 change your behaviors, you also increase the likelihood of muscle stiffness. Your muscles need you to be moving and active. When you're not active or changing the way you do something (like walk, sit, etc.), you're increasing muscle stress, which in turn can become muscle pain and discomfort.
Similarly, the muscle stiffness caused by the fight or flight system may also change your behaviors as you respond to the pain. This can create a cycle of stiffness where your anxiety causes muscle stiffness, which causes inactivity, which causes more anxiety and more stiffness.
How to Stop Muscle Stiffness From Anxiety
It doesn't matter if muscle stiffness is due to anxiety, exercise, injury, etc. The stiffness is still stiffness, and the pain and discomfort you experience needs to be dealt with the same way it would be treated even if it wasn't caused by anxiety.
That means that you should first talk to your doctor, and then consider the following:
- Stretching Often Stretching is, of course, a valuable way to relieve muscle stiffness. It keeps your muscles loose, and works out some of the tension that is present in your muscles and keeps you from easily moving. It also reduces the risk of further injury, which is important for stopping muscle stiffness.
- Exercise Exercise in general is extremely important both for anxiety and for muscle stiffness. Exercise is known to be almost as powerful a cure for anxiety as many anxiety medications, because it creates and releases many of the same hormones that are known to improve your mood. It also keeps your muscles loose and healthy. You can also consider yoga, which is a form of both exercise and stretching, and may have a positive effect on your future muscle discomfort.
- Massage Massage is also considered a way to combat both muscle stiffness and anxiety together. Massage is known to decrease anxiety, although it's not clear why - most likely because it is a comforting way to decrease some of the symptoms. Massage is also an effective way to work out muscle stiffness. That makes massage a valuable choice for those whose muscles have been stressed because of your anxiety.
- General Health - Your muscles are also very sensitive to your general health as well. You need to do anything you can to make sure you're getting enough sleep, eating protein, and drinking water. These small changes won't have a big effect on your anxiety, but they are going to improve your muscle health, which should improve the way your muscles deal with stress.
If you're someone that uses modern medicine, traditional over the counter pain killers should also be effective. Most muscle stiffness and pain responds fairly well to basic over the counter treatments. Always make sure you talk to your doctor first before taking any type of medication.
All of these should decrease the effects of muscle stiffness from anxiety, but they do not necessarily improve your ability to deal with the anxiety itself. It's still going to be very important for you to deal with anxiety itself in order to ensure that you're able to successfully stop the stiffness from occurring.
I've helped thousands of those with severe anxiety control their muscle stiffness and other fight or flight symptoms starting with my free 7 minute anxiety test. Make sure you take the test now to find out exactly what it takes to fully control your anxiety.