stress. Unless you've been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, I don't think you have anything to worry about. I do have an MA in psychology, so I'm familiar with most of this.

I think your anxiety symptoms are normal considering what happened at the dentist. it's traumatic for me to go to the dentist too, so I tend to always get put to sleep first. Try sedation dentistry. It isn't much more expensive than regular dentistry.

Hope this helps!


Yeah, I now think that its just my aspie self showing up even more during this period in my life. And I was under sedation for what they did to me and that's what scares me is the needle IV they had to give me and I have a horrific fear of needls and pain and that's what brought me to tramatic fear that I still have not fully recoverd and its been about 2 weeks now.

I just hope I would recover and over come my fear od needls and docters.


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06 Mar 2009, 12:21 am

it just sounds like anxiety

did u have a hard time writing this thread out or coming to a conclusion?

sounds like if u know something u can impart it

maybe u just havent been feeding ur brain?

and i forget peoples names all the time, even quick stutters sometimes but thats only when i cant choose between which word i wanna use out of the few-syllable ones, also pretty much everythin else u mentioned when talkin to someone while lost in anxiety



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06 Mar 2009, 12:40 am

Sometimes OCD can include repetitive "intrustive" images -- when I was younger I'd have spells of repeating images/videos/thoughts/whatever-to-call-it about needles and sharp objects puncturing me, and actually getting stuck by a doctor would send that into overdrive. It was really hellish. On the upside there are pretty good treatments for OCD. Maybe look that up and see if it fits?

About the memory problems, out of curiosity, have you noticed any new difficulty with reading? Like it's hard to follow a story because it's hard to remember what's going on from one part to the next?

Well, hopefully it's just stress, or life starting to involved a lot more responsibilities and things to keep track of, than before, though.



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06 Mar 2009, 1:04 am

I have experienced similar dysfunction consequent to traumatic and distressing happenings. The worst instance was caused by a psychiatrist (and took many weeks for me to recover to a more normal level of functioning), so I can sympathize with negative feelings arising from the ridiculous situation of being harmed without healing by so-called health services.

I would not be concerned unless you also start to experience positive symptoms or the situation does not resolve itself within a couple of months, or you experience similar symptoms (at some future time) without any "triggering event".



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06 Mar 2009, 1:11 am

Apple_in_my_Eye wrote:
Sometimes OCD can include repetitive "intrustive" images -- when I was younger I'd have spells of repeating images/videos/thoughts/whatever-to-call-it about needles and sharp objects puncturing me, and actually getting stuck by a doctor would send that into overdrive. It was really hellish. On the upside there are pretty good treatments for OCD. Maybe look that up and see if it fits?

About the memory problems, out of curiosity, have you noticed any new difficulty with reading? Like it's hard to follow a story because it's hard to remember what's going on from one part to the next?

Well, hopefully it's just stress, or life starting to involved a lot more responsibilities and things to keep track of, than before, though.


Yeah, after the surgery,befor I got help, ithw images, feelings, and thoughts about the needls and what they did would not stop and that agony of having to relive it again and again in my mind made me think about killing myself.

befor I got help with medication from my psychiatrist I would have deficulty understanding, even reading words. For work I had to read this little booklet and do a little test on it and I could hardly get thru it and whwn I came to the questions many of them I couldn't remember what I read about it. And normaly this little excercise wouldn have posed such a problem.


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06 Mar 2009, 1:31 am

pandd wrote:
I have experienced similar dysfunction consequent to traumatic and distressing happenings. The worst instance was caused by a psychiatrist (and took many weeks for me to recover to a more normal level of functioning), so I can sympathize with negative feelings arising from the ridiculous situation of being harmed without healing by so-called health services.

I would not be concerned unless you also start to experience positive symptoms or the situation does not resolve itself within a couple of months, or you experience similar symptoms (at some future time) without any "triggering event".



Yeah, the way they treated me in that hospital was cruel and unsympathetic. I hope I don't have schizophrenia and develop the positive symptomes because then I might have to go to an actual psych ward and it would be absolute hell on earth!

I just worry that maybe what I thought might be AS all this time might be the onset of schizophrenia because I on my mom side there's a lot of mental problems and I believe along the lines there was schizophrenia from what she told me. And on my dads side I don't know much because his father left him so I don't know what type of people they where like.

I just would need to be evaluated. Ill talk to my therapist and see what she thinks.


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06 Mar 2009, 3:09 am

I wouldn't worry too much even if it was schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia usually causes problems for people who have delusions and believe that there is nothing wrong with them. You're considering the posibility, so you'd get the help you needed before it progressed.

For the record, i think it's just an anxiety/aspie thing :)