Why Do I Grind My Teeth So Much—And How Can I Make It Stop?!

Today Savvy Psychologist is excited to share a special episode of Checking In, a new wellness advice podcast from SELF magazine. Checking In tackles our most personal health and wellness questions, no matter how complicated or embarrassing. In this episode, you'll hear how anxiety can manifest in our teeth and jaw, and you’ll learn practical tips for relieving the physical symptoms of stress. Enjoy!

In this episode, a woman named Sarah calls in to tell us that she’s been grinding her teeth a lot lately, thanks to her anxiety.

“I started to notice an increasing amount of jaw pain,” she says. “I could feel my jaw spasming during the day.” She says that the more she does it, the more worried she gets about it, which then creates a nasty cycle where her anxiety triggers her teeth grinding and vice versa. Sarah wants to know why this is happening, and how to make it stop.

This is all very relatable to me, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that.

New episodes of Checking In come out every Monday. Listen to this week’s episode by clicking on the audio player above, and get more episodes of Checking In on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Teeth grinding, or bruxism, is when you clench your jaw and grind and rub your teeth together, generally unintentionally. There are a number of different causes of teeth grinding, and mental health conditions like anxiety can absolutely be a factor. So to get some insight into that mind-body connection, I first talk to licensed clinical psychologist Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., the author of the book Detox Your Thoughts.

“There’s really no disconnecting the physical response of stress from the mental one,” Bonior says. She and I discuss the fight-or-flight response, and why anxiety can indeed manifest physically in many different ways—like teeth grinding, of course, but also gastrointestinal distress, headaches, shortness of breath, insomnia, and so on.

We’re in a situation where ... we have to overthink whether or not everyday, simple decisions are going to harm us. We used to take for granted the fact that we could go get groceries. Or we could get the mail, or we could talk to a neighbor. We now have to think about that on such a level that it’s exhausting.

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