O SO SORRY YOU REALLY SUFFER,AND WHAT YOU EXPERIENCE COMES WITH THE MIGRAINES, i WISH I COULD HELP ,PLEASE MAKE THAT APPOINTMENT WITH THE HEALTH CLINIC AND HOPE THEY CAN HELP ,I THINK THEY CAN,YOU HAVE NO LIFE AND YOU SHOULD NOT BE GOING THROUGH ALL THAT,i WILL PRAY ALL GOES WELL FOR YOU , PLEASE PLEASE GET SOME HELP,LET ME KNOW CALL FOR THAT APPOINTMENT TODAY MY FRIEND,HUGS TO YOU,YOUR NOT ALONE ,I SUFFER WITH THOSE HEADACHES TO ,HAD ONE WED. THEY WOULD SCARE ANY ONE BUT WITH HELP YOU CAN GET THROUGH THEM MORE HUGS ,SHIRLEY

Morning, you don't know how much I wish i could pack you up and move you into my house for a month. :) But....sigh.......I cannot do that, so I will just keep throwing my advice to you and hope that one of these days some of it will sink in. I think the thing to ask yourself is "What am I getting out of this phobia?" Because I don't think you want it to go away. I think it makes you miserable and you hate it, but I think you need it. Only you can know what you need it for though. Just something to think about.

I DO want it to go away though. It's controlling my life. I cant stand the fear anymore. It scares the heck out of me. I dont know what to do anymore. I am so scared that any minuet now i am going to have a massive stroke and die.

Nobody in my life will listen to me anymore about it. Everybody ignores me about it, especially my mom. I really dont know what to do anymore. :(((

But you know what to do. You just don't do it. And I understand why, so I am not judging you. But one of these days, you have got to stand up to this or it will NEVER go away. All you do all day, every day, is tell your brain how scared you are. You never tell your brain, at least from what I can tell from the things you write here, one single thing to indicate that you are brave or in charge of your safety and well being. The only thoughts you think are full of fear and worry and terror that you could die at any minute. Your brain is not making you feel this way. YOU are making YOURSELF feel this way! Your poor brain struggles every single day to keep up with your never ending drama and you never do anything to help it. I know you know what to do. I have read your avatar, and read your status updates. I know deep down, you know that you have to be brave and not give in to your worry anymore. But doing that means trying. It means no longer typing the thoughts, "I can't stand the fear anymore." It means no longer voicing everytime you think you are going to have a stroke. It means knowing deep down that there is basically no chance on Earth that you are having a stroke, and TRUSTING that, and never ever again saying to your mom or anybody else...."What if I am having a stroke?" It means resisting that compulsive urge you have to worry about this. It means not letting the scared little girl in you run your life anymore. It means telling her to shut up....that you aren't listening anymore...and you are done being terrified and ready to start living.

I hope you don't think I am being mean because I promise you I am just trying to be supportive. I am trying to get you to see that you have got to help yourself because nobody can fix this but you. You have to want to do this and for some reason you don't seem to want to do it. That is why I say that this anxiety serves some other purpose for you. My anxiety gave me an excuse to not be brave. My anxiety gave me an excuse to not get a "real job". My anxiety gave me an excuse to not go to college. My anxiety gave me an excuse to get married too young and not be independant and live on my own. What is your anxiety doing for you that makes it so hard for you to let go of?

One of these days, I am going to come on here and you are going to say "It was so hard. But I went all day yesterday without mentioning my fear of stroke to anybody or allowing myself to dwell on it at all. It was really tough. But I was brave." I know its going to happen. I will just wait patiently until it does. :)

You need to go for cognitive behaviorial therapy for controlling your fears. You are the only one who is creating the fear in your brain. You just have to stand up and say "SO WHAT if it happens". What's the worst that can happen. NOTHING. And the more you just say I'm sick of worry about this the more the fear will lessen on you. You don't understand that you are the only one feeding your brain those thoughts. People do not want to listen to it in your personal life as they are trying not to feed into your fears and the more you keep talking the same way the more you let anxiety win. Take control....You have the power to redirect your thoughts. Even if it's all day long. Best to you!

