Anxiety and tight/itchy throat, please share/help

[OnceuponaRainbow18]

I’ve always suffered with low level anxiety, which was manageable ; but I started a new job in sept and since then I’ve got this awful new symptom that suddenly my throat feels like it’s closing in, my neck feels tight and it feels super itchy/scratchy down my throat. Almost like I’m having an allergic reaction.

Does anyone else get this?
Any ideas of how best to deal with this?

I try and talk myself around and tell myself I can breathe and it’s ok. I do the CBT judge thing where I weigh up the evidence and then know I’m not going to not be able to breathe

But, when it happens it really feels like this huge pressure around my throat and my throat is closing in, shamefully the first time it happened I called an ambulance as thought it was an allergic reaction.

Any advise would be gratefully received

It's possible you have silent reflux, the symptoms can feel very, very much like the effects of anxiety. It happened to me.

@Aquamarine1029

Can you suddenly get silent reflux?

I did. Took me months to realise what it was. I had been drinking loads of peppermint tea and that's what kicked it off.

Would sucking a sugar free sweet help?

I don’t suffer with anxiety but in a dry office and if I’m talking a lot I sometimes feel like I am going to choke or actually choke.

Sucking a sweet helps.

@Aquamarine1029

Ooh I drink a lot of peppermint tea

@BleuJay

Thats a fab idea I’ll try that next time- thank you

Yes, another vote for silent reflux-the same started for me after I had covid in the first lockdown.

Can silent reflux make your throat feels really tight likes it is closing in?

Ooh I drink a lot of peppermint tea

Peppermint is literally one of the worst things for reflux, which of course I had no idea until I got it. It feels like there's a tight belt around your neck. It's awful.

Have you tried deep breathing exercises to help control the breathing and focus your mind?

@OnceuponaRainbow18

Can silent reflux make your throat feels really tight likes it is closing in?

Yes. Exactly like that. You can have problems swallowing, and you can feel like you're having trouble breathing. Read about it. There tonnes of info out there on reflux. It's related to GERD but not exactly the same.

GORD, sorry.

Thank you all, making me feel much better.

I’ll cut out the peppermint tea and try and see if there’s other food/drink triggers- would it happen quite soon after eating/drinking it?

I do try deep breathing but sometimes I’m somewhere it’s hard to do that and boom suddenly I feel like I can’t breathe properly.

I assumed it was anxiety as it rarely happens at work where I’m so busy but not thinking about peppermint tea I never drink this at work! So maybe!

Is your new job in an old building or could there be damp/water damage? It sounds like an allergic reaction to me. Try antihistamines. There are several different ones you can try. One of them might help.

Get some esomeprazole and take it daily for a week or so to see if it goes away. If it is reflux and it's more than a mild case, you might have to take esomeprazole for longer to heal it. Ask your gp.

I used to have this and thought it was an allergic reaction and it was a really bad time. To combat it id drink loads of water and always had a bottle with me. I also got diagnosed with GERD and was prescribed omeprazole and it did go. The headspace app is really good.

I used to suffer panic attacks. It was linked to PTSD as a result of having had an allergic reaction - went into anaphylactic shock and almost died.

For me, every time I ate food I would then have that throat tightening/itchiness as a symptom of my anxiety. It wasn't probably physical at all but once I was aware of it, I looked for it and it happened at every meal. When I began to manage my anxiety and the panic attacks stopped, so did the itching and tightness.

All of which is my way of saying it may well e a symptom of your anxiety and not a physical condition at all.

@Fizzgigg

I used to suffer panic attacks. It was linked to PTSD as a result of having had an allergic reaction - went into anaphylactic shock and almost died.

For me, every time I ate food I would then have that throat tightening/itchiness as a symptom of my anxiety. It wasn't probably physical at all but once I was aware of it, I looked for it and it happened at every meal. When I began to manage my anxiety and the panic attacks stopped, so did the itching and tightness.

All of which is my way of saying it may well e a symptom of your anxiety and not a physical condition at all.

Obviously I'm not saying you're wrong, but I have experience of this being the other way around. So it could be either. My DD has histamine intolerance which causes anxiety and is made much worse by trauma. So resolving the trauma can help resolve the sensitivity to histamine/allergic response and in turn help with the anxiety. I guess it amounts to the same thing anyway, but I do think the anxiety is often a physiological response rather than the cause.

People are strange BonneVacance! For me it definitely has wasn't physical but I totally believe it to be different for your daughter.
I'm nut allergic so my reactions to food were very specific and rare but I'd react like that to every single thing I ate, for about a year. And then it subsided as I got a handle on things.

Probably not helpful OP.

If you rule out silent reflux/allergies etc and you're still struggling have a look into muscle tension dysphonia which is a tightening of the muscles surrounding the larynx. Causes vary from environmental triggers/post virus to anxiety/ptsd. There's lots of exercises on YouTube to help relax the muscles. You can do laryngeal massage, lip trills/blowing raspberries, streaming the vocal chords, blowing steadily with a straw into a cup of water.

*steaming

Thanks all, I’m hoping it’s silent reflux but think it’s anxiety. Or any be the reflux causes an anxiety attack as well

Look up Vocal Chord Dysfunction