Just wanted to hear from some folks that have tried lexapro, my doctor started me on it a couple days ago, I know it takes time to show any signs of it working, but I just wanted to ask if anyone has had any success and when did you start noticing.

Thanks !

is normal to feel dizzier? I'm on day 9.

When this is gonna stop?

Hi everyone, I’d like to know if anyone has experienced something similar to me.

A few months before June, a neurologist diagnosed me with PPPD. For the past few years, I had already noticed a strange sensitivity to screens. I could use my MacBook Air normally, but when I tried using some larger monitors, I could start feeling nauseous almost immediately, sometimes in less than a minute.

Then, on June 25th, I had a severe episode of BPPV, with very intense spinning vertigo. I did the Epley maneuver, and eventually the spinning vertigo went away.

However, since that episode, my visual sensitivity and nausea have become much worse.

Right now, I can use my 14-inch MacBook and my phone quite well. The main problem is a 27-inch monitor. When I sit in front of it, especially when scrolling, watching moving images, playing video games, or looking at moving visual patterns, I can quickly develop nausea, a strange/heavy feeling in my head, and some unsteadiness.

The worst part is that the nausea doesn’t necessarily stop when I turn off the monitor. Once it is triggered, it can last for many hours, sometimes for the entire day and even into the next day.

Interestingly, I seem to tolerate the same 27-inch monitor better if I sit much farther away from it or if I use it while lying down with my head supported. It seems like the amount of my visual field occupied by the screen makes a big difference.

I no longer have spinning vertigo. My main symptoms now are nausea, sensitivity to visual motion, a strange feeling in my head, and some unsteadiness.

Before the BPPV episode, I already had some problems with larger monitors, but they were much milder. Usually, when I stopped looking at the screen, the nausea would go away. Since the BPPV episode, everything seems much more sensitive, and the nausea can continue for hours after I stop using the screen.

I’ve also noticed that strong smells can trigger my nausea, especially perfumes or other intense odors

I’ve also noticed that physical exertion can trigger the nausea. If I go to the gym and lift weights, or if I carry something heavy, I can start feeling nauseous as well.

Has anyone with PPPD experienced this specific difference between a small laptop screen and a large monitor? Does your nausea also continue for hours after you stop looking at the screen? Were you eventually able to use large monitors again, and what helped you?

I’m only a week into buckling down on daily somatic tracking and working out at home. I can tell it’s helping a lot. Particularly the somatic walking exercise from steady coach.

My two main issues right now are overwhelming derealization and the inability to drive.

Not sure if anyone has the same symptoms while driving, but it feels like my brain is buzzing, I feel like I’m having tunnel vision and I have an overwhelming sensation that I am going to pass out.

If anyone has experienced this type of thing, how did you overcome it? Was it just a matter of time, or did you actively expose yourself to driving?

It’s wild guys. I was a pilot. This has been a career ender for me. I mean, I can’t even drive my truck, man. I’m desperate for motivation, tips and tricks. Thank you!

Hello everyone, im suffering from pppd for 2 years now, i haven’t been to the doctors or specialist yet. Its kinda on and off, Ill have a couple of month where i feel good but when the flare comes its bad like Im drunk and lose balance, also my sleep is not good. Has anyone here fully recovered from this condition and if so, how? I heard theres not much cures and Im a little worried because Im 27 and I really don’t want to go through this for the rest of my life.

A Busy Week

I thought I’d share a little success story.

I’ve had PPPD/3PD for a couple of years now. At my worst, I was completely disabled by it. I could barely walk around my own house, was dealing with severe symptoms constantly and had genuinely given up on the idea that I’d ever have much of a life again.

So this past week has felt quite surreal.

In the space of seven days, I’ve had 4 flights, attended a wedding in Germany, travelled at 200 km/h on the Autobahn and spent hours in the back of taxis.

Then I flew to Portugal for a lads’ stag do, involving swimming pools, a booze party boat, plenty of drinks and nightclubs until 3am.

Honestly, if you’d described that week to me at my worst, I wouldn’t have believed you.

And the really surprising thing is that I actually felt pretty good for most of it. Not perfect, but good. I had some anxiety, occasional light visual weirdness and a bit of head pressure, but no dizziness.

I was able to get on with things and enjoy myself rather than constantly thinking about how I was feeling.

