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Panic attack versus seizure

Sat, 02/28/2009 - 06:08

What is the difference between a panic attack and a seizure? The seizure I had this evening started with a sheer panic attack and progressed into a complex partial seizure. I felt sheer terror at first working up my spine and then it generalized into a true seizure, where I lost consciousness.

Has anybody else had this happen to them? Any information or response would be grateful.

Comments

Re: Panic attack versus seizure

Submitted by adelemarie on Sun, 2009-03-01 - 04:39

Hi,

I experience the intense 'de je vu' and the accomanying, undescribable sense of dread/doom/end of the world feelings. They occur about once every 6 weeks or so, duration approx. 30 seconds, (its hard to track time when going thru one).  

I was diagnosed with seizures about 20 years ago and I have only ever had 2, thats right, only 2  major seizures. 

The last one was about 2 months ago. And I know what caused it.  I was at work, there was a squeaky door,  it was driving me nuts, our unit clerk gave me a can of WD40,  before I could think about what I was doing I had sprayed WD40 on the door hinge, not realizing that the arosole can created a huge cloud of mist, which surrounded me ( I was in a confined area), which I inhaled. It was pretty intense and I knew this was not going to end well.

The very next night, sure enough, I had a big one!  Lasted a while I assume, cause like the last biggy, I came to to a room full of firemen, and paramedics.  

I guess I should'nt complain... 2 big seizures in 20 years and absolutely no meds!

I know everyones triggers for seizures are differant, but you should take note to what chemicals you are exposed to prior  to a seizure: big or small.  For me its petroleum distillates.  The major seizure I had prior to this last one was triggered by exterminators spraying our basement laundry room with pesticides... I went down too soon after the spraying.

I know that feeling you have of shear terror feels like a panic attack, but I think that is actually part of the seizure.  I think 'panic attacks' are something differant. I don't think people who have panic attacks experience the weird  'de je vu' sensations, and they are probably, and this is all assumtion,  triggered by something totally differant.

I have never had a panic attack, but I would bet that seizures are much more terrifing. When I have one, I cant talk, my eyes are wide and fixated, I have weird visual effects.  I feels like its the end of everything.... literally.  

Anyway,  I hope you find out your triggers. There is a reason for everything.  I know it frustrating when we don't have the answers, or even when we do, there is nothing we can do about it, and are still left to deal with the effects, (as in my case), but, life goes on and we just have to do what we can. 

Good luck

Adele

 

 

Hi,

I experience the intense 'de je vu' and the accomanying, undescribable sense of dread/doom/end of the world feelings. They occur about once every 6 weeks or so, duration approx. 30 seconds, (its hard to track time when going thru one).  

I was diagnosed with seizures about 20 years ago and I have only ever had 2, thats right, only 2  major seizures. 

The last one was about 2 months ago. And I know what caused it.  I was at work, there was a squeaky door,  it was driving me nuts, our unit clerk gave me a can of WD40,  before I could think about what I was doing I had sprayed WD40 on the door hinge, not realizing that the arosole can created a huge cloud of mist, which surrounded me ( I was in a confined area), which I inhaled. It was pretty intense and I knew this was not going to end well.

The very next night, sure enough, I had a big one!  Lasted a while I assume, cause like the last biggy, I came to to a room full of firemen, and paramedics.  

I guess I should'nt complain... 2 big seizures in 20 years and absolutely no meds!

I know everyones triggers for seizures are differant, but you should take note to what chemicals you are exposed to prior  to a seizure: big or small.  For me its petroleum distillates.  The major seizure I had prior to this last one was triggered by exterminators spraying our basement laundry room with pesticides... I went down too soon after the spraying.

I know that feeling you have of shear terror feels like a panic attack, but I think that is actually part of the seizure.  I think 'panic attacks' are something differant. I don't think people who have panic attacks experience the weird  'de je vu' sensations, and they are probably, and this is all assumtion,  triggered by something totally differant.

