Muscular Tension
Tense muscles are another manifestation of anxiety, more specifically linked to the fight or flight response initiated during an anxiety attack. The hormones released during this response, cause the body to prepare to fight or flee. This explains the role of these hormones to cause increased tension in the muscles. The hypertensive muscles are able to act according to rapid bursts of signals from the brain, even when they might not be fully processed by other senses, like vision, smell, or taste etc. Muscle tension is perceived as a dull ache, or tightness of the muscles. Another less common feature is anxiety-evoked muscle twitching. Shivering of the extremities, jerky movements, rapid blinking are manifestations if the same mechanism.