Can neck pain be caused by stress?
Do you know the effects of stress on the body? Do you know why our neck hurts when we feel stress? What can we do to mitigate its symptoms? In the following article we tell you all this and more.
How does stress affect us?
Why does neck pain occur?
Symptoms of muscular stress
How to relieve neck pain due to stress?
How does stress affect us?
We know all too well that stress affects our psychological health. The worries of everyday life; the numerous responsibilities we have to face; the workload; or the impossibility of reconciling work and personal life, often put us in complicated situations, as if we were jugglers of our own life.
If you think you may need help, in Psynthesis Psychology we are at your disposal. Find out about our psychological therapy services and treatments for stress.
However, not only stress damages us psychologically, but in many occasions this stress is reflected through cervical or muscular pain, such as back or neck pain.
Why does neck pain occur?
The body is a reflection of what happens to us internally, so it is not surprising that all those emotions, both expressed and unexpressed, are housed in it.
A curious fact that confirms this was a study conducted by Aalto University, which revealed how we experience emotions in the body. The result was that, regardless of culture, all the people participating in the experiment located and coincided in locating basic and complex emotions on the body map.
When we talk about the stress produced by a series of negative events and emotions, we must take into account that, bodily, there is an automatic tension of the jaw muscles, the contour of the eyes, the mouth, the neck and the back.
What is the reason for this? Because evolutionarily stress has, and has had, an adaptive function, since it has prepared us to attack or flee in the face of danger, so that all this muscular tension has as its ultimate objective to prevent our response to that which causes us fear.
That is to say, although stress by itself is not harmful, if it becomes chronic, its muscular ailments, such as neck pain, will also be harmful.
Symptoms of muscular stress
The symptoms of muscle tension can become more or less intense; mainly depending on the degree of overload and the profile of the person.
Among the main signs of muscular tension we find:
Muscle stiffness and heaviness.
Muscle contractures and stiff muscles to the touch, especially those located in the neck and back.
Pain in certain areas of the neck, back, shoulders, jaw and between the eyebrows.
Headache and dizziness of a throbbing type, such as in the cervical spine.