I have never had a panic attack, but I would bet that seizures are much more terrifing. When I have one, I cant talk, my eyes are wide and fixated, I have weird visual effects.  I feels like its the end of everything.... literally.  

Anyway,  I hope you find out your triggers. There is a reason for everything.  I know it frustrating when we don't have the answers, or even when we do, there is nothing we can do about it, and are still left to deal with the effects, (as in my case), but, life goes on and we just have to do what we can. 

Good luck

Adele

 

 

Re: Panic attack versus seizure

Submitted by MichaelK on Mon, 2009-03-02 - 08:43

Hi Adele,

Thanks for comment. You have expressed it very well, for when theise TLEs happen to me they feel as if I have begun to tour Dante's Inferno. That is why I dread them so much - the sheer terror of them. I walk through areas that I have had them before with more fear than before.

I appreciate your help!

Michael

Hi Adele,

Thanks for comment. You have expressed it very well, for when theise TLEs happen to me they feel as if I have begun to tour Dante's Inferno. That is why I dread them so much - the sheer terror of them. I walk through areas that I have had them before with more fear than before.

I appreciate your help!

Michael

Re: Panic attack versus seizure

Submitted by 3Hours2Live on Mon, 2009-03-02 - 01:45
discussion/981904 MichaelK, Panic attack versus seizure; Sat, 02/28/2009 - 3:08am|26views|5comments March 01, 2009 Sunday 10:45 PM PST USA Most of my cluster seizures in early childhood would start with a vague sensation of fear with a minor partial seizure as an aura, and in about eight hours later, then each seizure would be very frequent with sensations of intense fear and clumsy actions of panic. I believe most of these physical actions were caused by the sensations of intense fear because severe punishment stopped my actions and I learned to sit very still and try to avoid any actualization of any desire to take action from the intense sensations, but this didn't always work. My non-cluster seizures back then usually just interferred with my speech/language and coordination, with few directly caused emotions or internal emotional consequences (but many indirect ones, i.e., "pronounce 'feather' correctly or no recess or gumdrop for you or your speech classmates," then corporal punishments when I "spoke in tongues" trying). Much less often were auras of divine joy to auras of blandness with occassional synesthesia; in early adulthood, auras with migraines also developed. Despite that the first sign of clusters was usually the sensation of fear no matter what all the other circumstances, teachers, nurses, and doctors wrote-off my descriptions of my seizures as stubborness, maligenering, panic attacks, to agoraphobia and other toxic mumbo jumbo. Studying Pavlovian Conditioning in junior college, I discovered I could induce minor versions of these "fear sensations" with independent stimuli conditioned as preceding painful electric shocks, but never to the point of triggering a seizure. My Social Psychology professor at the university was the first person who told me that I probably had seizures from Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, and that my description of my childhood seizures sounded like "Seahorse Epilepsy" (seizures radiating from the hippocampus) that he had recently read about in a journal that described the secondary seizures similar to the one I suffered in his classroom. In the university library I discovered that "gut fear" was the most common adverse viscereal sensation caused by Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, and that the "gut fear" was totally unrelated to everything else, despite what Freud and others may preach. Also, that "kindling" of TLE over adolescence often results in the Geschwind Syndrome, which doesn't respond well to AEDs (either not at all, or results in Forced Normalization phenomena and back to psychological toxic mumbo jumbo). Some recent literature I've read goes so far as to say that people with epilepsy "train themselves" to have the signs and symptoms of seizures with fearful thoughts, and they just "think" they have seizures once their epilepsy is in remission and should be classified as having psychogenetic non- epileptic events. Such invasion into "hard-science" neurology by "soft-science" psychological philosophy seems like so much balderdash to me, maybe useful to immorally shun or exploit patients at best with even more toxic mumbo jumbo. LOL. The book "Imitators of Epilepsy" by Kaplan and Fisher, has a chapter by Grady and Stahl on Panic Attacks and Epilepsy with some 130 References/footnotes. I hope this helps.

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