This show was about anxiety, but, given its relationship to migraine I thought it might be interesting. You can podcast and/or read the transcript.
http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/217#transcript
Scott - please move if there’s a better place for this outside general discussion.
Vic
This was a good episode Vic. I’m not sure if people outside of Australia can watch this (in which case you’ll need to read the transcript) but you can try watching the video of the program here:
http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/217#watchonline
S
Video worked all right for me in UK.
Have only watched 1st of the 3 parts and so far quite interesting, although obviously in this type of show there isn’t the time to get into deep discussion and explanation.
I am a bit of a veteran in anxiety disorder, as I’ve had panic disorder for a long time - well controlled after a number of courses of CBT (with a fantastic CBT therapist).
My weird thing thought is that my MAV doesn’t usually coexist with the periods of panic attacks, and dizziness has never been a symptom of a panic attack for me. However, since this latest bout of MAV flared up and my home situation went t**s up, I have found I do get anxious about getting dizzy when I go out, but it has never led to a recognisable panic attack for me.
My otoneuto at Queen Square explained about the underlying common denominator in the brain for MAV and anxiety, and with me, one does not necessarily cause the other, so they have a correlative rather than causal relationship. She referred to that paper Scott has put in the Archives re. anxiety and migraine.
I’ve also never truly accepted the the ‘traumatic childhood’ correlation thing. My childhood was not in the least traumatic. I beacame somewhat unhappy in my early teens when we moved house and I had to go to a new school, but was fine by my later teens (16-7) - until the MAV started at 18!
I think this is why the load of psychoanalytic type therapy I had never did jack for my panic disorder, but the CBT did.
Interestingly, some of the features of my panic attacks were similar to complex partial seizures as in temporal lobe epilepsy, for eg. I would get a funny taste in my mouth and my tongue would go numb, and often my right hand would feel crampy. I would get a funny tingling feeling that started in the pit of my stomach and seem to spread upwards into my head, neck and chest. The neurologist I saw at the time never ruled it out complex seizures, but I was prescribed clonazepam as that had anticonvulsant properties.
I often wonder to myself whether, given a choice, I would opt for having panic attacks or MAV. I think I would choose panic attacks, as they appear to be more treatable, and of course although devatasting and terrifying, never lasted longer than 45 mins at their worst, even though they left me feeling shaky and drained for days. On the other hand, we all know here what MAV’s like…
Dizzy Izzy x