Community Forum Archive

Alright so I have got a lot of things to take off my chest so bare with me. I am a 25 year old male who was diagnosed with JME about 5 years ago, and I have been put on clonazepam 0.5 mg ever since. My diagnosis was made back in India and at the time I was pursuing my undergraduate engineering studies in India. I remember having a pretty rough time handling all the studies and the anxiety associated with socialising with people and doing things in general. Note that I have had a bad problem with psychogenic stuttering since my childhood, induced by a emotionally traumatic event in my childhood. But eventually I was able to overcome it all and I aced my undergraduate studies with flying colours. As far as my seizures are concerned they only used to be trigged when I used to think like REALLY HARD about something, and I would get like a small jerk in my palm. But after the course of medications it was rare; like once a month or two. My seizures were relatively controlled and I was a part of my colleges mixed martial arts team and I did well in relatively all the domains of my academics. I had routine checks with my neurologist and he cleared me to go to the US to pursue my masters. Fast forward to Fall-2018, I am pursuing my masters in US in the field of Data Analytics and things have taken a turn for the worse. At least thats what I think of it. I am a student so I am under an immense pressure from a lot of things. Financially, socially and academically. Despite of maintaining a strict diet regimen and exercising I used to experience these intense bouts of anxiety which all started with me scoring pretty low in my statistics class.My sleep schedule got messed up and my medication-taking time was off the hook and I did the occasional beer sessions (once a month or two)Even though I didn’t have any experiences with seizures, I had relatively worse experiences with anxiety and hypertension which was diagnosed at the university. My Blood pressure skyrocketed to 159 - 99 and upon checking it out the doctors at my university attributed it to stress and poor sleeping habits. I was put on counselling in which the therapist concluded that I am doing all the right things towards dealing with my stress and that he does not think that I need to be shifting towards taking any more anxiety meds. He recommended me to join these support groups and that to practice active journalling and relaxation techniques. Fast forward to now: Started a new MMA team in my college and been exercising pretty proactively. my blood pressures normal and i try and deal with my anxiety pretty well. But still this is what I have been experiencing, and I have tried to be as concrete as possible with the explanations: So when I would try and move my hands or make a conscious movement to pick, or place a object; a really nagging feeling of anxiety crawls up and then vanishes as fast as it had turned up. It is the same as to when I am sitting in the library and i get this weird feeling that “everyones watching me “so I get pretty anxious about my actions. I tried looking up for absence seizures but its not like I loose my consciousness so I do not think that thats it. I I do not have any jerks, just these sudden moments of anxiety. I experience the same thing when I would be talking to somebody. As I dont socialise quite often because I think I would be disappointed, talking seems to be quite the bummer as I am in a alien country and I do not know a lot of people. I remain depressed most of the time, and I cannot help but stop negative thoughts from crawling up. My GPA has taken a downfall and I do not seem to be enjoying anything of what’s going on around me because I dont feel worthy of all of it I do not know that whether this is my JME crawling back or it is just anxiety or what is it? Could someone clarify it for me as to what should I do in this case. Much love