Facial tension is a common response to stress and can also be linked to a TMJ-related problem. If you feel stressed, you might experience tension in various parts of your body, such as the face, neck, and shoulders. This tension is a completely natural — and common — response to stress.
As a result, your face puts itself into a holding pattern whenever you feel stressed, anxious, or worried, since it's in a state where you're anticipating imminent danger and preparing yourself for it. Tension and tightness in your jaw is another possible consequence of scrunching your face up under stress too often.
Our nervous system is hardwired to contract our mimetic muscles (facial muscles) in certain patterns to convey a range of emotions—like happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, surprise, and fear—as a means of communication.
What Is Facial Pressure? It's most notably felt as a sense of fullness, pressure, soreness or pain (in more severe cases) throughout the affected area. Facial pressure can affect your entire face from your forehead and eyes to your nose, cheeks, and jawline.
Anxiety can cause several different issues that affect the appearance and feeling of the face. Anxiety can lead to a red face, facial tingling, and other issues that affect the lips, eyes, and more. Despite these issues, most people cannot tell when a person is anxious by their face.
Stress & Your Facial Muscles
When muscles are tense and in this state for long periods of time, it can trigger other reactions in the body and even promote stress-related disorders. Facial tension can cause the face to change shape, along with headaches, heavy eyes, and jaw discomfort.
A person who clenches their jaw or shoulders when they feel anxious might notice increased tension around the face and head as well. Anxiety may even cause numbness in the mouth or tongue.
Tension: Facial tension and stress can accumulate in the muscles of the face throughout the day. Whether it's emotional or physical stress, it gets held in the face. Like any other muscle group, overtime if tension isn't released it impacts the surrounding muscles, neck, shoulders etc.
The researchers noted that the expression labeled as anxiety consisted of two plausible environmental-scanning behaviors: eye darts and head swivels. They also noted that eye darting and head swiveling was labeled as anxiety, not fear.
Apply heat to relieve tense neck and shoulder muscles. Use a heating pad set on low, a hot water bottle, a hot shower or bath, a warm compress, or a hot towel. Or apply ice or a cool washcloth to the forehead. Massage also can relieve muscle tension — and sometimes headache pain.
Facial tension is a common response to stress and can also be linked to a TMJ-related problem. If you feel stressed, you might experience tension in various parts of your body, such as the face, neck, and shoulders. This tension is a completely natural — and common — response to stress.
Constantly stressing and overthinking may lead to frowning of brow which over a period of time may become a permanent wrinkle. Chances are high that a depressed person may not drink enough water. This makes their skin dehydrated and dull. Low mood and high-stress flare acne issues.
In people with GAD, persistent stress can lead to hyperstimulation. This is when you experience the physical effects of the body's stress response even when it has not been activated. If you have chronic muscle pain that seems to have no cause, anxiety-related hyperstimulation may be the culprit.
To get started, pinch the skin along the jawline, then begin to gently roll upward to the eye and temple region. Make sure to do it on both sides of your face. “Lift the face tissue with the thumbs while guiding it with the pointer finger grip,” licensed massage therapist and esthetician Liz Aigner tells Well + Good.
Stiff Necks Cause Face, Jaw and Sinus Pain
Sometimes these trigger points and/or stiff neck joints can also lead to ear pain or sensation of loss of hearing. Clenching the teeth or grinding the teeth (bruxism) can lead to pain from overuse of these muscles.
Tension-type headache is a term used to describe a headache causing mild to moderate pain that often feels like a tight band across your forehead or pressure around the head and neck. These headaches may be provoked by the stress of everyday life, eyestrain or poor posture.