Chest Pain Due To Anxiety: Symptoms, Causes And Treatment
Feeling of suffocation, hyperventilation, paresthesia, loss of control of one’s body… are common symptoms of anxiety attacks. But if there is a symptom that especially generates the fear of dying when we have one of these crises, it is the existence of chest pain.
And it is that chest pain due to anxiety is a really annoying symptom, often being taken by those who suffer from it for the first time as indicative of the beginning of the end. Throughout this article we are going to talk about this type of pain, indicating some of its causes and how to treat it.
When we talk about chest pain due to anxiety, we are referring to the perception of pain generated by the somatization of an anxious state which can occur in the context of an anxiety crisis, as a prodrome of it or in the face of the perception of continued stress without necessarily leading to a crisis.
This pain is usually perceived and classified as stabbing, and it usually occurs in the form of pricks and can appear in different points of the torso. Pain of this type usually disappears quickly (they can last a quarter of an hour, but the most common thing is that they do not last more than a few minutes), in addition to not changing much whether we make physical efforts or not.
In addition to the pain itself, it is common for them to appear along with it symptoms such as hyperventilation, numbness of extremities and usually a feeling of going crazy, dying or completely losing control over one’s body.
Chest pain is a frequent phenomenon in the somatization of anxiety, but as we mentioned in the introduction, the fact that it is also a typical symptom of cardiac problems and especially angina pectoris and myocardial infarctions makes it Both problems are often confused.
The similarities are many but they can be distinguished by the fact that in the case of pain typical of heart disease, the pain is usually more specific to specific points on the chest and arm (although it must be taken into account that the typical heart attack symptoms They usually refer to the case of men, the location being more generalized in the case of women), They tend to persist over time and worsen with physical effort And unlike anxiety, there are usually no respiratory alterations or loss of control.
In any case, it is possible that a heart problem could cause anxiety and it is advisable to go to a medical service as soon as possible to ensure that the problem in question is anxiety and not a real medical problem.
Causes
Taking into account that chest pain due to anxiety is not the product of heart disease, it is legitimate to wonder why it appears. The ultimate cause is suffering from a high level of anxiety. However, the reason why the somatization of anxiety appears in the form of pain It is due to numerous physiological aspects that may appear as a consequence of the activation produced by it.
Firstly, when we are stressed, afraid or anxious we are generating a high level of adrenaline and cortisol, something that at a physiological level translates into the activation of the sympathetic autonomic nervous system (responsible for activating the body to allow reactions such as those of fight or flight). When an anxiety crisis arises, this activation generates high muscle tension in order to prepare the body to respond quickly. This continued tension can generate a certain level of pain in different parts of the body, the chest being one of them.
Likewise, fear and nervousness also tend to generate an increase in lung activity, leading to hyperventilation. This hyperventilation also implies a high level of movement of the thoracic muscles and the diaphragm, something that, together with muscle tension, promotes pain. Furthermore, the fact of constantly taking short, shallow inhalations causes the sensation of drowning to appear, something that in turn will generate more nervous activation and a greater number of inhalations.
Another frequent alteration in moments of anxiety and that participates in chest pain due to anxiety is alteration of gastric motility and dilation of the digestive tract which can even cause pinching of the nerves in the torso, or the accumulation of gases in the stomach that can rise to the chest and cause pain.
Treatment
To treat chest pain due to anxiety, you will have to first treat the cause that generates it, that is, the anxiety itself.
At a cognitive level, the first thing that must be assessed is why this feeling of anxiety has arisen, and it is necessary analyze what external or internal factors stir and agitate us internally to such an extent that our body needs to express it through the body.
We must also assess whether we are dealing with something that we can or cannot act on directly. If we can do something to change it, we can try to generate some type of behavioral modification or develop a strategy to solve the problem in question. In case the anxiety is due to something that is not controllable and unmodifiable, we will have to restructure our way of relating to said situation It would try to relativize the problem, reducing its importance and assessing whether it or its possible consequences are really so relevant for the subject himself.
Another aspect that can be of great help is training and practicing different relaxation exercises, which especially take breathing into account, although muscle relaxation techniques are also useful. Yoga, meditation or mindfulness are also very useful practices that make it difficult for anxiety to develop and allow us to put anxiety-inducing situations into perspective.
If we are in the middle of an anxiety crisis, the first thing we must assess is that anxiety is not going to kill us and that said pain is something temporary and a product of our own reaction to it. We must try, as much as possible, to calm down (although it is not easy). In addition we should try to focus on our breathing, avoiding hyperventilation as much as possible and trying to take deep, slow inhalations. The crisis will end up passing.
