What does it mean when your face is tingling?

This is one of the many questions I’ve been asked about the multiple and mysterious sensations we all experience when in an anxious state. So, what does face tingling really mean? Why tingling? Why the face?

Everything is Connected – Nothing Stands Alone

First off, it’s crucial to understand that what we often call ‘anxiety’ is actually our survival state kicking into gear. Anxiety triggers a heightened, fully embodied state, finely tuned to react at lightning speed to stressors, real or perceived.

If the stress is coming from something outside of you, (or thought to be), your body shifts into a mode that maximizes your chances of either escaping or fighting off the threat. On the flip side, when the stressor is internal, (such as thoughts, fears, pain), your body still preps for action. However, since the threat is coming from within, there is no escaping it, because simply put – you can’t outrun your own body.

Why Does Your Body React With Tingling During Anxiety? 

When you are up against a stressor you can’t fight or escape from, that’s when you really feel the full force of the survival state – Fight, Flight or Freeze – in all its intense glory. During the Fight, Flight, Freeze response, your body taps into energy reserves, heightening sensations that often include tingling in areas like the face. As a result, you get to be hyper-aware of all the sensations as your body generates this super-state on your behalf. If you were actually running or fighting, the same activity would still be going on, but you wouldn’t notice it, because you’d be utilising the energy and dissipating the state through action. When you can’t, and you just have to sit with it, it’s intense, painful, disconcerting, and everybody hates it.

Sensational Sensations – Feeling the Feels

The technical term for being aware of sensations within your body is interoception. You might interocept sensations involuntarily, like when you feel a twinge in a muscle, butterflies in your stomach, or that overly full feeling after a big meal. Or you can deliberately direct your attention to a specific area, like your hands and fingers, and notice any sensations there. Often, you’ll pick up on feelings you weren’t even aware of until you focused on them. You can give it a try right now if you like, before continuing to read. Let yourself be curious. What did you notice?

Essentially, your body is made up of billions of sensory neurons that detect sensation and relay this information to the brain. They relay this information across your peripheral nervous system and into the central nervous system, which conveys to the brain that something, somewhere, is happening. The brain with help from you and your perception and sensation, decides what to do next. If it’s a headache that’s inconvenient and painful enough to be a nuisance, you might head to the medicine cabinet for a painkiller. If it’s a hunger pang, you might start foraging in the kitchen for a bite to eat. Simply put, sensation is your body’s way of signaling you to take notice of what’s happening internally.

Why Tingling in the Face Happens During a Survival State

If you find yourself in a survival state with nothing to run away from, you’ll notice that the sensations within remain intense. They don’t get dissipated by action, when action isn’t appropriate to be taken. However, it’s also important to know that although there is a lot going on when a body transforms into a Fight, Flight, Freeze state, those sensory neurons become amplified, making things appear even more dramatic than they are. The reality is from an evolutionary perspective, if they weren’t exaggerated, we wouldn’t pay much attention to them, and might not respond quickly enough when real danger is present.

We Often Find It Hard to Decipher Sensation

In my field, people talk a lot about emotional literacy. But embodied literacy? – not so much. We tend to fear physical sensations, particularly those we don’t fully understand, like face tingling caused by anxiety. Let’s face it, as a species, most of us have learned to fear internal sensations. Often, people tell me they feel disconnected from their embodied intelligence and see everything in terms of ‘symptoms’ of disorder. Obviously, it always makes sense to check out anything unusual with a doctor, but it’s also useful to consider our feelings in relation to the context of our broader lives. When we change our relationship with our embodied selves, towards one of curiosity, and compassion, we start to be able to understand our experiences a lot more clearly.

Feelings, Perceptions and Interpretations all Work Together

Brain activity is influenced by receiving a direct message from the sensory neurons that there is sensation going on. It is also influenced by the perceptions you have and dispositions you hold about those sensations. When it comes to anxiety, nobody I meet likes involuntarily interocepting, that is, being stuck with feelings they don’t like or understand. The feelings experienced are most unwelcome, and everyone I work with is super keen to get rid of them. In fact, it is really common for people to tell me that they HATE the sensations that go along with the survival state. Take a moment to notice your own disposition towards sensations.

Your Brain Responds to Both the Sensation and How You Perceive It

Keep in mind, that your brain is not only receiving and responding to direct sensation, but also your perceptions and dispositions towards those sensations. A disposition of HATE conveys to the brain that there is an enemy to fight. The brain does not know that the enemy is the very sensations that it is producing by generating a survival state to help you. This is how you end up caught in a feedback loop which perpetuates the survival state that you are trying to escape from.

Why Does Your Face Tingle During Anxiety?

So, finally – a tingling face. Why would a face tingle? Well, it’s because everything is connected to everything else. There’s even an old song about it. At the top of your back, across your shoulders, below your neck, there is a muscle called the trapezius. When our body is transformed into a state of Fight, Flight or Freeze, this muscle is instantly filled (perfused), with richly oxygenated blood. The reason for this is that it is an important muscle that we use to propel ourselves forward when we are running away. It is used to pump our arms back and forth, creating momentum in our upper bodies. As this muscle enlarges, it pulls on the tiny muscles of the neck, scalp, and face. As the song says, every tiny part of you is part of an interconnected whole system, so no one bit of you operates alone. As each tiny muscle pulls or pushes against other tiny muscles, we feel sensation that we don’t normally feel, in sensory neurons we are normally not aware of. This feels strange and confusing, and we sometimes react with fear. This fear is conveyed to the part of our brain that is designed to keep us safe (The Amygdala), which then generates more of the survival state we are afraid of. Again, here you can recognise the feedback loop between sensation, and our perception of our embodied experience.

Learning the Language of the Survival System

By understanding the nature of this feedback loop, you can learn how to work with the survival system in a way that conveys to your survival brain that you are safe. Once you are able to do so, the unwanted sensations diminish very quickly. This is the beauty of the human organism. It adapts to whatever is required of it, we just need to learn how to convey our needs to it effectively.

If you’d like to learn more about embodiment, specifically in relation to the anxious state – check out my anxiety course or Positive Psychology for general support.

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About Gill the author

Gillian Batty is a dedicated counselor, researcher, and academic with a specialised focus on the research and treatment of anxiety. With a robust academic background, Gillian holds a Psychology Degree, a Postgraduate Certificate in Counselling and Psychotherapy, and a Postgraduate Certificate in Mindfulness and Compassion-Based Practice. Gillian has also earned an MSc in Global Mental Health.

Currently, Gillian is pursuing a PhD, where her research is centered on exploring the impact of the biomedical approach to anxiety and developing a comprehensive systems-based model for its treatment. With a deep commitment to advancing mental health care, Gillian combines practical experience with academic research to offer evidence-based insights and treatment strategies for individuals struggling with anxiety.

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