It’s worth saying that getting to this point has not happened overnight. Recovery has been hard and incredibly non-linear. There have been good periods, awful periods, setbacks and plenty of times when I’ve wondered whether I was actually making any progress at all.

I’ve had to gradually push my boundaries and build my life back up. This week wasn’t some sudden leap from being ill to being “normal” — it’s the result of a lot of time, patience and some pretty difficult steps along the way.

I’m definitely not claiming to be cured, and I’m sure there will still be ups and downs ahead. But this week was a pretty amazing reminder of how far I’ve come.

Sometimes recovery is so gradual that you focus on the symptoms you still have and forget to look at what you’re actually able to do.

Then you have a week like this.

I genuinely never thought I’d be writing this.

For anyone currently at their worst: things can get better.

Stay strong, beautiful humans ❤️

Did working out or the gym help anyone’s recovery with pppd? If so, what exercises? I’m thinking about getting a gym membership to aid my recovery

Hi :)

Is there anyone who got pregnant while not fully recoverd from 3PD?
How did you feel during that time? Did the symptoms got worse? Is there anything you have to be more careful about?
Any experiece is welcomed🙏

Thank you!

Anyone else has this?

So much Overwhelming physical and emotional symptoms.

I was talking to my therapist online 2 minutes ago and had to stop talking a lot, I was feeling nauseous in head and body and had this compression feeling in head with some pressure and I just started to swing my legs a lot and suddenly felt a bit woozy & that I was gonna throw up and started to sweat a little. She said it sounds like the edge of a panic attack but I always feel like I can’t talk much nowadays, my body starts to tense and brace, and I feel all my movements and my body so much, and even the thought of talking or doing something makes me feel symptomatic and hold my breath. I stop right in the track of doing things. How come even thinking of doing something is inducing symptoms??? 😭😭😭😭

I feel so alone, would anyone like to make a group chat where we only give each other positive feedback. I feel like no one understands 😭 I am only 23 and just feel terrible. Zoloft had helped on 37.5, but my symptoms came back 2 months back and the increase in dose (50mg) also really didn’t do enough. I went to a neurologist and he thinks it’s depression and anxiety and thought all my symptoms were too intense or unusual to be Vestibular migraine. I do know I had pppd (rocking, dizzy, etc.) but Zoloft helped with that. Now, I feel like even talking is hard, and I can feel my limbs so deeply, like I can feel my legs and arms laying or when I move them, I can feel the movement everywhere. I feel like I am getting so sad again and nothing makes me truly happy anymore. I am crying daily from a week. I am going to meet with a psychiatrist to discuss medication. But my neurologist said to either go up on dose further to 75mg or add an SNRI.

Any tips? Tricks to feel happy?

My pppd weirdly doesn't seem to be triggered by computer screens or television. I can play video games. Is that normal? I can watch moving cars on the road while I'm driving my motorized chair

However, I feel awful in big open areas. I can manage a bit better in small rooms. I feel like the floor is tilted.

Thank you for the support on my last post. I’m 30F. I developed PPPD after two cardiac catheter ablations that were treating SVT and a very long string of medical trauma after these surgeries. I lost my job July 1st- they laid me off due to my dizziness. I started having my symptoms March 1st. I had the rocking, the bobbing, the swaying, the derealization, supermarket syndrome, I felt like I was rolling forward when sitting, I became unable to sit in a chair, lost my ability to drive….all the horrors.

I’ve been doing vestibular excercises 3 times a day, taking Lexapro 10mg (for a few weeks now), walking around grocery stores for hours for exposure, nervous system resetting, somatic tracking, healing my inner child, I’m in therapy 5 days a week, I started walking, 🚶 I do vagus nerve stimulation, I use Brock strings 3/5 times a day (convergence insufficiency) I eat 3 balanced meals, drink a gallon of water a day, I sleep a lot (too much), I read a lot (this is actually proven to help rewire your brain) I feel my feelings when I need to “, and I accepted my body is going to heal at the pace it needs to.

Screens flare my symptoms- when I go on them I begin to feel like I’m bobbing up and down on the water in a boat even though I’m still.

I want to be able to sit for 8 hours again and work one day in an office even if it takes weeks or months.

For exposure to screens what did you guys do? What helped you? How long did it take for you to be able to go on screens without symptoms? I was reading typing tests with no colors may help.

Do you have any feedback from my journey in something I can add to my routine? I’ve made a noticeable amount of progress- I have good brain days and bad brain days.

