Are those panic attacks or something else?

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Since I was around 9 years old, I started having those mysterious 'attacks'. When I have these attacks, I completely loose my ability to sense any directions, to know where to walk, to make sense out of spoken material, or to draw any information from what I see to plan my actions. Imagine if you saw what is in front of your eyes, but it didn't make any sense at all. I don't know where I am, I don't know what's happening, I'm not able to make any sense out of anything. It's like your brain and body sees nothing, but your eyes see an image. It's pretty hard to describe. In other words, I completely shut down, and just sit and wait for it to pass. Until it passes, I'm not able to function at all, except to maybe walk in the direction in which someone leads me.

The first attack I had came with almost no warning at all. Well, I felt detached from reality for about 1 hour before this attack occurred. When this attack started, everything stopped making sense, I didn't know where I was, what was happening, where the directions are, etc. I saw what was in front of my eyes but wasn't able to act based on what I saw. I was also unable to think. I think the way I describe those attacks make them less severe than they are in reality. During these attacks, I'm not able to do anything other than maybe walk in the direction someone assists me to walk to. By assist, I mean physically assist.

During these attacks, I'm not able to function and block off completely for about 20-25 minutes, but my 'consciousness/senses' are still impaired for the next 4 hours or so, and still a little bit impaired for the next 8 hours. By impaired I mean that when I walk, I feel that something is moving onto me, and that my body isn't really here.

I think I developed a mild agoraphobia because of this attacks, because I started fearing having those attacks in some places, such as when you have to follow someone with a group during an excursion and generally when you have to do something while a lot of people are around, such as walk into a class with lots of people (this is when I fear that it might happen the most, as if it happens, I won't be able to hide it), and such. I think I actually had panic attacks as described by the symptoms when I feared that those attacks might come in these places, although rather rarely.

However, I don't fear going out on the street, or walking down the street, or going to a store, etc. I just fear the situations which I described, because I won't be able to hide my attack here.

I thought that these were panic attacks for a while as I read about agoraphobia and panic attacks, but the more I read about panic attacks, the less they seemed like what I have. Panic attacks seem far less intense than what I have. Then, when I had such an attack for the last time in front of a military base (I had an excursion there, I don't work in the military), I was taken to an ambulance (which belongs to the military base), where blood tests were taken, where blood pressure, heart beat frequency and such was measured. They said that this didn't seem like a panic attack at all, and that it seems more like epilepsy.

I also had an appointment with a psychologist who's specified in panic disorders and cognitive-behavioral therapies, and she shook her head and said that I should take my blood sugar levels, and implied that these don't seem like panic attacks at all. I told her that I've taken blood sugar tests already about a week ago, which turned out to be normal. She said that still, I should re-take them and that those don't seem like panic attacks. She had that confused look on her face.

So what are those 'attacks'?

They seem like Aspie shutdowns.

If they are, then why did I only start having them around the age of 8-9 or so?

If it were hypoglycemia then wouldn't raising your blood sugar make the symptoms go away fairly quickly?

Could be shutdowns, too, but then you'd need to look for environmental factors that changed in some way at the time you starting experiencing this.

My first thought was that it sounds like you're having seizures, but I'm not a doctor.....You said that it was suggested you might have epilepsy--have you had an EEG? Might be worth going to the doctor about it again.

Same thought.

It seems your brain might be temporarily disconnecting the recognition process from the perceiving process. I read an article about this that was maybe posted a while back on here and I've experienced this complete meaninglessness of input a few times after waking up but not regularly like you describe or for the length that you describe.

One of the psychologists I visited said that I should have an EEG as well. I think I'm going to have one pretty soon, when I have the time to.
I'm not sure if those are shutdowns. If shutdowns and meltdowns are the same thing, those aren't shutdowns at all. During meltdown I just punch my wall and am extremely angry, and such.

Do you happen to have a link to this article? Thanks.

Sounds like shutting down and disassociating. When it happens to me I usually can't move I feel like the room is huge. Im super confused and sometime I'll cry. It's like I leave my body and the world starts to move really fast without me. I can be terrifying. Hope you find an answer.

During sugar tests for Reactive Hypoglycemia, the test often induces hypoglycemia for me, which is much like a more lengthy partial seizure of epilepsy, though the Limbic sensations are not as nearly intense as during a Limbic seizure.

My occassional heart dysrhythmias are more shorter than epileptic seizures, with very brief loss of consciousness during heavy excerise (I stopped lifting heavy weights because they hit hard when I drop them during the brief loss).

The seizures of epilepsy I have usually meet the typical rule of "less than 5 minutes" for epileptic seizures, but without anti-epiletic medication, during strong clusters of seizures, another seizure can start before the previous one fully concludes, as in Status Epilepticus.

A couple of my favorite references for differentials are:

The differential for "Panic Disorder (panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, DSM-IV-TR #300.01, 300.21)" versus epilepsy, of:

"Simple partial seizures may occasionally be characterized by a panic attack. Clues to this diagnosis include not only the occurrence, at other times, of other seizure types (e.g., grand mal or complex partial) but also the exquisitely paroxysmal nature of the ictal panic attack: whereas panic attacks in panic disorder take minutes to crescendo, the ictal anxiety peaks within seconds. An EEG may or may not be helpful in such cases, as it may be normal even while the patient is having the seizure,": http://www.brown.edu/Courses/BI_278/Oth ... /panic.pdf

This seems like a good guide when Nonconvulsive status epilepticus is totally excluded.