Go out and enjoy yourself no matter what. You are letting life pass you by. Do you want to wait another 10 years and say you wish you would have done something about it. Go out and go shopping or something and distract yourself. Tell yourself, If something were to happen and you know you have body symptoms (bodies react to the thoughts we tell it). If something happens other people would be around. You can't live your life always thinking "WHAT IF" this happens, what if that happens. Did you know the more you tell yourself you don't want something to happen you create the very thing you fear.

OK, you may be thinking these people are being harsh on you but having suffered like you have I can see the logic in what they are saying. These people are behaving the way they are because they can see the dangers of the way you are thinking because if you do not change the way you are cognitively behaving these symptoms you are having will become foundated and much much harder to deal with. DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE LIKE THIS FOREVER? No i dont think you do. So i am going to try to explain this to you in a different way and hope for your sake you listen to me....
Imagine your body is a machine and on top of that machine running it all is an organic computer...your brain. Your brain and body work in symphony with eachother and the body has the ability to go onto autopilot as it were so that your brain can rest sometimes..like when it does when you are asleep. Now part of that autopilot feature is a learning mode, When you panick your body dumps shedloads of adrenalin and other endorphins into your body to deal with the oncoming danger. You can control that to an extent BUT (and its a big but) if you keep telling your body it is in peril one day "autopilot" will learn you need those endorphins on a permanent basis and thas where the trouble starts. Once the body starts doing stuff on its own it is very difficult to train it back to its factory settings and there is only one way to do that and that it with your mind. Like the others have said there is only one person that can do that and that is you. You have to start believing that as weird as these symptoms are they are not going to kill you and are simply a reaction by your body to all the chemicals you are dumping into it. When you panic, do something else take your mind off it DO NOT dwell on it because if you do trust me it will get worse. While you are sitting there worrying your mind is telling your body i am still in trouble so guess what will happen, yes it will dump yet even more adrenalin and endorphins and your symptoms will just get worse and worse and worse. You have to make a stand now while you are young and reasonably healthy. You keep going like this and one day it will be permanent and much harder to deal with by which time you will be my age and have a body not as equipped to deal with health trauma.
I woke up this morning and for the first five minutes my eyesight was so blurry i could barely see. Scarey but i knew what was going on and caught myself going into panick mode. I sat down got my brain in gear and five mins later i could see again. Its bloody hard to do but it works. I feel like crap this morning all sorts of aches and pains and here i am sitting here trying to help you out so please dont let this gargantuan effort i am putting in on your behalf go to waste. Sit up straight realise what is going and for gods sake take a stand now while you still can or else you will be in my position and then you will know what hell is really like.

Something i fergot to add which also may help....
Fight or flight..its a standard response by your body to oncoming danger. Like i said your body is dumping stuff into your system to prepare it to either run or stand and fight. Your heart will start pounding sending blood round your body to all your muscles. You will start breathing quicker which infuses your blood with oxygen also to give your brain and other bits a heightened sense of awareness to prepare you for either fight or flight..and heres where it specially applies to you..your eyes. Your eyes start to work at their optimum so they can see everything. Even little things in your periphery that normally (when you are calm) your brain is trained to ignor become apparent. Its all part of the process and its up to you how you use this unique ability. You either run for the hills which is of course otherwise known as panick or you stand up and bloody fight for your life. Like lilly said and there is a lot of sence in her words trust me if there is anyone on here you should be listening to its her. Stand up and fight girl. Stop running away coz u can beat this. That computer in your head does have a keyboard so use it. Dont let it have control. Stand up and fight. Tell your panick to come and get you. Be defiant and have confidence you can win. Trust me, its hard but its doable. We are all going to die one day its just a matter of how you want to spend what time you have between now and then. Keep going the way you are and one day you wont be able to stand up fight no more coz every day you feed it with anxiety it grows and gets stronger. Its up to you, i just hope you have the sence to listen and use these guys to help you fight your demons while you still can. If its any hope to you I have lived on this earth for 44 years and suffered more trauma than most. I have worried my way through most of it so my demon is a biggun but when i do what lilly does and say come get me you bastard he shits himself and runs for the hills. And you know what i think? Ha now you know what it feels like.

