Anxiety is driving me crazy!!

I dont know whether anxiety is causing my migraine or the migraine is causing my anxiety! The anxiety component to my headaches are new since last November but this week has been horrible! My heart races like crazy, I feel short of breath, pain in my upper back...I was sitting in a movie theater today and almost had to run out!

Doctor gave me Klonopin to take a few weeks ago - said to take .5mg twice a day!! I dont want to get dependant on benzos so I only take 1/2 a .5mg at bedtime. It makes me SO sleepy! Cant imagine what it would do to me during the day.

I do 30 minutes on the treadmill each day, practice breathing and relaxation, take yoga classes once a week as well as massage therapy every two weeks and I still get these horrible anxiety episodes!

I am taking 20 mg of nortriptaline daily as a preventative. I was getting chronic daily headaches for the past 4 months. I cut out all painkillers for the past week to see if I was suffering from rebound and my headaches are way less in severity - the only good thing that has happened to me lately!

Do any of you suffer with this? How do you cope?

At least for me I think it can go both ways. Our migraine aura symptoms are pretty unusual and when I am out and about sometimes I do get anxious thinking thru the "what ifs" in my head. I hate drawing attention to myself so I can get hyper-alert and get myself all worked up. When this happens I try to sit calmly and talk myself thru it - that even if the worst happens and I have a major migraine episode in public it will still be okay. On the flip side though - my aura symptoms creep up slowly - the confusion, the lightheadedness and sometimes I am not quick enough to put it all together in my head and say to myself "okay a migraine is starting" and instead I start to feel anxious about feeling weird. Also, I think the migraines themselves mess with my brain chemicals and that can also lead to what I call "migraine-induced" emotional fall-out. Hope this makes sense! L

It is possible that the fear of migraine is causing us constant anxiety, however what you describe sounds more like panic attacks and they are quite a diffferent problem and people with no migraine can suffer them for no reason.
I had a friend who symptoms were just as you describe, often very severe so she was "certain" that she was about to have a heart attack. But when I took her to hospital she was calmed down, and given some king of tranquiliser as a one off, and she was better, until next time. She had no migraines.

I have another friend who also suffers panic attacks if she has to drive any distance from home.NO migraines either in this case.


I think what you need is more definite diagnosis what is happening to you, and have your heart checked as well, just to be on the safe side. You are already doing much to help yourself with extercise and yoga, but you need more help to see what is causing these attacks of anxiety and speeding of heart rate.

Obviously this medicine is not working, so if any medication does not bring relief after few weeks, it is NEVERr going to work - you need to try a different approach.

Try not to worry, as this can cause stress and stress is definitely a bad migraine trigger.
Let us know how you are, Tamsha and Good Luck.

Yes the anxiety you are describing sounds beyond just migraine. If the Klonopin is not working or makes you too sleepy to take you should definitely talk to your doctor about something else. He may be able to adjust the nortriptaline if this is a new thing.

When I first started getting migraines, anxiety was a major component of the early stage of my migraine. Right before the aura came on, I would feel very anxious and have to pace around to work off the racing heart and the feelings that I was "very unwell" or something was very wrong with me. However, once the migraine proper got going the anxiety would completely disappear and I would collaspe into bed, no longer fearing impending doom but wishing for it so my symptoms would go away :-)

I went through various treatments - first vertigo drugs because I found the dizzyness the most disabling symptom, then anti-anxiety drugs because they thought the anxiety might be panic attacks. Neither did much good, including Xanax, although the Lorazepam tried after the Xanax did help with the nausea a bit. The doctors eventually decided I was freaking becuase of all the weird symptoms coming on ( extreme vertigo, nausea, vision and hearing loss, falling down...), but I think it is definitely a prodrome symptom because the anxiety often comes before the other symptoms. Althoug my wife says I have other symptoms before the anxiety - I get all irritable, so she says, and start "looking weird". I never notice. I normally just feel really, really exhausted right before the anxiety kicks in. It may be I'm fighting the fatigue and overreact.

I still get it on occasion with my migraines, although a lot less than I use to. The interesting thing is I never recoginize it as a prodrome. I get all anxious and start pacing around and it's not until other symptoms start coming on that I realize its a migraine attack.

