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Headaches - But Why?? (Probably Anxiety) (EDITED)

4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago2,328 words

I've been having a lot of distracting headaches recently, and I'm not sure whether they're due to anxiety/depression or my brain condition... (EDIT: I just talked on the phone with a hospital nurse...)

Usually, while doing dev work, I divide my days into clear chunks: morning, afternoon, and evening, with meals at the start of each one. I've set up (and frequently update) four playlists of music 90 minutes long, which I put on while I work both to focus and to measure the time I'm working for. So in the morning I do one 90-minute playlist's worth of work, then a break, then another 90 minutes, and the same again in the afternoon. In the evenings I try and do other stuff, like drawing or music composition, or playing games, or just 'relaxing' (procrastinating on YouTube and Reddit).

I can't always manage to work for all four sessions - it depends on the day and what I have to do - but I'm usually able to do at least some work each day. Sometimes I'll lose the whole morning block but make up for it in the afternoon, or I'll do enough in the morning that the day doesn't feel wasted even if I'm unable to work in the afternoon.

Usually the reason I'm unable to work some days is due what I've been assuming is depression: an anhedonic fatigue that makes everything feel joyless and robs me of all energy and motivation to do anything. I've seen a few threads on Reddit over the past few weeks about depression (I imagine the prolonged pandemic is really taking its toll on a lot of people), and another one I saw today - ∞ "Depression takes away your willingness to fight against depression itself" ∞ - has this as the top comment:



I feel bad when I'm not able to work because of depression since I know I'm taking longer than I'd like to with Atonal Dreams - and finishing it is a goal I need to reach just to know whether or not to stick on this path or change - but it really does feel like I 'have no choice', or like even though I desperately want to do certain things, I just can't bring myself to do it. Then that leads to feelings of guilt that probably only compound the condition.

These past two or three weeks, I've been unable to stick to the schedule at all; my life's felt even more lost than usual. The main reason is what I need to do: I need to prepare for an alpha test of Atonal Dreams. Another is the vaccine that I had, which led to physical symptoms and a lot of anxiety about physical symptoms, as I wrote about ∞ apparently less than a week ago ∞.

For the alpha test, I wanted to connect my Patreon account and Discord server, so patrons from the former could gain automated access to the latter. I dreaded this due to traumatic experiences running a community in the past, but I finally got around to establishing the link yesterday and - as the sensible part of my mind expected - it wasn't bad at all. If anything it was uplifting talking with people a bit and knowing that I'd done something that I needed to! I actually look forward to hearing how people feel about the game once I can enable access to it.

For that, though, I still need to create a Steam page, and I hoped I'd achieve that today, but haven't. Not due to fear or anything in this case; it's just so tedious uploading to Steam - see ∞ this page ∞ for an idea of part of the convoluted process - and the weight of the thought has just felt too heavy. (An itch.io upload would be way easier, but I need to put it on Steam anyway to start accumulating wishlists, so I might as well do that now.)

Instead I've got a crippling headache, which I've had for most of the day. It's a distracting mental vortex that sucks me in, flooding my mind with worries about what it could be and dark futures where it's a harbinger of something worse.

I think it's anxiety, but it's a literal fact that I've spent a lot of time in hospital recently because of a very real tumour in my brain. I used to get these pressure headaches all the time - it feels like a hand pressing down on top of my head - and was always 'reassured' that it was from 'staring at that screen all day!' or it was 'all in my head' (ha), just anxiety, etc... It turned out to be hydrocephalus, though - from the tumour blocking cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow in my brain - and my ∞ ventricles ∞ are apparently permanently enlarged due to being engorged for so long.

I had a ∞ third ventriculostomy ∞ - an operation where a hole was poked in my brain to create a new path for CSF to flow - a couple of years before the main surgery in late 2018 (it still amazes me that this surgery took half an hour but the other took something ridiculous like thirteen(?) hours even though both involve cutting into and exploring the brain). The literature about these says they can fail, so what if it's failed in some way??

The literature also says - from what I can tell, though most studies seem to be on children since hydrocephalus is mostly seen and treated in those - that whether or not it's failed is obvious fairly soon after the procedure, and it's been several years since I had mine done. I've also had additional surgery and a bunch of regular checkups - including scans - since then which have found no concerning signs.

But what if it's that anyway??

I'm a hypochondriac. Are you a hypochondriac? Do you google every medical symptom you ever have? I always have, and it used to be that I was paranoid about my headaches being a brain tumour since that was the worst possible outcome. A lot of neurotic people share that worry for the same reasons... but very few of those get the news that their fears were actually accurate. So even if I can acknowledge that my worries are probably just hypochondria, it's a whole lot harder to shake them off completely if they've actually been confirmed to be serious before. It's no longer just "what if it's a neurological issue?", it's "what if it's a neurological issue again??"...