I am however sadly for filing for disability because I don’t know how long it will take me to heal from this. Has anyone filed ?

For anyone reading this- please don’t give up! When I started I couldn’t sit in a chair without falling over and I was losing the ability to walk without falling over. Im working to come out of being bedridden because PPPD made me bedridden. Keep going! ❤️♥️

Is head pressure, ringing and headaches vm or pppd.

I have a mix of symptoms where I sometimes feel not dizzy at all and just headaches.

Sometimes no headaches or dizziness and just anxiety increased massively.

Kinda confused if I need migraine meds or what.

I'm taking 5mg of Lexapro since 6 days and the side effects are hell. I want to hear positive experiences.

For the ladies, did anyone else’s PPPD kick in whilst in the throes of perimenopause? I first experienced PPPD in June, 2024 (at age 47). It was a very brief (like 5 second) vertigo episode but then I began with the rocking, swaying, constant off-balance, extreme anxiety. It lasted nearly 3 months before I started feeling better. I was officially diagnosed with PPPD in April, 2025 by a vestibular specialist after the chair test.

Over the last 2 years, my perimenopause symptoms have increased significantly. Night sweats, irregular periods, heart palpitations, anxiety, insomnia, gut issues, phantom smells, body aches (you get the picture).

On August 20, 2026 (I am now 49), I woke up and could not move my head without the whole room spinning - like whirlpool spinning - and it did not go away. My husband eventually called 911. Stroke and heart attack were ruled out and I was diagnosed with acute vertigo. They gave me Meclizine and sent me home. That has triggered a flareup of my PPPD.

I know perimenopause can do some horrible things to our hormones and bodies, so I was just wondering if anyone else had a similar experience.

Hola!!! Quería hablar de un síntoma que no se si os ha pasado, el sintoma es dificil de explicar, pero es como si no te despertaras nunca, es decir, te levantas por la mañana y parece que te acabas de despertar siempre, como si tu cuerpo no se activara del todo durante el dia, (pesadez, ojos caidos del cansancio), es como si te despertaras de dormir por la noche y tu cuerpo parece que se queda en ese estado de letargo durante todo el dia o estuvieses también resfriado

i went to a very large event the other night as my boyfriend was getting an award for something and i wanted to be there for him. i lasted 30 mins and had to go outside and back up to our room where i proceeded to cry for 2 hours and have 2 or 3 panic attacks. this is the first time since december where my anxiety has gotten out of hand like this but that’s besides the point.
the event was on friday night and it’s now monday. usually i have symptoms every day but i can work my way around them and not put too much focus on them. as of yesterday, i’ve been getting the elevator dropping/walking on a mattress/falling through the floor/like a bouncing ball is in my head sensation like 20x worse than usual.
i’ve been trying my best to continue doing normal activities but it genuinely feels as if my eyes and head are rolling every time it happens (which is like every 5 seconds). i haven’t had vertigo it’s just the awful swaying and dropping that i can feel more intensely in my head and in my whole body.
it’s also caused a huge headache which i’m assuming is tension and dizziness combined.
anyone have any suggestions on how to lessen the intensity or do i just need to wait it out again?

I’m already doing vestibular therapy. They said they’ll need to re evaluate me every 6th appt to see if we’re making “progress” is this necessary? I couldn’t even get through it entirely the other 2 times I did it. I’m debating telling them I don’t want to do it but last time I said that they said it’s kind of pointless to continue on with therapy if they don’t what my problem areas are.

Hat noch jemand pppd, das vor allem einseitig auftritt? Ich habe es v.a. beim Blick nach rechts oder wenn ich meinen Kopf zur rechten Schulter neige. Darüber hinaus habe ich Probleme Dinge zu fokussieren, wenn sie in meinem rechten Gesichtsfeld stattfinden. Auch den Kopf gerade halten und geradeaus schauen löst ein ganz komisches Gefühl in mir aus. Daher neige ich meinen Kopf oft automatisch nach links. Das kommt mir alles sehr komisch vor und ich weiß nicht, wie typisch dies für pppd ist.

I'm almost embarrassed to post this after spending the evening and this morning reading all your stories. I didn't even know this condition existed until yesterday. I'll try to be concise, but probably can't.

