Facial Twitch

Facial twitching is one of those problems that turns out to be a lot more annoying than it should be. After all, in many ways a facial nerve twitch is no big deal. It doesn't affect your long-term health, it doesn't lead to other conditions, and it doesn't necessarily degenerate into anything worse. Nonetheless, a facial twitch can profoundly affect your quality of life.

Many facial twitches or tics are developed as a response to stress. Sometimes it is very clear, but other times the causes aren't so certain. I first got my facial twitch about two years ago. At the time, I was going through an extremely stressful period in my life. I was having a divorce, having a shake up in my career, and mourning the loss of a good friend. I don't know which of those factors it was, but one of them triggered a facial twitch. Suddenly, the left side of my mouth would jolt up for several seconds at a time, turning my expression into a morbid rictus. At first it only happen once or twice a day, but soon it was happening several times an hour.

The most awful thing about it was that everyone would notice it. People would startle every time it happened, then pretend that they hadn't seen it at all. It was always very awkward because I always knew that they had seen it, and they knew that I knew that they had seen it. It made social situations very difficult for me for a while.

My doctor knew right away that it was probably psychological, but knowing that fact doesn't necessarily make it an easy thing to treat. I took some supplements which were supposed to relax tension, but they did nothing. I tried meditation, exercise, and a few other things, but none of that seemed to help. Finally, in desperation, I tried therapy.

For most people, therapy to treat a facial twitch will work, but there's no telling how long it will take to be effective. It can take weeks, months, or even years. In my case, it took about four months until my symptoms started to improve. I had to get into a less stressful place in my life, but I also had to address the fact that I hadn't been dealing well with stress in the first place. My emotional inhibitions which had always kept me strong in the past were at the root of my facial twitch. As I learned to open up about my feelings, my psychosomatic condition gradually subsided and then went away.