A while back I blogged about the links between anxiety and dizziness and how more often than not the two seem to go together: people experiencing dizziness as part of an anxiety attack or a panic attack.
Today I want to look at dizziness and vertigo as potential causes of anxiety and panic disorder – things like agoraphobia. It has often been said that stress and anxiety can bring on what is often referred to as giddiness, dizziness, light-headedness and vertigo. The reason being that blood is diverted to the muscles, the oxygen balance in the blood changes. This is perhaps true however it doesn’t tell the whole story. For the whole story on panic attacks consider something like Panic Away, one of the most reliable anxiety cures.
The fight or flight response is meant to save us, but why did we evolve to disable our balance mechanism when poise and stability is needed most, when we are in danger? That begs a question along the lines of the chicken and the egg: what comes first dizziness or anxiety/panic?
For sure anxiety or a big shock can bring on balance problems like vertigo, often very short sharp bouts. However I think, and there is a certain amount of scientific evidence to back this up, that there are a lot of people with panic disorder who actually have an underlying balance problem.
If you into a supermarket and feel funny, maybe get derealization or feel dizzy or lightheaded the doctor will no doubt send you to a psychologist that will tell you that your subconscious doesn’t like being out of control and in a supermarket there is no easy way of escape. Maybe this is rubbish. Maybe the lighting and long aisles of a supermarket make it such a strange environment that the signal from ear and eye get somewhat out of sync in people with a slightly defective vestibular system. Maybe that is what causes the panic like symptoms and leads for the desire for an easy escape route.
If you think about it, the agoraphobics’ worst nightmares are all places that tend to be unnatural and odd and somewhat disorientating: supermarkets, shopping malls, motorways and highways: all places that could cause strange feelings in a person with a vestibular balance problems.
This is potentially important because in such cases your psychologist or charlatan hypnoanalyst will be telling you your neighbor sexually abused you. In fact there are types of vestibular rehabilitation and other physio techniques, as well as drugs, that might well help.
If your anxiety seems heavily related to dizziness or vertigo, or you experience balance problems elsewhere in life it might well be worth looking into.
