Anxiety Chest Pain
The Connection between Anxiety and Chest Pain
Anxiety and chest pain often go hand and hand. Chest pain is, in fact, one of the central symptoms of an anxiety attack. Often when a person has her first anxiety attack, she will go to the hospital only for the on-call physician to explain that he can find nothing wrong with her. Most experienced physicians will then know to suspect anxiety as the cause.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a psychological condition that presents with strong physical symptoms. Typically, anxiety occurs in relation to particular environmental stimuli, what we might call “triggers.” These anxiety triggers can range from specific phobias (such as a fear of spiders) to more general anxieties (such as fearing to go out in public).
What are the symptoms of an anxiety attack?
An anxiety attack—which you may also know as a panic attack—is when a person experiences acute discomfort after running across his or her anxiety trigger. For example, a person might go to party and suddenly feel the full pressure of social anxiety disorder.
Typically, a person who is unfamiliar with anxiety disorders will notice his physical symptoms first. The victim of an anxiety attack will often feel intense chest pains that feel like a constriction. Often the sufferer will believe he or she is experiencing an intense heart attack. The sufferer’s breathing will become ragged and strained. Pulse rates increase, and sweat breaks out.
Usually the first time sufferer will believe the emotional symptoms are secondary to the physical symptoms. The inexperienced sufferer will usually attribute the intense fear that grips his or her being to the heart palpitations and the breathing problems. As the sufferer becomes better at recognizing his or her triggers, however, the order of things becomes clearer. The fear begins, then the physical pains and discomfort. The intense fear is actually the central symptom. It grows into an intense and often irrational panic. When an attack is particularly severe, the patient may also experience disorientation or dizziness.
A typical side effect of anxiety disorders is insomnia. Sufferers will often have difficulty getting to sleep at night because the symptoms persist even when the patient lays down to rest. Some sufferers will have their most severe symptoms alone at night.
How to distinguish an anxiety attack from a heart attack?
Because the connection between and anxiety and chest pain is close, one might wonder how to know when a chest pain is due to anxiety versus a traditional heart attack. As a rule of thumb, you should always be safe rather than sorry. If you have not had a panic attack before, you should assume this is a serious condition and get yourself to the emergency room right away.
Through therapy, you will learn to recognize the triggers for your anxiety and to practice relaxation techniques when you feel your symptoms coming on. With this knowledge, you will know how to identify the nature and intensity of your chest pains.
Does that mean that people with anxiety disorder don’t have heart attacks?
You can still have a heart attack when you suffer from anxiety disorder. However knowing what is typical of anxiety and chest pain when it accompanies it, can also tell you what is not typical. Therefore, if you begin to experience chest pain without coming across your triggers or if you don’t even feel anxious at all while experiencing chest pains, this could be a sign of actual heart attack.
Of course, you could also experience a heart attack and a panic attack simultaneously. How would you tell if it were a heart attack? If you did not notice a difference in the quality of the pain, you would probably notice that even after your usual relaxation rituals, the physical symptoms persist.
In all of these cases, you should go to the doctor first, just to be safe.