An Athletes Battle with Stress and Anxiety

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bfhopeful2

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Quick backround. I am 32 male, recently divorced with two kids. Stress is not the word. I am also an athlete, I have a brown belt in Brazillian Jiu-jitsu and train with multiple UFC fighters daily. Hence I am very active, or at least was. Been on one ssri or another for about 10 years, mostly paxil 25mg. This treated a pretty bad anxiety disorder pretty well for me. It was actually a life saver. I don't know if I could have done without it.Started drinking on paxil, bad idea and then developed sleeping problems, mostly hypic jerks that would wake me as if you were falling in a dream. Problem was that it would happen several times a night. At first only my girlfriend noticed, but as it got worse I started to wake from them. At one point I didn't sleep for three days.Went to pshychiatrist and we decided to come off the paxil. Switched me to prozac as that has a longer half life and less withdrawl effects. also went to neuro for a full work up and had clean emg, eeg, mri with contrast, sleep study and blood work. All is fine there, neuro asked me to see a physchiatrist. Day one of taking prozac the twitching started, my finger was the real first bad one and of course i thought i had parkinsons and then als and then ms and everything else you can imagine. But with a clean neuro that wasnt all that probable. So Dr. thinks its an adverse reaction to either prozac itself or ssri's as a whole. I tended to agree with him, but I have been off for 4 days with no relief. He put me on kolonopin and nurontin. I thought it was a side effect for sure, but then I can across this site and it seems that I have exactly what everyone esle here is having. I have only had the twitches for a month, but started in my left arm, biceo, forearm and finger. All very violent and then moved to my left calf and now all over. No muscle is safe. Calves, feet, hamstrings, quads, back , bicep, sholder, neck, head, lip and even my tounge once. None of them are really violent anymore, actually no one could see them if i dint point out. But once you know what to look for they look like little worms crawling around underneath the skin. the claves especially, I guess I would call that my hot spot..No pain, weakness, tingly feelings, cramps or anything like that. Just fing annoying twitches. My anxiety levels are through the roof as to what this might be. Does it sound like bfs to you?
 
If it does can you tell me what to avoid:Caffeine?Smoking?Exercise?etcAnything I can do besides worry myself to death and take nurontin and kolonopin?Mentally how have any of you overcome it and live normal lives? I can't even work. I mean I am there in body, but my mind can't stop thinking about the horrible progression this thing might have. My girfriend is about to leave me. My work is suffering and I feel like I am losing it. I need some advice, some copping skills. I have a physcologist, but him telling me not to think about it isn't really all that helpful.
 
Yep. You have BFS.If you search through the archives, you will see that pretty much everyone here has a story almost exactly like yours. We all end up in the same place. It's just classic old fashioned garden variety BFS. It's annoying but it's not going to hurt you.Tips: 1. Get steady exercise2. Get more hobbies3. GET MORE SLEEP4. Drink less caffeineBTW Your girlfriend leaving you is a far more likely outcome than you actually having a serious disease. So I'd work on that more than I would your BFS obsessions. The simple truth is that you will probably twitch for a long time, but in time you will learn not to care.
 
thanks, i really appreciate the reply. its just so annoying sometimes it makes me want to scream. do you have times when they are relatively silent. at least a good month here an there? did you notice it worse in the beginning, or does it pretty much stay regular and you just have to learn to deal and forget its there?
 
It is worse at the beginning because A) it's new, and B) it's scary. Nearly everyone freaks out the first time they get it and wander over to Dr. Google and read what the internet says. That's when nearly every BFS person is in their darkest hour. That's also when the endless procession of meaningless doctor visits begins.Once you get past THAT stage you will wind up in a stage where it gets better sometimes, and gets worse sometimes, but never really deviates that much in any direction. You'll have good days, you'll have bad days, and it will wax and wane harmlessly while you learn how to deal with it. For some people it takes a month to get to this stage, for some it takes several years. But sooner or later you WILL get there, just like the rest of us have. Once you realize that your symptoms really aren't progressing into anything serious, it will take quite a load off your shoulders. At that point you will be able to say, "Oh well, it's just BFS."In time your twitches WILL go down and possibly even go away altogether. Why? Well maybe because your anxiety levels are down. Maybe because you have made lifestyle changes. Maybe because your diet was better. Maybe because this was when it was going to go away all along anyway. There's really no way to predict it. All I can promise you is that it WILL get better in time, and that nothing your body is doing can hurt you right now in the interim. Your muscles and nerves are just tired and stressed out and overexcited, and there could be a million reasons why it is happening. No one here (or in the history of BFS in general) has ever had it develop into the bad thing.The first thing I would recommend for a newbie like you is to learn how to meditate. If you can consciously turn off your brain for a couple of minutes once or twice a day, it will help a lot. Obsessing about your health 24 hours a day isn't good for anyone.P.S. Some days I actually have no twitches at all, and it's weird. I actually miss them.
 
