Anxiety causing 'bug crawling' sensation

I'm not sure if this should go in the PTSD or Anxiety forum, but since it's anxiety induced I'll try here.

From events in my past I've been left with PTSD, and unfortunately there are parts of my work that cause PTSD-related anxiety symptoms to flare up. For years avoidance has been the biggest resulting problem of those symptoms. Through sheer will I have been able to push through it and minimize my amount of avoidance, but a new symptom emerged a few weeks ago.

It began after a particularly bad week where in all my dreams I was reliving the source of my PTSD. Upon waking, those memories relentlessly pushed themselves to the forefront of my mind... all day, every day, for that whole week.

Ever since then, whenever I now push through my avoidance issues I begin to experience a physical sensation that feels like bugs crawling all over my body and through my hair.

This only occurs when I am attempting to do the parts of my work that cause those PTSD anxiety problems. If I stop, the sensation slowly goes away over about 30 minutes, at which point it goes away completely and I'm fine.

This only occurs when I approach the parts of my work that cause the PTSD. If I avoid that, I'm completely unaffected, but avoiding it is really not an option. As you can imagine, it is extremely distracting when I'm trying to concentrate but am constantly brushing my face, arms, legs, hair etc in a futile attempt to rid myself of that sensation.

Has anybody experienced this before? Anxiety induced bug crawling sensation? If so, how did you manage to rid yourself of it?

I should mention that I'm not on any medications, so it's not a side-effect of anything. And it's not real bugs... if it were, there would be signs on my body, and it wouldn't only occur with (and stop after) the anxiety flare ups.

Hello TrBn

Thank you for this post -

I had a look at the Blogs here on PsychCentral to see if I could find something that may be appropriate to your post; based on how I have personally interpreted what you have written -

I found this for you that might be interesting for you to have a look at -

Tactile Hallucination » Encyclopedia of Psychology | Encyclopedia of Psychology

Hallucination » Encyclopedia of Psychology | Encyclopedia of Psychology

Hang in there and I hope you are able to find some kind of resolution soon.

Thanks for those links, it gave me a name for it rather than 'weird bug crawling sensation'

After reading those pages I spent a couple hours researching 'formication' to see what fixes are out there, but from what I've seen there doesn't seem to be anything if it's due to a psychological cause. It can be a side-effect of certain medications or a withdrawal symptom over certain drugs, but I don't take either. It can also be a hormone-related symptom of menopause, but I'm not old enough for that, and I'd be the wrong gender too.

It may be something that I just have to learn to deal with like I have with the other anxiety symptoms. With any luck it won't be something that remains forever, since it had only begun after that bad week.

Thanks again!

it's horrible.

i've had it too, but for a completely diffrent reason

insects are my biggist phobia and i sometimes feel them crawling on me in the dead of night or in winter, even though they arn't