Safety note: FND can look like stroke, epilepsy, fainting, injury or other urgent conditions. If a symptom is new, severe, sudden or different from your normal pattern, get urgent medical advice.
Movement symptoms
- Limb weakness or paralysis: an arm or leg may feel heavy, disconnected, weak or unable to move.
- Walking and balance problems: dragging a leg, feeling unsteady, unusual gait patterns or needing mobility support.
- Tremor, jerks, spasms or dystonia: shaking, sudden movements, fixed postures, curled fingers or an ankle that turns in.
- Drop attacks: sudden falls, sometimes without losing consciousness.
Functional seizures and awareness changes
Functional seizures, also called dissociative seizures, can involve shaking, becoming still and unresponsive, staring, altered awareness or losing the ability to respond. They can look like epileptic seizures or fainting, so specialist assessment matters.
Sensory and body symptoms
- Numbness, tingling or altered sensation: sensations may affect one limb, one side of the body, the face or larger areas.
- Visual symptoms: blurred vision, double vision, reduced vision or sensitivity to light.
- Dizziness: some people experience persistent postural perceptual dizziness, often worse when walking or in busy environments.
- Speech and swallowing: slurred speech, a new stutter, whispering or hoarse voice, word-finding difficulty or a feeling of something stuck in the throat.
Cognition, fatigue and pain
People with FND may also experience brain fog, memory lapses, concentration problems, dissociation, chronic pain, migraine, sleep disruption, bladder or bowel symptoms, fatigue, anxiety, depression or PTSD. These symptoms can be part of the wider picture and deserve care in their own right.
Why symptoms differ
FND does not follow one fixed checklist. A person’s symptoms may depend on which nervous system functions are affected, what else is happening medically, their environment, sleep, pain, stress, sensory load and how their body has learned to protect itself. This does not make symptoms less real. It means care needs to be tailored.
What to track
A brief symptom record can help clinicians and can help you notice patterns. Keep it simple: symptom, time, possible triggers, sleep, pain level, food and fluids, medication changes, what helped, and whether the symptom was new or typical for you.
Video can sometimes help clinicians assess intermittent symptoms such as seizures, tremor or walking problems. Only record if it is safe and respectful to do so.