I am sorry to hear that you have to deal with this phenomenon after already having anxiety issues. I suffer every symptom you described (including the tongue but for me it is a couple times every day) and have for 11 months now. I take Klonopin. I have had no relief or break from it except that which is induced by the Klonopin. The only thing that really helps me is knowing there is hope in that many others have twitching and it never progresses from there. So far I have no weakness. Stay busy and focus on the fact that you will NEVER get to a place where life is worry free, so you don't have to feel that you are being singled out for some unique fate of having to worry. We are all human and vulnerable. The more you focus on what you can do and enjoy the less energy and time you will have to worry. I think this is how everyone gets through all problems in life.Krackersones
 
Which meds? Everyone responds differently to these and they all have side effects. If you do a forum search you will get lots of hits, info, and general comments on just about any Rx that's out there. The only one I could tolerate was gabapentin and took it when sleep was a problem - stopped after a few months because 1-it's a drug, 2- I was sleeping OK, and 3- it was making me forgetful. All the others I tried made me non-functional in some way but that's just me - some have worked well for others. Also search the forum for coping skills - look especially in Symptom Management - you find lots of techniques and opinions. The variation of what works for each person is pretty wide but all are worth a try and in a way, you become proactive rather than just responsive to the symptoms and this is a good thing. Don't give up exercise - even if it seems to help initially, in the end you just end up less fit. Moderate it, do a good warm-up and cool down with a relaxation technique (breathing or meditation, yoga, etc) if only for a few minutes. Most here would agree that they feel best when they are physically active, especially if it is part of their life and many find that some sort of meditation helps their nerves/anxiety. As Mario was saying - this stuff is kind of a journey, don't freak out when you turn a corner and things look a little different.
 
Neurontin is the brand name for gabapentin (same stuff). Some have had success with it - helped me to stop jerking and spasming awake (in turn allowed my husband to sleep better). Some adjustments were need and finally I settled on taking it late in the day (after work) then overlap it at night by taking one at bedtime - this way the largest dose was when I was sleeping and it affected me a little less in the morning. You have to play around with this anti-seizure stuff - it's not like many drugs and everyone responds differently. It takes days to adjust to it also so if you start it try a Friday - maybe it'll level out by Monday. I stopped when I couldn't remember stuff I knew (retrieval problems) but this effect built though time - didn't happen right away. Many here take Klonopin also - just use the search function in the forum for opinions.
 
Now I am very confused. Are you telling me that the sleep jerking is also part of BFS? I thought that was a completely seperate problem for me. I am taking about as you are falling asleep, your whole body can jerk in it's core. Most of the time it did not wake me up, only my girlfriend. Sometimes it was just a hand or a leg. The worse the symptoms got the less I could sleep. I started taking kolonopin to sleep and it seemed to work and get me through the night without waking up. Then after I got that under control the day time twitching started. Did you ever use ssri's long term? Or do you know of anyone else that has on this forum? I thought the BFS was caused by some seratonin issue I was having, brain damage in the receptors from the 10 years I was on paxil.
 
See that you've already posted about the jerking....Don't let this stuff confuse you - bfs is so many things - it's a sort of catch-all term for non-life-threatening weirdness and neural problems - there are so many symptoms. None of them will kill you, however, they will irritate you and there may be times when they mess with you (not getting enough sleep is one that is a double problem as it encourages other symptoms). Yes, a lot of people have it and so does my cat. Really. I even remember having them as a kid - I thought I was falling down usually in a dream. But I have to say it never consistently woke me up until I started having other bcfs stuff - and for sure it never woke up my husband before. I also woke both of us up with large muscle spasms for a while and these were more consistent than the whole body jerks. Most of that is gone now for me. Symptoms will change and you can't let every little new one freak you out or you'll cause that awful not-having-any-fun-too-worried-to-live-my-life dis-ease. Me? never any drugs - too weird already. And as others have said on your other post some of these drugs actually cause bfs symptoms in taking then and in withdrawal. Just go to the nih (National Institute of Health) or Medline website and look at the drugs and their multiple side effects......be careful and "consult your doctor before changing any dosages..."
 

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