Whole body locks up in agitation, doesn't last long but I hate it

Im just curious to see if anyone else has this problem. It’s also extremely difficult to describe, I’ve had to recreate the effect to get my point across to the docs. They don’t seem too concerned. I am unable to find a true description online but I’d have to put it in the same category as an anxiety attack. I can feel its onset before it happens. a simple string of agitating outcomes brings it into full effect, and it doesn’t happen too often. Seems to be a bigger problem when Im completely alone (I think I have a slight control over it when Im around other people but when Im alone I have no fear of embarrassment) Itll completely take over my body, Ill drop whatever Im holding like my tablet or phone and get completely rigid. shaking. grimacing. my arms raise up toward my chest and every single muscle in my body gets so tense it usually leaves me completely drained after it passes. my teeth clench shut. Im still completely aware of my surroundings though so I don’t think its any kind of seizure. I’ve been searching for answers by looking up example of like agitated catatonia but it doesn’t quite seem to fit. I do however get totally catatonic as a separate problem. Im just looking to see if anyone can relate and what they do to prevent it’s onset. is there a name I can put to this? I don’t hyperventilate. If anything… I don’t think I breathe at all while its happening. Thank god it only lasts between a few seconds and a few minutes before im released from its grasp.

Sounds like cramps. One time I got it while driving…hitting my ecig sometimes triggers it. Fortunately I could pull over where I was…scary

Definitely neither of those. Its not cramps its a stress problem, and I just recently got started on perphenazine. its like a panic attack,

its like a seizure but conscious. I can watch panic and anxiety attacks on youtube all day and not consider ANY of them what Im dealing with. I look at them and think well that’s not an attack at all, they should see what happens to me.

After some more digging, I learned loss of consciousness doesn’t always happen in a seizure and stress can induce them. I think I might be having seizures after all.

WOW… I used to call these… personal earthquakes. It felt like an internal earthquake and it used to happen a few days before an episode for me… I’d get agitated and antsy… couldn’t sit still… lot’s of pacing… lot’s of rapid speech…

then something upsetting would happen… I’d feel like I was hyperventilating not quite the panic attacks I have now… but I’d have a personal earthquake.

I dealt better with it when I was with family. Being alone made the walls feel like they were closing in.

I haven’t had one in a while. But looking back at my sisters journals… If I had three or more in a week … I then had a bit of a relapse… or a melt down episode.

I do hope you feel better soon. They used to scare me. But afterwards… I would sleep for a long time.

Good luck I’m rooting for you.

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15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 15 “be more descriptive”

I had these (or something very similar) regularly whenever I slipped under the waves of the bipolar power dive in the '90s and early '00s. Though I have rarely seen others have them, they must have been common because the nurses and psych techs on the acute services never became greatly concerned. I’d march about the day room all wrenched up, hands and arms twisted, face grotesque.

Seems to me now like I was trying to bleed off that flood of intense pain energy. They weren’t giving me anti-Ps yet, but when they gave me minor tranqs, those “attacks” would cease… but the fierce anxiety remained. Steady dosing with Seroquel seems associated with the lessening of those attacks over time.

Bruce McEwen’s, Bessel van der Kolk’s and (especially) Peter Levine’s books on treating stress and PTSD all helped me make sense of this phenomenon years later.