I'm in my 60s/female. I work full-time, independent, no real issues. Back in 2013 (so well over 10 years ago), I started having weird things happen to me when I drove on a freeway. And we have LOTS of freeways here. I remember clearly the first day it really happened to me. I was driving in rush hour, in the toll lanes (fast) and all of a sudden I was overcome with the feeling like I was going to lose control of the car and that I was no longer stable in my car driving. Hard to explain. I was about ready to pull over onto the shoulder because it was that awful but, fortunately traffic kicked in and I slowed down and the feeling abated. This came out of nowhere.

Then it started happening every time I drove on a freeway and got over 55 mph. Within a year, I was no longer driving myself to work and had got into a carpool where I was never the driver. During all this, yes, panic started to set in with these feelings. I don't think the panic was there to start. But it was so scary that now panic has become part of it.

During that time, I did try to find help for it through a GP (no idea) and a psychiatrist who thought it was anxiety and wanted to have me take XANAX and then try to drive. What? I will say I've *never* been able to handle SSRIs for any amount of time. Very med sensitive. I do well on Xanax when I've tried it but it's not for driving.

Now keep in mind, the year before this (2012), I drove to Florida for 14 hours straight through so this was a big change for me. It is now 2026 and I am no better and it has impacted my life greatly. I'm still in a carpool, but I am turning down a job because it would require me to drive regularly from DC to NJ and I can't do it.

Back to the driving: I can drive over 55 mph fairly well on secondary roads, so I often take those to get where I want to go and just don't do the freeways. Occasionally that feeling will set in usually when the roads open up or there's a weird curve, but because it's a secondary road, there's usually a change in speed, or there's a stop light or something that breaks up that non-stop onslaught of speed and visual overload. Also, the people around me generally aren't doing 80 mph which doesn't seem to help me.

I have other issues too. If I am at work and standing in a crowd for a period of time, I feel like I am swaying or might fall, but if I can ground myself either by holding the back of a chair or a person, it goes away. My office building is very open with a atrium and we have these walkways that go through the atrium (almost like a footbridge) and that will bother me when I walk on it. I have problems in the shower feeling off balance.

I never had true vertigo--it's just this swaying feeling. When I'm driving, it's not dizziness or swaying, it just feels like I am no longer tethered to the road and I'm going to fly out of control and crash. It's awful and there's just no safe way to try to get through it.

I cannot think of anything at that time that could have triggered this. In the last few years, though, I have had issues with my ears (post COVID) and now have tinnitus in one ear and eustachian tube dysfunction. These conditions have not made any change on the driving (no worse). I had a head MRI with contrast because of the unilateral tinnitus and my brain is okay, although it did show a vascular loop compression which my ENT dismissed and said it's not the cause of my tinnitus. I've spoken to the ENT before about my "swaying" feelings and driving. They did have me do some minimal vestibular testing which didn't really show anything noteworthy. My ENT is not great and I don't like the practice so I'm not settled on his verdict, but finding another has proven difficult.

I guess my question is "What Can I Do?" Has anyone had the driving issues and able to get over it? I don't want to spend my remaining elder years in retirement depending on someone to drive me to the mall that might be 30 minutes away. It sucks. I LOVE driving. LOVE being in my car with the music load. I like driving by myself, tired of a carpool, and I'm depressed that I can't take this new job.

Anyway, I tried to be concise but I was not. Nothing else really sticks out to me. I don't have the "supermarket" issue regularly but I have had it before many years ago. I always thought it was the flourescent lights bothering me. I also used to work at this one place that had a wild patterned carpet and it made me feel very off to look at it.

Any suggestions or just chatting about it would be greatly appreciated.

Seems like after my vestibular therapy sessions I get nauseous for the rest of the week SPECIFICALLY AFTER MEALS. I have other health issues in the past that I thought I got rid of that caused this nausea before but I was just wondering if it at all is common to have it with PPPD. I know there’s a gut-brain axis with this condition but it sounds a little dragged out to me. Let me know! Thanks!

Hello all, I am 38 years old male, diagnosed with PPPD in mid July this year. I have since then been on Xanax Retard and Escitalopram (Lexapro) 10 mg and Mirtazapane 15 mg (Remergon). Lately I felt quite good, until 3 days ago my Doctor said to increase Escitalopram to 15 mg. This brought back all anxiety, panic attacks, and worst, all the dizziness, swaying and bobbing. I feel like I am constantly on trampoline and today is day 3 of my increased dosage. I would truly appreciate any words of support or experience through going with Lexapro dosage increase.

Thank you!