OMG - that's exactly how I feel! You summed up my prodome to a "T"! As soon as the actual migraine hits my anxiety is gone and I just deal with the migraine portion itself. I've tried a few meds as well to see if it would help and nothing seems to be working. You'd think I'd catch on by now that severe anxiety and fatigue is prodome but for some reason I dont!

Thank you SO much for your post. It has made me feel a lot better.

Do you still get the migraines and if so, how often?

Our brains are truly remarkable............wish they weren't so creative sometimes though. So glad that CQ made you feel saner! L

Tamsha101 wrote:OMG - that's exactly how I feel! You summed up my prodome to a "T"! As soon as the actual migraine hits my anxiety is gone and I just deal with the migraine portion itself. I've tried a few meds as well to see if it would help and nothing seems to be working. You'd think I'd catch on by now that severe anxiety and fatigue is prodome but for some reason I dont!

Thank you SO much for your post. It has made me feel a lot better.

Do you still get the migraines and if so, how often?

When I first started getting migrines, I was getting 3-4 bad ones a week. Now, either due to effective medication or maybe my migraines have just slowed down over time, I only get mild ones about every 2 weeks and maybe a bad one every month or so.

I was having issues with severe anxiety a few years back. I had some success using Paxil, but had to get off it due to side effects as I got to a higher dose. While the Paxil gave me a 'break', I learned some methods of dealing with the anxiety and was doing fairly well (yoga etc.). With some stressful life changes, and an increase in migraines, I started having issues again. I read about 5-htp, and started taking it a few months ago. It seems to be working quite well for me. It seems to be helping my anxiety, and my sleep a ton. The worst part with my anxiety is that I go weeks without sleeping properly. I have never slept as well as I have since taking 5-htp.

tdu, what is 5-htp? Please explain.Thanks.

You can find other threads around this forum on it.

5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) is an amino acid that is the intermediate step between tryptophan and the important brain chemical serotonin. There is a massive amount of evidence that suggests that low serotonin levels are a common consequence of modern living. The lifestyle and dietary practices of many people living in this stress-filled era results in lowered levels of serotonin within the brain. As a result, many people are overweight, crave sugar and other carbohydrates, experience bouts of depression, get frequent headaches, and have vague muscle aches and pain. All of these maladies are correctable by raising brain serotonin levels.

There are a ton of links if you Google search. This one seems to have a decent write up: http://www.naturesnutrition.com/SKU/32826.htm

It's one of those treatments a lot of people don't 'hang in there' with though. Having taken Paxil in the past, and knowing it took a few months to work I started 5-HTP expecting a similar timeline. And that was pretty much what happened. It almost immediately helped with my sleep problems, and within a few months was really helping with my anxiety. And as mentioned, if there was one time in my life to see if something was working for my anxiety it's right now. I have some major stresses ranging from bad stress (health, injury) to good stresses (bought my first house).

Unfortunately as with any other natural treatments, there is a lot of conflicting info and I am sure there hasn't been enough studies. I can only list how it's worked for me.

Thank You for your explanation tdu, I did look it up, and it looks inetresting.
I am always worried about taking anything new, since I always get bad s/effects, so I like to research everything as much a possible.

I do not have anxiety issues I just get stressed at times, since with various health issues I find it difficult to deal with day to day practical issues.

Mini wrote:Thank You for your explanation tdu, I did look it up, and it looks inetresting.
I am always worried about taking anything new, since I always get bad s/effects, so I like to research everything as much a possible.

I do not have anxiety issues I just get stressed at times, since with various health issues I find it difficult to deal with day to day practical issues.

That is totally understandable.

In my case, I am 35 this year and have had migraines since I was 7. So I have lost so many years to migraines, I an willing to experiment.

As with others in this thread I get in the horrible circle where you don't know if anxiety is triggering migraines, or migraines are triggering anxiety. One thing I do know for sure is that the anxiety affects my sleep big time, and if my sleep is screwed up I am guaranteed to end up with migraines. Treating the anxiety seems to help with the sleep, so I treat it.

I don't want to be back on the prescribed meds though. They did help, but I had some side effects. The bigger issue is the side effects never went away when I stopped the meds.