Choking feeling/ Difficulty Swallowing

This is one of the most terrifying experiences that I personally dealt with during my anxiety days. You have no idea how many times I thought I had throat cancer. Partly thank to Dr. Google.

I was still able to swallow. But it just felt very difficult. I felt like there is something stuck in my throat. I constantly had to clear my throat which, I later on realized, was the cause of my throat having a burning pain and my voice became coarse. All was because of too much forceful clearing and coughing.

I was constantly rubbing and feeling my throat trying to find a lump or a tumor. And by doing so, I made my throat tender to the touch. Such pain pushed my fear further into thinking that it must be a serious issue since there is pain involved.

I was afraid that whatever inside my throat, if left untreated, will grow into something bigger and prevent me from breathing. Just that thought by itself would throw me into panic mode. And as you know, once panic hits, the tight throat/ choking feeling only gets worse.

Swallowing food is a natural reflex. If you don’t believe me, next time when you eat something, just keep on chewing and eventually you will swallow. My anxiety made me consciously pay attention to every bit of food I swallow making a natural mechanism become forceful. And as we all know, when you give any sensation your undivided attention, it grows. If my throat could speak, it would ask me to leave it alone and stop putting stress over it.

I remember my doctor explained to me that our muscles tense up when they are under stress and the muscles inside and around our throat aren’t no exception. With a high level of constant stress in our body during anxiety, our throat will tighten up just like any other muscle. But since it’s close to our breathing and eating mechanism, such tightness can cause a lot of alarms, especially the faulty ones.

I would say that I had the severe cases when it comes to this specific symptom. Regardless of how scary it was, how convincing anxiety tried to be, I was never stop breathing, I was still able to swallow everything I ate. Test after test, all came back normal. My doctor almost lost patient with me because of how many types of cancer I insisted that I had.

I am now fully recovered from anxiety and not a single incident with my throat tightness and difficulty of swallowing happens since.

Symptoms are like battles. You can win one here and there, but attacking your anxiety helps you win the war.