The possibility of nonconvulsive status epilepticus frustrates many differentials. The book "Nonconvulsive Status Epilepticus" By Peter W. Kaplan, Frank W. Drislane (2008), often has a preview of moderately "uncommon" confusions beyond the simpler differentials:
(preview often available at books-dot-google with the search "epilepsy Lyme seizures Kaplan Drislane")

A book with many sections available at ncbi is "Imitators of Epilepsy" at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books?term= ... 20imitepil[book]

Tadzio

That is what it sounds like to me too. Not everyone has shutdowns for their entire life. They can come later on. Panic attacks are more aggressive and can literally make you feel like you are physically about to die. Chest pains can almost feel like heart attacks sometimes, difficult to breathe, sweats, etc. They are so terrifying, they can cause the afflicted person to panic even more, thereby making their symptoms even worse. Some people go to the hospital thinking they are about to die (I know of people personally who have).

I personally do not think they sound like seizures as someone mentioned. I used to have petit-mal seizures. You don't see things in front of you, you completely lose consciousness. It is not as though the world doesn't make sense, it is as though you simply don't exist at all. When you snap out of them, you can't even remember that you've had them (I know because of accidents that occured like almost falling off a swing making me realize that I was gone for an unspecified length of time). My grandmother had grand-mal seizures and she could feel them coming on sometimes, but once they were there, it was like me: you have no idea what is happening, for how long, etc, and you don't remember once it is done.

My first shutdown was when I was 12. They happen when you can longer deal with the stress of the environment. Sometimes it happens and you don't know why. My next one was when I was 22. Now they're quite frequent.

I'm epileptic too and I do relate to what you're describing. Seizures are an over excitation of neurotransmitters that can temporarily stop some areas of your brain working properly or it might causes some areas to activate that don't need to, i.e you have involuntary movements, have visual distortions, hear sounds not there, lose awareness, have mood shifts, the senses get all cross wired, etc. I get breathing problems too when the seizures are the most severe.
The time you described experiencing them makes me think they are seizures, because with me they're usually over after half an hour. That includes the temporary paralysis that follows them.

I think there's a connection between autistic shutdowns and seizures. So even if you don't have epilepsy you could still have shutdowns.

How's your short term memory after this happens?

They are many types of seizures.

A neurologist once said that tingling is a very mild seizure.

There is temporal lobe epilepsy where the person affected has auditory and visual hallucinations and a change in behaviour. But no involuntary movements or loss of consciousness.

There are simple partial seizures that mimics autistic stimming but is uncontrollable. They are known as automatisms.

There is complex partial where people lose the ability to move, may have tremors. Those ones are especially nasty.

And I have had countless clonic tonic (gran mal) seizures where I don't lose consciousness. I could describe you a clonic tonic in detail.

Just because it's not common doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I had once lost a whole hour of time while lying in bed and just staring at nothing in particular.

My short term memory is always horrible, but it simply turns off during those 'attacks'. Like, the short term memory function doesn't even exist. Very often I felt like I was dying when having those attacks as well, but not always. Only when I obsessed with health issues and had those attacks in the same time. When I was obsessed with health issues, I thought that the attack I had was me passing out because of, say, some serious illness, so I was

I can also remember what happened during those attacks, so I'm not sure if they're epileptic seizures.

Oh, and what exactly are those 'autistic shutdowns'?

Simple partial seizures of epilepsy do not generally interfere with short term memory.

Complex partial seizures of epilepsy do generally interfere with short term memory. Deja vu "memories" may result as may partial amnesia for events around and during the complex partial seizure.

When partial seizures are fairly strong, long after-effects may result (post-ictal sensations and impairments). After strong partial seizures, I often experienced Todd's Paralysis on the left side of my body. http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/todd ... alysis.htm

Heart arrythmias and near zero breathing for many minutes after/amongst seizures would often cause the most alarm for Emergency Responders, while I would be variously re-entering and leaving consciousness again and again during strong and close clusters of seizures. Most of my post-ictal phenomena are passive, while other people's post-ictals are sometimes "active", with post-ictal "rage" and "inept attack" behaviours resulting in the most dangers from other observers/responders.

Observers often cannot distinguish between my partial seizures versus my painless/painful migraines (having epilepsy all my life, and having frequent migraines for three decades, I can). My migraines are random and also aggravated by boredom and certain narrow range of stimuli, while my epileptic seizures are totally random daily and with period strong clusters about every four weeks.

Both my epileptic seizures and migraines are often confounded by observers as similar to "shutdowns", but by my internal viewpoint, only the aspects of aggravated migraines overlap with the rather vague criteria/descriptions of "autistic shutdowns".

The journal article "Future affective technology for autism and emotion communication" by Rosalind W. Picard (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 12 December 2009 vol. 364 no. 1535 3575-3584), includes moderately formal and informal descriptions of autistic "overload", "shutdown", etc.: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ ... /3575.long Some of the descriptive labels imply nearly opposite meanings, as in an "overload of boredom" or "shutdown from boredom" of the overlapping vague criteria/descriptions of my migraine phenomena within the criteria of autism phenomena.

Tadzio