I'm so tired of not knowing what's going on, anyone in my same boat between "seizures" and "pseudo seizures"?
Since I was two years old, I've had "seizure" activity (you'll see why I use quotes later).
I know it was serious enough that I had to go to the hospital often for EEGs and MRIs and such. When I was 7, I have to stay homebound for a month connected to a machine and with a fanny pack that had other parts of the machinery. I remember some seizures from when I was little but my mom says they were happening almost monthly and I have no recollection of that.
Then starting in middle school, it seems like I would have one a year. But they were always triggered by something that made me queasy like watching a graphic scene in a movie or getting my blood drawn. It really intensified after my little died in the sense that things made me queasy so much more easily so I know to avoid that now. In high school they put me on a couple of different anti seizure meds but it just made me sleepy, more depressed from my sisters death, and made me nightmares so intense. I know it was the medication because the intensity lessened after I stopped medication.
Then for the first time, when I was in college, and had convulsions after getting my blood drawn, did I hear the term "pseudo" seizure.
Fine, whatever, I don't care, as long as I can avoid the passing out and shaking and peeing myself.
I moved to California and picked up cannabis and then wow, I didn't have any seizures for almost six years.
Then it started again, even though I still use cannabis. I had one a year and a half ago, passing out and shaking. But it was after I cut my finger. But a few months before that I had a sleep study because I was so tired all the time no matter how much I slept and they noted there was "some" seizure activity but nothing to be concerned about?! What?!?!
I just always feel like doctors can't give me answers. They either say it's pseudo seizures and I do it to myself (literally what they have said) and then when a scan does show seizure activity, they just shrug their shoulders and say oh well.
Last night I had that really intense feeling of waking up from a seizure, you know where you hear a lot of sound but it's muffled and getting louder and louder and you can't move. and then when i did "wake up" I had the funny feeling in my mouth I've had all these years after having convulsions.
This one was intense but I do have on and off nightmares about having "seizures" where I really feel like I can physically feel that feeling of doom and sinking out and then back in.
But I don't even feel like I can go to a doctor about this. Online searching shows this might be a focal seizure.
Sometimes I feel like maybe I just have ptsd from having seizures when I was little but I wonder if that lowers my bar to have an actual one, like a focal one. One doctor at a clinic one time suggested that my strong vasovagal reflex lowers my blood pressure so much that my brain is without oxygen and that triggers a seizure.
I don't know but sometimes I just get so scared it can happen to me out of nowhere, whatever "it" is and I am so tired of going in circles with doctor, even worse when the doctor tells me I just do it to myself and am panicking.
Anyone else out there going through something similar?
Posted Aug 12, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC