MVP causing severe anxiety attacks?

Hi everyone, I was diagnosed with MVP with mild to moderate regurgitation while in the hospital in 2021. I’m 30 now and I’ve always been symptomatic but so far it’s been pretty manageable - palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness and feeling “heavy” sometimes, but it’s always been mild and improved with some rest so it hasn’t impacted my life much.

Last week, I had a weird episode where I was laying on my couch relaxed when I suddenly started feeling tightness in my chest and my head felt strange, which quickly turned to tingling in all of my limbs at once. It got so bad I couldn’t walk so of course we went to ER. Testing didn’t find anything serious thankfully, so I was discharged and they told me it was anxiety, which I thought was strange because I don’t struggle with anxiety and have never had a panic attack. Over the next week I still had random episodes of vertigo and tingling in my left arm, but it came and went pretty quickly.

Last night I had a more severe event - started with very sudden tingling in my left arm, then the racing heartbeat, vertigo, and difficulty breathing started. I focused on my breathing to prevent hyperventilating and tried to calm down, but sitting or laying down caused the tingling to spread to my legs and I was losing my balance a bit when I walked around. After 2 hours it still hadn’t improved so back to the ER, more testing this time, still ruled out any emergent issues with my brain or heart. They prescribed me an anxiety med to take as needed and propanol.

The ER doctor seemed to think it’s likely that the physical symptoms from MVP are triggering an anxiety response and it just becomes a vicious cycle - it just seems strange to me because I haven’t mentally felt anxious at all to trigger the start of any of these episodes. I’ll start the propanol later today and hopefully it helps but this has been an incredibly scary situation to deal with. If anyone has advice for how to manage more severe symptoms, stories to share just for reassurance, or tips for starting propanol I’d love to hear them.

Posted Jun 12, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

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