  

  

24F 166cm, 71kg, no smoking, medication : sertralin /zoloft 100, possibly fibromyalgia, seeking help with PNES seizures I've been having for 10 years and a bit. Sorry in advance that this will be rather long.

I am grateful for input, thoughts and suggestions from anyone, not just professionals.

possible TRIGGER WARNING

It started with dissociation in form of stupor during the traumatic situation which lasted for about half a year and consisted of several additional traumatic events in this time, despite the whole situation being traumatic as such. It was related to abuse. Even after the trauma was treated the seizures still stayed as an own thing as the mechanism kinda got too established in my brain over the years and gets triggered even without reason, a bit like a short circuit. I tried literally everything to get the trauma itself treated and also to get the seizures themselves under control. I've been in various hospitals, rehabs and mental institutions sometimes up to 6 months. I tried every kind of medication and therapy any of the many professionals i consulted could ever think of.

After fighting for it for eight years i had them under control well for two years. Back then i started holding them off longer and longer similar to if you try really hard to not fall asleep or faint , starting with just a few seconds to sit down so I don't fall and after holding them off for like 6 hours they would just disappear. With this it helps if i: - look at one point not allowing it to get blurry

· do slow and controlled eye movements from time to time

· do easy breathing focused on breathing out a lot, maybe with vocalization

· keep legs straight

After i got them under control a few times by just holding them off things changed a bit and after holding it off for 1,5-2 hours i would get into like an active fighting mode where i also tense up physically to fight it off quicker. I just felt when i reached that point cause I got like a pressure in my head, like itd burst similar to if you were upside down really long and a lot of blood flows into your head and that'd almost make me tense up automatically . I like to compare it to arm wrestling if you didn't allow the opponent to push you down for a while and you feel he is weakened and now it's your chance to push him down if you try really hard once more. This would take me about another hour or half. In this mode it helped me if I:

· squeeze or bite a pillow

· push hands against each other

· pull on a scarf or something tied to somewhere, for example the bed

· lean and push against a wall

· kneel on the bed and push down into the mattress or against the wall

For two years I've had them under control very well, they didn't come up so much anymore and if they did i could fight them off easier and easier. But since I moved out and started university ten months ago it got out of control again (even after I moved back in with my parents at the beginning of the year) and i can still hold them off for 1-2 hours but then they always come through. I have never gotten to that active fighting mode anymore. For a few months it's new that I don't only have one seizure but always get a few in a row. Sometimes these episodes last only a few mins with like 3 seizures, sometimes I may have 50 within 24 hours. At the moment a seizure mostly lasts up to twenty mins but can also be two hours or so. If i get a follow up seizure within an episode I can only hold these for a few seconds or up to ten minutes sometimes. Since these are harder I'm curious if id get to the active fighting quicker with these but didn't get it so far yet. I generally feel like something subconsciously is trying to run away from the active fight, not ready for the confrontation maybe. I can also imagine that despite i am originally diagnosed with dissociation due to the trauma the seizures more transformed into a psychosomatic conversion issue since it's not always related to trauma specific triggers anymore but they don't seem to be related to the stress level or such.

I feel quite hopeless now to the point where suicide comes into consideration again even if yet I decide against it. At times I would have given so much to gain that control I still have now but now that I know that full control has been possible what I can do now is just not enough anymore. I feel like all these years I fought for nothing and I'm kicked almost back to the start. I would be really grateful for any kind of input from anyone here cause I feel like I'm at a point where I might just need some fresh thoughts and ideas from rational point of view.