Ever wonder what the effects of scrunching up your face can have on your body and your health? When you experience a great deal of physical or emotional stress, facial tension can often be the result. As much as it’s a perfectly normal and natural response to many stress-inducing life situations, there are short and long-term repercussions on both your health and your sleep. So how do they happen, and how do you relieve facial tension to help you sleep better and enjoy a better quality of life? Let’s break it down.

What does it mean to carry stress on your face?

When you begin to feel stress and anxiety, your body sets off your sympathetic nervous system—also known as your “fight or flight” response. As a result, your face puts itself into a holding pattern whenever you feel stressed, anxious, or worried, since it’s in a state where you're anticipating imminent danger and preparing yourself for it.

Tension and tightness in your jaw is another possible consequence of scrunching your face up under stress too often. This is also known as a Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ), and is the result of tension on neck muscles.

Stress and anxiety can lead to negative health repercussions, including on your face, its muscles, and in your jaw. The more you do it, the more it can lead to you keeping a consistently stressed-looking facial expression. Certain facial habits, such as frequently grinding or gritting your teeth, can exacerbate these issues further.

What kinds of effects can it have on you?

Chronic feelings of stress can cause facial conditions such as acne, dry skin, bags underneath the eyes, and wrinkles. In some cases, feeling tension in your face can lead to headaches, tingling sensations, and/or facial flushing. Headaches from stress and tension can vary in frequency and intensity, from as little as half an hour to as long as multiple months in a row.

To make things worse, even thinking about the stress responses in your body can amplify your facial tension further. Should you experience these symptoms chronically, it’s best you seek advice from a medical professional. In general, try to minimize as much stress in your life as possible. You can try getting more exercise, making more time out of your day purely for relaxation, and working on improving your sleep hygiene.

How much does this affect my sleep?

If you find yourself waking up feeling like your shoulders and/or neck have been stabbed with a knife, tension in your face and jaw could be at fault. This is tied to our impulses to grit our teeth, bite our lips, and clench our jaws while stressed. Because it causes your head to tilt forward and your neck to tighten, this can lead to pain that cause problems for you during sleep.

So how can you relax your jaw while sleeping? You can try exercises where you move your jaws in certain ways to relieve tightness, especially if grinding your teeth—also known as bruxism—is an ongoing problem for you. Alternatively, you could try placing a warm wet cloth on your neck before bed if you experience discomfort, take ibuprofen or acetaminophen, or gently massage your jaw. Make sure you also try frequently changing your posture during sleep, as this can help release jaw tension.