Many individuals sometimes experience seizures, defined as a situation where individuals lose their sense of control and begin jerking and shaking, sometimes even fainting. Oftentimes, the cause of these seizures is due to neurological conditions, like irregular electrical activity in the brain. However, in certain cases, the cause of these seizures is psychological conditions, such as stress or anxiety. These seizures are known as psychogenic seizures or blackout. It is important to note that psychogenic seizures/blackouts do not contain irregularities in brain activities, yet still occur.
What are Psychogenic Seizures/Blackouts?
A psychogenic seizure/psychogenic blackout is an attack that individuals may experience where they may faint or begin seizing due to psychological effects. During the attack, individuals may no longer be able to control their bowel or bladder. They may also go blank or stop being aware of their surroundings. These types of seizures usually take a longer time than epileptic seizures.
When individuals regain consciousness after the seizure or blackout, they also might not remember what happened to them. The fact that these symptoms are very similar to epileptic seizures makes it hard to distinguish between the two. This can be problematic because, in many cases, people are misdiagnosed, and this can lead to them taking wrong medications that do not help.
Psychogenic seizures/blackouts are quite frequent. They can occur multiple times a day, or at a certain time everyday. When the attack occurs, the individual’s eyes could close firmly, and the eyelids could flutter. In many cases, the attack could occur when one is hyperventilating, or breathing rapidly and heavily.
Causes of Psychogenic Seizures/Blackouts
A psychogenic attack occurs as a result of stress or anxiety. Although it displays physical effects, physical conditions do not cause the seizures. In many cases, they even occur as an automatic reaction to someone who has been through a traumatic experience that they cannot accept. This involuntary reaction happens because the brain cannot handle the stress or, in cases of traumatic experience, the triggers. So, when a person has a recurring traumatic memory that keeps surfacing, their brain will shut down to, more or less, take a break from thinking about such a damaging situation. The trauma that a person has been through can be recent or from a long time ago.
Examples of stressful situations include problems with relationships (familial or otherwise), a huge change (whether changing countries or jobs), financial troubles, and many other things. All these issues can be difficult to deal with and do lead to an attack in some cases. It is also important to note that psychogenic attacks sometimes occur in random, non-stressful situations, which is ironic considering it is mainly stress that causes these attacks. A person could be resting, and the attack could occur.
In addition to stress or trauma, individuals suffering from chronic pain are at a higher probability to experience psychogenic seizures. To sum up, a number of issues and disorders are correlated with psychogenic seizures: mood disorders, anxiety, PTSD, a history of emotional, sexual, or physical abuse, stressful familial situations, psychosis, dissociative disorders, personality disorders, traumatic brain injury, substance abuse, and behavioral problems like aggression or anger.
Treatments
One of the key elements of treatment is the understanding of one’s condition. A person suffering from this may react with anger and denial. However, it is important to learn more about this condition and move towards accepting it. After understanding its entirety, they would be one step closer to treating the condition. Counseling come in as one of the main possible treatments to PNES. If the individual’s source of PNES is due to traumatic abuse, it is crucial to seek professional help.
If you have experienced any seizures of this type, do not hesitate to contact a doctor to understand what exactly your condition is. Do not treat this condition as a mere inconvenience and decrease its importance. You should understand your condition to be able to treat it.