Had a thunderclap headache after I orgasmed earlier tonight (first time that’s ever happened). I went to the ER, they did a CT scan, and confirmed I had no hemorrhaging or damage to my brain. However, I’m completely unable to feel emotions now and it doesn’t bother me. What could that mean?

22 y/o Female-to-Male transgender. Medical diagnoses: idiopathic intracranial hypertension, cyclic vomiting syndrome, asthma, GERD. Psychiatric diagnoses: PTSD, ADHD, Bipolar I, AFRID, nicotine use disorder. Medications: Mirena IUD, clonidine. Recreational substances: daily cannabis edible and use of a nicotine vape.

Part of my nightly routine to fall asleep each night is to masturbate right before bed, orgasm, and let the way it makes me feel sleepy help me drift off into sleep. Well, I did that tonight. However, I had a very different reaction when I orgasmed tonight. I felt incredibly depressed afterwards and developed a thunderclap headache (like, worst headache of my life type of headache). I naturally massaged my temples for whatever reason and it reduced the intensity of my headache from a 10/10 to a 4/10. I called the after hours nurse connected to my doctor and she said if it got worse again, go to the ER. Otherwise, take Tylenol and monitor the symptoms. I got off of the phone and went to grab Tylenol. However, my headache spiked to a 7/10 suddenly and I became extremely nauseous. I didn’t want to risk it, so I decided to head to the ER asap after that.

While I sitting in the waiting room after being triaged, I kept switching between two “states” if you will. For 3-4 minutes, I’d have a 7/10 headache and feel incredibly nauseous. Then, for 1-2 minutes, I’d feel incredibly lightheaded like I was about to pass out (but not dizzy), the constant ringing I normally have in my right ear would get extremely loud, and I would have visual disturbances (like flashes of light) during the lightheaded stages. My head pain would reduce to a 1/10 during these states and my nausea would go away completely. Once I got back to a room while the switching between these two states was still occurring, I told the ER doctor about the switching of the two states. The constant back and forward of the two states kept going on while I was waiting the 45 minutes it took to get the CT scan done. I got a CT scan done since the ER doctor was worried I had some kind of internal brain bleed especially because he said my left eye wasn’t moving properly with my right eye during a test where he tracked my eyes while having me follow his pointer finger (he asked me if I had a lazy eye and made the comments on my left eye). It took 45-50 minutes from when the doctor ordered the CT scan to get the actual CT scan. The switching between the two states stopped about 5 minutes before I was called back for my CT scan (so, this switching of “states” occurred for about 1 hour altogether).

Something was very different emotionally for me though after the back and forward switching between the two states stopped. I’m someone who normally feels extreme emotions all the time regardless of what emotion it is. I had extensive psychological testing done at one point where they somehow quantified that I normally feel emotions 3x intensely as the average human being. But now, I can’t feel emotions. At all. It’s very weird. It doesn’t feel like I’m numb (because sometimes my PTSD turns off all of my emotions and I’m left with a numbness/emptiness). And I’m reacting to situations with the appropriate amount of emotions required for the situation automatically. But, I can’t feel joy. I can’t feel sadness. I can’t feel excitement. I can’t feel shame. I can’t feel guilt. I can’t feel fear at all (which, I’ve never not felt fear or some level of anxiety before). I still do things (like eating, writing an email, etc.) because I logically know it’s best to complete those things and I react to those things emotionally through my actions. However, I don’t feel the emotions behind them anymore. Normally that would bother someone but, I don’t even have the ability to feel bothered by it seems like.

I told the nurses and ER doctor this, they just said “Okay”, and pretended like I never even brought it up. Again, that would normally really upset me but I can’t feel upset anymore it seems like.

The doctor came back and told me that my CT scan showed no signs of internal bleeding and everything on my scan looked completely normal. He said he looked though my medical records in Epic and said it might be connected to my idiopathic intracranial hypertension diagnosis. He gave me a dose of toradol to reduce my head pain and then discharged me home.

I guess I’m trying to figure out what to do about my complete inability to feel emotions now despite reacting to everything normally like I still feel my intense emotions. For example, does it sound more psychiatric in nature? In that case, I’ll contact my mental health team about it. Does it sound more neurological in nature? Then, I’ll contact my neurologist about it. I tried doing a google search to see if I could get a better idea of what professional to ask about it and Google doesn’t seem to know what the hell I’m talking about. Like, it brings up pages on emotional numbness, but I’ve had that multiple times before. And, Google describes that emotional numbness still bothers people. That isn’t what I’m experiencing now (or if it is, it’s in a very different way) as when I’ve felt emotionally numb, it still bothered me on some level that I would be emotionally numb. This doesn’t bother me at all. Nothing brings me joy nor bothers me anymore. It’s almost like my ability to feel any emotions in any capacity just completely shut off tonight.

Do any of you have a clue of what be going on or who to contact regarding this? Again, if my emotions never come back, it’s not bothering me right now because I don’t have the ability to feel bothered, uncomfortable, sad, etc. However, if it sounds like it could be mental health related (especially because I recently switched from having a full-blown manic episode for 6-7 weeks to a deep depressive episode a few days ago), I’d like to know so I can prevent a potential problem if there is one. And, again, this doesn’t feel like depression because I’m extremely familiar with dark, depressive episodes where I’m very numb. Again, it’s like my body is still reacting to things emotionally, but whatever allows my personality to feel the emotions has been 100% shut off now.

Any thoughts???