Where does intense twitching end and a seizure start? PNES and Dissociation?
Hi everyone
I had a bad accident that caused me having PTSD. During EMDR therapy for processing the accident I had the weirdest experience - my body starting shaking, I felt like I was going unconscious, my head dropping, etc. but I never actually fully lost consciousness and was able to force myself back awake after like 30 seconds. However, this pattern kept repeating - and was identified as a type of dissociation.
This has been two months now but the symptoms have since kinda gone off the rails - I start to loose my ability to speak or move (I go into freeze mode while staring into the void) for short episosdes in normal conversations, sometimes even randomly dissociate with my head dropping, my body is in a state of constant hyperarousal and most days my body (mostly upper body, hips and neck) are just shaking kinda uncontrollably.
I am always fully oriented and conscious through this, I can open my eyes if I really force myself, I can have a conversation, I can move my arms and legs, I can temporarily suppress the worst part of the convulsions- but I can't make it stop. I comes in waves of 1 minutes and then stops for 1-2 minutes, resumes again, etc.
I have seen a neurologist about this - because the link to the PTBS and dissociation is so clear in my case, they diagnosed me with FND. One doctor referred to these episodes (after I showed them a video of a more severe episode of convulsing that I recorded myself to have proof of all the spooky symptoms that my body is creating) as seizures, but I'm unsure if they really are a seizure? Where do seizures start? Is it "just" shaking/trembling/convulsing?Is it a somatoform dissociation? Are those the same things? I have started reading into all of this, but I feel like the more I read, the less clear it all becomes to me.
I am mostly just very confused as to what on earth is happening with me. I feel like the EMDR therapy for my accident triggered some kind of deep wasp nest somewhere in my body but it's so hidden that I can't consciously access it, but it just keeps constantly and randomly firing.