We are well on our way covering the various anxiety physical symptoms. In this article we have reached exactly mid way. We have already discussed five symptoms, and we have five more to go excluding the one we are going to discuss here. In this article we are going to discuss one of the most common anxiety symptoms which is sharp chest pains.

chest pains are generally described as a feeling or sensation of heaviness, pressure or a general feeling of discomfort in the chest. Chest pains are not only common but are considered serious as well. When a person is faced with a sudden and unexpected chest pain, the first thing that comes to mind is the worst, as many related such chest pains especially if they are sharp with a heart attack.

The Chest pain symptom or chest discomfort, is usually related to anxiety. When heart attack is ruled out, most chest pain causes turn out to be one of the following:

1- Anxiety Disorder

2- Muscle pain

3- Indigestion

4- Sometimes nerve pain.

Because of the close ties in perception between chest pain and heart attack we think its most appropriate to elaborate a little bit more the heart attack symptoms before we move on in our discussion about anxiety chest pain. We are got you this illustration from Holisticonline.com.

If you're having a heart attack, you might feel:

Crushing pain in your chest that may spread to your left shoulder

Chest pain that may spread to your neck, jaws, and/or down your back

Deep, dull pain or a tight, heavy, or squeezing sensation beneath your breastbone

The pain may be just in your arms

It may be in your jaw

Or it may be in your back

Early signals of heart attack

• Uncomfortable pressure, fullness, squeezing, or pain in the chest, usually lasting longer than two minutes

• Pain radiating to the shoulders, neck, jaw, arms, or back

• Dizziness, fainting, sweating, nausea, shortness of breath, or weakness

None of these symptoms assures that a heart attack is in progress, but the more symptoms you have, the more likely it is a heart attack.

Other Symptoms of Heart Attack

• Chest pressure

• Sweating

• Jaw pain

• Heartburn and/or indigestion

• Arm pain (more commonly the left arm, but may be either)

• Upper back pain

• General malaise (vague feeling of illness)

• Nausea

• Shortness of breath

You can see that there are many commonalities between anxiety symptoms and heart attack symptoms. There are a lot as well who mention anxiety as a cause for heart attack. Therefore, it is very crucial to rule out a heart attack or any other medical condition that share the same symptoms with anxiety before we make a judgment about an anxiety physical symptom.

Now when it is determined that anxiety is the reason behind the chest pain, a person has to be aware that the other anxiety physical symptoms will come in play after constant tension and tightness which are usually associated with anxiety. When this happens it is possible that the intensity of the sharp chest pains will increase.

As we have mentioned before that this anxiety symptom is very common. The chest pain can be sharp or dull. It can manifest itself as a side pain as a left chest pain or a right chest pain, or it can be felt around the chest. This pain can extend into the neck, shoulders or around the back of the head (Notice the similarity of this part with heart attack symptoms). The pain length varies. It can either come and go or stay for a long period of time. It can also take the form of occasional spasm.

We hope that this was a helpful and useful description of the anxiety physical symptom and that we have been successful in drawing the picture of the difference between anxiety chest pain and heart attack chest pain successfully. We realize that there is a lot of gray areas in drawing the distinction.

We will continually introduce material for you to better understand what is Anxiety. We will continue our research and bring you more information to cover as many aspects as possible of anxiety. Meanwhile you can check the list of materials and tools that we gathered for you to tackle and solve anxiety for yourself and others at: 

1- BusinessFountains Store: This is the main area of Anxiety Material that we are collecting.

2- Anxiety Self Help Library: This section mainly includes anxiety related audio books and other audio materials. Audio books are very useful when you don't have time to read a book. For more audio book listings and categories you can go to our Audio Book Section.

3- Our channels for providing you with more anxiety information and solutions are increasing. It will be completely inappropriate to add links to all those sections in our articles. You can check out all our anxiety information channels at our Anxiety Centre by clicking on the red banner below.