Random,

First, you need to understand there is a difference between conscious anxiety such as fear of crowds, bugs, heights, worries and the physiological anxiety within the brain from too much stimulation. The brain can kick into an over-drive condition from a simple trigger. The crowded restaurant is a very common trigger. I always have ear plugs for these occasions. Our conscious thinking does not cause the anxiety. The stimulations in our environment do.

The spacey feeling, disoriented, confusion trying to make sense of speaking, and others are the brain responding or over-responding to too much stimulation.

Add conscious anxiety such as "Lately when the symptoms come on, I feel as though it is something very serious. As though I am having a stroke and could lose conciseness and maybe not wake up again." to over-stimulation and you have a recipe for trouble.

You are not having a stroke or going to die. Your brain is just overloaded.

If you were a backpacker and trained hard to be able to carry 60% of your body weight on trips but then were injured and laid up for months, would you expect to be able to carry 60% of your body weight on your first backpacking trip ? No, you would not. You would need to rebuild capacity/strength to do so.

It is the same with your brain. Its capacity for stimulation and tasks has been severely reduced. Forcing it to try to do these intense efforts will cause a failure. But, it has to rebuild capacity slowly. One cannot force it.

If you brain is still struggling with this, there are only work-arounds (ear plugs, frequent breaks from the voices, etc) until the brain slowly regains some ability to tolerate these stimulations.

The spotty vision could be a visual migraine. They do not have to be painful. They are also called silent migraines. Worth asking a doctor about this.

Driving is a sensory intense activity. Add a bit of stress from knowing the restaurant will be challenging and things can get worse in a hurry.

The imaging you have received would not show a subtle neck injury. Few are trained to see the instabilities. There is a post that was just top posted about active imaging the upper neck. Upper cervical chiros can help with this in some cases. This is not a 'treat with range of motion exercises' condition. It takes months of personal discipline with sleeping and resting posture.

There are ultrasound protocols that can look for vertebral blood flow but you need a tech who understands how to put the vertebral arteries under positional stress. There was a post about bruit blood flow that can indicate an reduced flow area.

Hearing and balance specialists have a simple test. Your sit in a chair and lean forward and turn your head to the right. Hold it and try to keep talking. If your speech changes, it indicates a reduction of blood flow. You only want to do this with a trained professional observing. In some, this position can cause a stroke.

So, What have you been doing to help your neck and what are you doing that may be causing stress to your neck ?

btw, If you were driving, you should consider if it is safe for you to drive until you get a better understanding of what happened during your recent drive to the restaurant. Pulling over was great but what if the symptoms came on fast and severe ?

Use every opportunity to let somebody else drive. Riding shotgun can be a great exercise in learning what the stimulations are in a driving environment. My first few months of riding shotgun were anxiety ridden. Took a lot of discipline to learn to settle my mind in those environments.

My best to you.