Throat Tightening sensation

[Meganxxx555]

Hi to all,
I have been experiencing severe throat tightening, from the muscles/nerves. I know this is a fight or flight response from leaving an abusive relationship in recent years. I have not been able to shift this , some people describe it as a globas sensation, a feeling of something stuck in your throat. This has been so bad that I had trouble swallowing, my oxygen sats went extremely low at one point. It’s extremely tight the muscles have just completely tensed up, I’m on venlafaxine 75mg and haven’t been prescribed anything else, my doctor won’t give me anything.
Has anyone else experienced this?
thanks for reading
Megan

Hi x

Yes recently when I’m anxious it’s awful

Yes I’ve experienced this , my psychiatrist called it globus hystericus. Very unpleasant, for me it’s happened during meals where I’ve felt very anxious such as meeting the in-laws … feel like I’ll never be able to swallow my food/drink or open my mouth ever again

Yes I have had this, I know that stress is a major factor but my symptoms really responded to anti-acid medication and happens much less often now. Might be worth trying, if it doesn’t work you could just stop it. Worth asking GP.

Yes I’ve had this. It’s awful! Laryngeal self-massage helps me. And I take Gaviscon Advance every night but I do have a hernia too.

This is often a symptom in grief - would that make sense to you? One technique is to ‘befriend’ it (I got this from Body Keeps Score) - when it happens can your thoughts stand above the physical sensation and observe and describe it and even imagine bits of it. Might take a few episodes to describe the sensation of any imagined colour, shape, texture, does it move, does it rise and subside? How long does it take? What is the intensity? Can you give it a name? Then you have the measure of it and can befriend it so it isn’t a threat - it’s information for you to do attend to something.

I suffer from this. It’s really distressing. Another person here who takes an antacid and gaviscn advance. It does help, along with some self calming techniques.

Spot on. I red somewhere that it’s a prehistoric urge to scream (opening the glottis), fighting against the socially acceptable need not to scream (the epiglottis) which abuses this too happen. I find it helpful to ground myself (feeling of bum on seat, hands on table etc), then widening to the other things going on (furthest away sound, the breath etc), and it soon subsides.

Sorry for typos, you get the gist

Yes another grounding technique is to look slowly around your room / environment to spot and name 10 things that are one colour - eg red, silver etc. it’s a distraction technique where you are intercepting an involuntary physiological reaction with an intentional cognitive action

I also had this and a couple of courses of acupuncture fixed it for me. It was a culmination of traumatic experiences: a frightening birth, losing my mother, miscarriage and a very close call accident within 18 months or so.
I hadn’t realised each of these things compounded as I hadn’t dealt with them. If you’re open to it, I’d really recommend an acupuncturist who deals with grief.
Sending love to you as it’s a horrible thing to have xxx