You can have a storke at any age. The difference is that older people more often get stroke in deeply in the brain and younger people more often have stroke in brain covers area.
That what you are experiencing is vessel spazm. A lot of depressed and anxious people have it when they think too much. Every time you think too much your blood presure rises so with time you will develope constant blood presure (if you do not have it yet).
I had that happening a lot and I take up to 75 mg of Amitriptyline (Elavil) to reduce it. Some people take up to 300 mg of it in the hospital. It reduces thoughts and prevents you from rising your blood presure to stroke level. It has so called hypnotizing effect (which make you feel that everything is fine) that Zoloft and several other antidepresants do not have. as soon as I get of it my blood presure goes up too and I am running with panic that I am having stroke. I had to take medication from blood presure to reduce blood presure. My hands and feet was feeling the same way you say because my heart would give tachicardy as soon as I think so I had to take medications for heart too.

Oh Lordy. I mean no disrespect to Lonely when I say this because all any of us can do is just throw our opinions out there.....but I don't want you to be alarmed and freak out about what he/she said. Young people do have strokes, but VERY rarely, and when they do it is not because they are stressed out. It is because there is some underlying thing going on like BCP's or clotting disorders or something like that. It is almost unheard of for a person in their early twenties to just have some random stroke. I don't think it would be possible for you to worry or panic yourself into a stroke, no matter how high your blood pressure gets. If that were the case, people who were victims of violent crime would be having strokes right and left. I mean maybe if you were elderly or had a horrible history of high blood pressure...but not just a girl in their early twenties. So there is another side to the story....its up to you what you want to believe.
Again, my apologies to Lonely....I hope you don't think I am being rude.

I do not know what a stroke or migrane aura feel like. however, i have experienced fear, frustration and helplesness. from my experiences, this is the perfect time to begin overcoming your fears. the key to my motivation is focusing on the facts. in your case, you have medical evidence in the form of CT scan results that your brain is perfectly healthy. these results can be the foundation of your recovery from this situation. the remaining symptoms are just symptoms. unless you are presented with medical evidence stating otherwise, you are perfectly healthy.

Morning -

My heart goes out to you! I know you are suffering. It takes a while for your sensitized nerves to return to a normal state. And every time you feed into your false message "I am having a stroke", it starts your cycle all over again. It is a false message that you need to stop believing.

You have had doctors, and medical tests all confirm that you are healthy. Listen to them and stop listening to the monkey mind messages. Your thoughts are jumping just like monkeys do and you are not being present in the moment-you are thinking of your future every time you think "What if?"

Have you heard about how they trap monkeys in India? When they are a nuisance, they drill holes in coconuts and put a bananna inside. The monkey reaches in grabs the bananna, but can't fit it through the hole in the coconut. It refuses to let go. If it just let go, it could escape.

Let go of the thought when it comes up. It is a habit that your brain has gotten stuck on. Use the monkey analogy or visualize that thought as a balloon and release it. Say it out loud. It helps to say things out loud-takes the fear out of it. Cognitive therapy will say to repeat what you are afraid of many times in the mirror. After awhile, it just does not have the same effect on you.

I feel that cognitive therapy will help you. This will pass. You will regain peace again. Have hope and faith in yourself.

Good gravy, grandma, Where do you get you info lonly? Vascular spasms in the brain are most typically caused by aneurysm. Thinking too much? You're blood pressure does not go up when thinking for long periods of time. It can go up with extended periods of anxious thought, especially if contemplating an upcoming difficult event or situation. I had to laugh out loud on that one. I'm beginning to think you're a spokesperson for Elavil, you seem to think it's the cure all and recommend it every time someone posts. Do your research before posting something that might scare an already scared individual out their wits that comes here looking for support. Your information is often highly skewed and inaccurate, and for the most part, negative.