When the body is stressed, muscles tense up. Muscle tension is almost a reflex reaction to stress—the body's way of guarding against injury and pain. With sudden onset stress, the muscles tense up all at once, and then release their tension when the stress passes.
adjective. If you are tense, you are anxious and nervous and cannot relax.
Tension itself is not a cause of mental health disorders. Still, feeling tense to the point where it's impacting your daily life or causing panic attacks may be a symptom of conditions like generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder.
The causes of being too uptight can vary from person to person. Some reasons may be due to 'stressors'. These range from a high workload to relationship problems. Co-occurring mental health difficulties (e.g., depression, social anxiety) may also cause tension.
Psychological Causes of Tension
In many cases, feeling tense is due to putting too much pressure on ourselves and overexerting our brain – causing us to feel overwhelmed and exhausted. You may feel like you cannot relax, or you have forgotten how it feels to be calm. This mental stress can cause our body to tense.
Everyone gets anxious sometimes, but if your worries and fears are so constant that they interfere with your ability to function and relax, you may have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD is a common anxiety disorder that involves constant and chronic worrying, nervousness, and tension.
Tensing is a manifestation of stress, and modern day stressors like work or commuting can lead to chronic tension. Similarly, acute pain and chronic illnesses can heighten the frequency and magnitude of tension.
Tight Muscles – Anxiety will run tension through the body and impact different muscles. People feel the tightness in other areas. Some will feel it in their neck, jaw, chest, or the stomach.
Listen to how they feel
Having a chance to talk could help them feel calmer and more able to deal with their stress. Being there for them and listening without judging them can help. [My friends can help by] making me a cup of tea, holding me while I cry, making me laugh...
Stress can affect our emotions, our body and how we behave, in lots of different ways. Sometimes when we are stressed, we might be able to tell right away. But at other times, we might keep going without recognising the signs.
Look around you and name three things you see. Then, name three sounds you hear. Finally, move three parts of your body — your ankle, fingers, or arm. Whenever you feel your brain going 100 miles per hour, this mental trick can help center your mind, bringing you back to the present moment, Chansky says.
Stiff-person syndrome (SPS) is a rare, progressive neurological disorder. Symptoms may include: Stiff muscles in the trunk (torso), arms, and legs. Greater sensitivity to noise, touch, and emotional distress, which can set off muscle spasms.
Do you often find yourself worrying about everyday issues for no obvious reason? Are you always waiting for disaster to strike or excessively worried about things such as health, money, family, work, or school? If so, you may have a type of anxiety disorder called generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
5 signs you could be experiencing too much stress:
Feeling indifferent, less connected. Thinking more negatively and becoming more easily annoyed or frustrated. Being forgetful. Experiencing headaches, stomachaches, changes in sleep, or appetite.
Stress, Pain, and Tension
Life itself causes tension. Even those without any noticeable anxiety symptoms tend to experience muscle tension once in a while. Tension is natural, and occurs when a person has any sort of emotional or physical stress.
A person with social anxiety disorder feels symptoms of anxiety or fear in situations where they may be scrutinized, evaluated, or judged by others, such as speaking in public, meeting new people, dating, being on a job interview, answering a question in class, or having to talk to a cashier in a store.
very nervous and worried and unable to relax because of something that is going to happen: You seem all tensed up. Are you still waiting for that call?
About Muscle Tension Dysphonia
If your voice is tired, your throat feels tight, or it hurts to talk, you may have muscle tension dysphonia, or voice strain caused by muscle tightness. This common voice problem can occur even if your vocal cords are normal but the muscles in your throat are working inefficiently.
Anxiety causes the muscles to tense up, which can lead to pain and stiffness in almost any area of the body. Constant stress and worry can also prevent the immune system from working properly, leading to decreased resistance to infection and disease.
It can affect the body in different ways, including the cardiovascular, urinary, digestive, and respiratory systems. A person with anxiety may feel nervous, restless, tense, or fearful.