Can anxiety Cause Chest Pain?

Feeling anxious or worried from time to time is a normal occurrence for many people. These are normal responses to abnormal moments in daily life.

Like most intense states of emotion, anxiety can cause physical symptoms alongside emotional ones. The physical symptoms associated with anxiety can sometimes be mistaken for other conditions, even more serious ones.

Chest pain can be a symptom of anxiety, and because of its occurrence alongside serious medical conditions like heart attack, it can be especially troubling to experience.

If you’re someone who experiences frequent anxiety or has been diagnosed with anxiety, learning to understand your chest pain as a symptom of anxiety can help bring you some peace of mind and identify when you may need to seek additional medical help.

Chest pain associated with anxiety can feel different for each person, and each person may experience different anxiety symptoms on any given day. For some, anxiety-related chest pain may happen gradually, increasing alongside other symptoms, and for others, it may present suddenly and unexpectedly.

Chest pain with anxiety may be described as:

• Sharp or shooting pain
• Muscle twitches in the chest
• Burning or a dull ache
• Stabbing
• Pressure
• Chest tightness or tension
• Persistent aching in the chest

If you’re not accustomed to experiencing this particular symptom of anxiety, it can be pretty alarming and even lead to an increase in the ongoing anxiety you may be experiencing.

Chest pain associated with a heart attack is usually brought on by exertion, accompanied by an increased heart rate, constant once it begins, occurs with shortness of breath, and is experienced as a pain that radiates from the chest to other areas like the arms.

When in doubt, it’s always best to get checked out by your doctor or emergency services, particularly if you have no history of anxiety or anxiety with chest pain. Research has shown that people with ‘nonspecific chest pain’ or NSCP (chest pain not associated with a cardiac event) are more likely to have anxiety (Demiryoguran et al., 2006).

When you experience anxiety, the brain and body respond with actions that trigger physical responses. During stress, this means an increased heart rate designed to pump blood to your larger muscle groups more quickly and tighten up muscles (like those in the chest) to help you flee danger.

These responses are helpful when literally needing to escape danger or fend it off. This response is a sign that your body is responding to perceived danger appropriately! For those with histories of anxiety and past trauma, this response may be activated when they aren’t in physical danger, or it may be triggered easily and take longer than normal to return to normal.

There are many ways to help reset the body’s stress response and cope with anxiety. If these are frequent occurrences, visiting with a mental health professional can help create a plan for addressing anxiety and all its symptoms.

References

Demiryoguran, N. S., Karcioglu, O., Topacoglu, H., Kiyan, S., Ozbay, D., Onur, E., Korkmaz, T., & Demir, O. F. (2006). Anxiety disorder in patients with non-specific chest pain in the emergency setting. Emergency medicine journal: EMJ, 23(2), 99–102. https://doi.org/10.1136/emj.2005.025163