Anxiety caused pain

[NaluKana]

Hello, i am a 27 y/o male who over the last 3 months have devolped anxiety issues due to medical problems. The doctors i have spoken with inform me that the pain i am feeling in my neck is due to the anxiety. However, over the last few weeks i feel a lot better mentally, and have gotten my anxiety under control yet the pain persists. My question is can anxiety caused pain remain after the anxiety is gone, and if so how long? Thank you for any help you can give.

[cj29]

In my experience, anxiety can cause all sorts of pain especially when related to health anxiety. For example, if you have a true medical problem, that the doctor says is under control, our minds tend to 'amplify' our symptoms.  We become much more aware of what is going on and tend to interpret things in a catastrophic manor.

You are doing the right thing in confronting this in my opinion.  You have expressed your concerns to your doctor and if he/she is telling you you are okay, I would tend to trust them.  You ask when this goes away; that depends.  If it persists you may want to talk to a mental health care professional (i.e. a psychiatrist, psychologist, counselor) to understand the underlying issue of the anxiety.  Keep us posted!

[JSGeare]

There's a kind of fork in the road conundrum here, I think. You feel "better" mentally and have the anxiety "under control." Both of these statements suggest you still have some mental challanges and still have anxiety, else there would be no need to control it. And so, that leaves open the possibility that the "pain in the neck" has a connection to the anxiety -perhaps is a last remnant. I confess that I find some irony that an ER tech would have a pain THERE -where so many of your patients do after an auto accident.

If the anxiety arises in connection with material in your upbringing -a common source- and if the conflcit of long-standing go unresolved, then you may expect more flare-ups depending upon how "trigger happy" the current emotional challenges happen to be. And that would mean a course of therapy to dig out the causes and resolve matters for once and for all. Meanwhile, though, there might be something simply to ease the pain -that is an ongoing discomfort. And it just is possible that the neck thing exists independtly of the anxiety, but nonetheless, by its mere presence, serves to trigger or exacerbate the anxiety.

The time has come, I believe, for the "we need to do somthing about this" conversation with your doctor. He/she "thinks" its about the anxiety? Fine -now, what do we DO about it? Triage yourself and act accordingly -the things to be treated and the order in which to treat them. And your first question of yourself is the same as the first question you have with an accident victim lying along the roadside -"What do we have here?"

This is a very good post because it demonstrates the mysery factor which is so prevalent in the initial phases of dealing with anxiety and panic -parsing out what belongs and what doesn't. I hope you will keep us informed. Meanwhile, see if you can apply some of your skills to the problems others are having here -you'll learn alot about yourself along the way.

[NaluKana]

Thank you for your comments, it really helps to hear from others that are going through similar problems. I look forward to working with you and others on this site, and hopefully it will help.  Thank you again.

[Jimdeez]

hey, ive been dealing with neck pain off and on along with many other random pains, like chest back, lower back now which is a new one.  Also pins and needles, ive also had like two quick dizzy spells, only lasted a couple seconds though.  So ya ur neck pain can definately be from anxiety, I had sore neck and shoulder muscles to just this discomforting feeling on the right side of my neck.  So I guess it jumps around on you at times.