I find it dizzying
“I find it dizzying (Yeah, oh, yeah)
They are bringing up my history (Yeah, oh, yeah)
But they weren’t even listening (Yeah, oh, yeah)” 1
Like for many of us who live with ongoing post-concussion symptoms, dizziness has been one of the most present and most debilitating symptoms that I have struggled with, as well as the most misunderstood and often disregarded symptom that I have experienced since the accident. Our friends, families, and doctors can relate to pain and headaches. But dizziness… that’s another story.
I had complained to doctors about feeling dizzy from the start. I felt dizzy when walking or running, when I went to bed, when I wrote the date on my classroom whiteboard, when I played with my kids, when I tied my shoes, when I drove, or when I scrolled. I constantly felt dizzy.
It wasn’t long before I noticed a pattern: every time I moved or something moved, that familiar dizzy spell would hit. Completing household chores like hoovering, peeling potatoes, stirring, or washing the plates could trigger my dizziness. I also noticed how common sights suddenly became triggers too: the bounce of my own shadow while running, the reflections in puddles, or even the steady fall of snow or rain. Visiting a supermarket, a busy park, or a classroom packed with thirty moving students was exhausting. Even a quiet moment at home watching Thomas the Tank Engine with my three-year-old son left me dizzy… everything that moved made me feel very uncomfortable.
I had told this to the GP several times in the months after the accident, but so far, nothing had happened. I also raised these concerns with a professional from the brain injury service who completed a screening questionnaire. This questionnaire felt like a “tick-box” exercise that didn’t fit my reality. The practitioner kept asking if my symptoms had worsened in the previous 24 hours. Answering “no” because my symptoms were constant rather than rapidly declining resulted in a score of zero, effectively masking the struggles I was facing.
When the results came back in the post, I had scored 0/12. I had failed to earn a single point for my constant dizziness. The logic applied to my assessment was devastating: because my condition was “stable” and hadn’t actively worsened, it was recorded as a zero. It wasn’t that the dizziness had vanished; it simply meant my ongoing struggle didn’t meet the specific measurement criteria.
Seeing that 0/12 made me feel completely invisible. It forced me to question my own reality and left me deeply worried that this was ‘it’. I couldn’t even finish reading the letter that I had been CC’ed on, as it made me feel physically sick. I felt lost, broken, unheard, and entirely deflated. What would I do now?
After a while, I realised that I needed to use clear language when talking about dizziness and the impact it was having on my life for doctors to take me seriously. So I started writing down very specific words to describe my symptoms. It was very hard, as describing a vague sense of dizziness is impossible. I started to write ‘head tilting’ or ‘spinning’ when I went to bed. ‘Swaying’ or ‘rocking’ when standing upright. ‘Head rush’ when moving my head quickly in any direction. ‘Floating’ or ‘walking on marshmallows’ when running. ‘Nauseous’ and ‘sick’ when watching my kids bounce on the trampoline. ‘Head pressure’, ‘can’t concentrate’, ‘off balance’, ‘everything bouncing’, ‘feeling like Frodo when he put the ring on’ when I was in the supermarket.
I also knew that I lacked specific medical vocabulary for doctors to translate these ‘weird’ sensations into medical diagnoses. So I did a lot of research, mostly through listening to concussion and vestibular podcasts to teach myself the words I needed to use when talking to a medical professional about my dizziness.
I learned that:
– Light-headedness is a woozy feeling, like you are about to faint.
– Vertigo is a feeling of false movement, like spinning.
– Non-rotational vertigo is feeling of unsteadiness, like rocking or swaying.
– Dissociation is feeling spaced out, or disconnected from your body/surroundings.
– Oscillopsia feels like objects in your vision are “jumping”.
– Disequilibrium is a feeling of feeling “wobbly,” or off-balance.
– Space and motion discomfort is a distorted disoriented feeling in large, busy places like supermarkets.
My research also taught me about why I was finding the dizziness so debilitating, how my brain was working significantly harder to keep me upright because my balance system was malfunctioning. I also learned that my brain was relying too heavily on my vision, which is why busy environments, like supermarkets, were exhausting. Having this knowledge was incredibly grounding; it provided the clarity I needed to change my habits.
By March 2026, my journey with dizziness continues. While ENT has finally seen me and I have hope for some answers, I’m also making peace with the possibility that I may never truly know why this is happening
The world of dizziness is really hard to navigate. Firstly, it is an invisible condition that not many people can relate to. Secondly, it’s hard to communicate your dizzy feeling, making it hard for doctors to ‘categorise’ the problem.
I love how Taylor captures the essence of my “dizzying” journey in Lavender Haze.
“I find it dizzying (Yeah, oh, yeah)
They are bringing up my history (Yeah, oh, yeah)
They are not even listening (Yeah, oh, yeah)” 2
The Concussion Girl
- Swift, Taylor, “Lavender Haze.” Midnights, Taylor Swift, 2022. ↩︎
- Swift, Taylor, “Lavender Haze.” Midnights, Taylor Swift, 2022. ↩︎