# Formication/Delusional Parasitosis (serious creepy-crawly triggers)



## James of Maine (Sep 8, 2005)

For*m*ication (not to be confused with for*n*ication) is basically the physical sensation of insects crawling on your body and/or biting you---with no evidence that any are actually doing so. It can have various psycho-, neuro-, physio-, or pharmacological causes.

Delusional parasitosis is an unshakeable belief that insects/parasites/etc actually are infesting you, also in the absence of any real evidence. Sufferers often go to the trouble of 'catching' the critters and collecting them as 'evidence'--- and they are almost always innocuous objects such as lint. It's a form of psychosis that can manifest from many different mental disorders, as well as heavy substance abuse/withdrawal.

I bring this up because I'm suffering seriously from the former (formication), and I sometimes feel I'm heading down the road to the latter. I'm constantly swatting or scratching at what feels for sure like something crawling on my skin, and usually there's nothing there. In my case, I think it's psychological in origin.

I think one trigger has been my very real experience with ticks this spring, including having to pull a burrowed one out of my arm, and having to worry about whether or not I might get Lyme disease.

The other thing is reading media reports about bedbugs--which I have never experienced firsthand--and how they're such an exploding problem, how easy they are to get, and how hard they are to get rid of. My risk is probably minimal/general.... I live in a single-family house, don't travel much, would never buy a used mattress or collect a free couch from the curb. But even the remote possibility has been triggering serious OCD/anxiety attack stuff in recent days. I won't go into too many details, but my imagination has pretty much taken over from my rational mind, and I'm locked in this obsessive thought pattern that I can't shake.

So, is--or has--anyone else experiencing/experienced anything like this?


----------



## pita (Jan 17, 2004)

I've experienced this a few times and it's horrible. I blame getting bitten by a tick in grade three.

I am bed bug obsessed. I'm moving to a building that has bugs in a couple weeks and I'm freaking out. I just know that _even if my unit has no bugs_ (and unfortunately, it probably DOES have bugs), I will feel like the damn things are crawling all over me.

When I start to feel itchy, I take a shower. I find it helps calm my skin down and distract me from the bug-thoughts a bit.


----------



## Clearly Obscure (May 22, 2009)

I had a problem like this for a while, and sometimes it resurfaces. It stemmed from an experience with lice a few summers ago, after staying in a less-than-clean hotel in Rome. For months after getting rid of the creepy little things, I was constantly convinced that they were still on me...sometimes, I would just curl into a little ball in my room and go practically catatonic. Ugh...makes me shiver just thinking about it. 
The idea of bed bugs freaks me out as well, especially when I read articles and consider how difficult it would be to get rid of them.


----------



## millenniumman75 (Feb 4, 2005)

At times, yes - and yes, I also misread that first word :bat.

Welcome back, JamesOfMaine!


----------



## nocturne332 (Oct 2, 2010)

I realize this post is a few months old, but it caught my attention because it is exactly what I am dealing with right now and I am desperately looking for answers that my primary care physician cant seem to provide. I have always had transient issues with formication usually in social settings ( I have GAD, but suffer from extreme Social Anxiety). It can be embarrassing, and I have passed up many conferences and classes for fear of appearing either crazy or unclean from constantly scratching at random "itches" or sensations of bugs biting or crawling on me. With the recent bed bug scare my anxiety has been through the roof and I have been habitually searching my sheets and mattress for bugs that just dont exist. I have found that an extra half tab of Ativan at bedtime seems to help decrease the crawling sensation, but I haven't figured out how to rid myself of the bedtime mattress vacuuming/sheet inspecting rituals. It's getting to the point where even though I know it's just a psychological manifestation, I am afraid to have my boyfriend stay over because I can't be totally convinced that there aren't really bugs that I just haven't seen yet. I feel like I'm losing it some nights.


----------