I just have to try to focus on the evidence that suggests it's not that. I've been really anxious recently in general due to the stress from past trauma, the thought of the tedium of the Steam upload, the change from the more comfortable creative dev work, the vaccine and going out into the world for the first time in months to have it, anxiety about my anxiety condition... I've got every reason to have headaches from all that! It makes sense! So why can't my subconscious mind just accept that and relax?

Another sign is that I'm constantly noticing that my muscles are tense; I consciously relax them when I notice, but get lost in thought again and the tension's back next time I notice. I'm fidgeting a lot, chewing my lip, all these other physical signs of anxiety. It's obviously anxiety!

But anxiety is what leads to all the overthinking. I notice a thought, which brings anxiety along with it, then the increased arousal allows in more thoughts and they all swarm together to create this consuming cloud, this spiral of rumination...

I've been trying to distract myself to see if that would help. I've been playing Bravely Default II, in bed away from my computer, but I've been noticing my head feeling much worse from doing that, and I wasn't sure why so I fell into another vortex of 'maybes' and 'what if's that eventually led to this post. Is it because I've been resting on my head on a weird angle on my pillow? The entry point for the surgery was on the back of my skull, so maybe putting pressure on it is a bad thing that causes brain issues?? Or maybe the angle from half-lying-down was causing odd CSF flow and hydrocephalus symptoms??? Or is it because I've been playing it with my glasses off and that leads to eye strain or something????

Ugh, that kind of thing. If you're the sort of person who ruminates, you'll know how it is. Maybe a big reason I get lost in the spiral is because such 'distractions' aren't actually all that distracting; while grinding battles, my mind wanders, and attaches to and exacerbates every little physical symptoms until I'm frantically googling whether headaches feel like this for other people and wondering whether I'll have dropped dead before I go to sleep tonight.

The best distractions turn out to be meals - which I eat alone while watching stuff on my computer - and my symptoms (importantly!!) lift during these. Again, making it clear they're anxiety-rooted. But I only eat three times a day - I've never had snacks between meals - so they only provide limited relief. I find myself looking forward to them though; "I'll be alright when I can eat next". Weird.

I'll be having another scan later this month, so I've been hoping I'll make it until then!! But another thing I need to remind myself is that very similar symptoms have happened before, after the surgery but before a checkup, meaning I've had my brain scanned after them and nothing unusual was found. BUT WHAT IF THIS TIME IT'S-

Bleh. It just goes on and on! It's awful, having anxiety. I wonder how things like this are to read if you don't have some constant chatter in your mind fretting about every little thing.

BUT WHAT IF IT'S NOT JUST ANXIETY AND-

Sigh...

Anyway. I wanted to write this largely just to distract myself... or rather I suppose to face it head on and present the demons with some more sensible thoughts, maybe? It does help to write things out. I still feel very tense and my head's still aching, but I'm less concerned after looking at these things that it's a sign of more brain issues. Probably.

Because of all these issues piling on at once - this feels like such a bad time because of them all - I've been trying to use both my morning and evening blocks to relax and do non-work stuff - SINCE I CAN - but I've been hoping to achieve at least something during the afternoon one. I don't know if I'll push myself tomorrow, though. I mean I could get started on the Steam upload process - starting is always the hardest part - but... eh, maybe I'll just see how I feel about it, and if it's too mentally daunting, I'll do it next week.

I hate that I'm not just some perfectly professional and put-together person who could churn work out, but annoyingly I'm a human with a very flawed mind - it's amazing really I'm able to do anything I have done despite it - so hopefully you understand. I'm sure I'm more frustrated about these set-backs than anyone!

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EDIT: I've lost literally the whole of today to worrying constantly about this, annoyingly!! I've had a head pressure feeling all day, and I really don't know whether it's due to just anxiety - including hypochondria and psychosomatic/nocebo effects - or whether it really is something related to my brain condition.

It'd be really odd if it was the brain thing right now with all the other anxiety-inducing factors, but I wondered all day whether to call the nurse just to maybe get some reassurance, or to move my next checkup (scheduled a couple of weeks from now) to sooner.

My anxiety had ramped up over the course of the day to the point where I couldn't bring myself to call, but my mum did because despite being a 33-year-old man I'm incapable of doing that myself apparently. Basically she was just told that I should call a nurse though.

While trying to work myself up to actually do that, I thought no, it's too obviously anxiety-related, I'll only be wasting their time, I'll just wait and see if it gets better by itself...

I got a call from the nurse anyway though and talked a bit... though if anything it only intensified the anxiety because now it's serious... I was told that maybe the scan can be moved to be sooner, though, so that's good... but chances are it'll still not be until some time next week.

Ugh, I keep shaking, I can't keep calm at all... I hate having an anxiety condition. It really is a constant battle between a sane and sensible ego, and a frantic, insane id which my ego's not exactly winning at the moment...

Hopefully this won't progress to anything worse though. I can't bear the thought of going through the whole treatment mess again. Or maybe I'll just end up dying. Ugh.