I Get A Mouth Twitch / Spasm When Smiling And Have No Clue Why

[Beyond Words]

I get a mouth twitch whenever I smile. I know it's somehow psychologically related because I am also able to smile in a way that my mouth doesn't twitch. Sometimes (especially when around other people) my face gets tense and wants to twitch whenever I move it. I can't smile properly when it happens. It usually gets worse when people look at me. I've had it for at least 6 months. I don't know what caused it, and what exactly triggers it. I can even smile and have my mouth twitch while meditating, or during any other solitary moment. However, I've noticed that it occurs most often when I receive some kind of verbal abuse (when I feel like I am being rejected / not accepted in some way). 

I've talked to a therapist about it and they say it's due to stress. However, I've had much more stressful periods of my life (which caused a region near my eye to twitch) when I didn't have this problem at all. I don't see a real correlation between stress and the twitch from experience. However, it is usually hard to hear me during conversation which stresses me out even when I try to accept it, because it hinders my charisma a lot. But I've had that problem for years and this only appeared around 6 months ago.

How could I cure this? Perhaps certain unconscious thought patterns cause it? I've been consecutively meditating for 20m/day for almost a year now, so my involuntary thought frequency is very small compared to previous years. 

[Ricksta]

Dear LiberalPipe

Rather the conundrum that you sit with there... Personally I enjoy it when I see a face twitch cause I know the person is actually bubbling with happiness that they haven't yet shared with other people. They trying hard to hold it in

It's good that you went to see a therapist, however I am surprised that they weren't able to assist you? Any facial twitch, slurring, stuttering etc. that is interactionally based (i.e. triggered by interactions with other people) really can be resolved within an hour by a trained individual. The crux of the resolution hinges on a baseline incongruency and the need for a closeness corrective. Explaining these two concepts to you won't resolve your issue so what I'm going to do is point you in a long term direction and also tell you what you can do as a short term fix.

In the long term you sit with a fundamental incongruency between how you really feel about other people and the image that you are projecting to them. For example one of the things I picked up on is that you feel other people are verbally abusing you when they reject or don't accept you in some way. This, I'm afraid to say, is something that you are going to have to address by working on yourself. As much as what you have the right to live so do other people and they are within their full right to reject you if they so choose. This isn't "verbal abuse" it's simply them rejecting you. You also reject people that you don't want to spend time with, there is nothing wrong with it. In fact, not rejecting someone that you really want to reject is called being incongruent, because now your actions (spending time with that person) is not in line with how you feel about that person (you actually want to reject them). So what is happening to you is that your subconscious is winning this battle and while you consciously put up a straight face, subconsciously you are being forced to display how you really feel about them. Work on being honest and open up about your feelings, initially it will be scary because you have a lot of pent up feelings, but after the initial rush of vitriol you will feel (and be) free to be open and honest. To live authentically. That's your long term pointer. Now for a short term fix...

Find somebody that you are close to and explain to them what is going on for you. The person doesn't need to judge/fix or anything, just listen. Ask them to stare at you so that your twitch is triggered. Smile at the person and watch as they observe you twitching. Ask the person to describe the twitching to you and have them reach out and touch your twitching smile with both their hands as if cupping your face. Continue to expose your twitching to them for approximately 30 minutes. You need to fully twitch as much as possible to this person and have them looking at the twitching as much as possible. Do this everyday for a week and reflect back to observe the difference between when you started and where you are now.

I've been through this process before and I know it works so I don't have to wish you good luck, it's a done deal.

[Beyond Words]

Thank you so much for your reply, I genuinely appreciate it. I just started doing the "short term fix" and noticed that I couldn't get my mouth to twitch when I was genuinely smiling. Maybe it just doesn't happen while genuinely smiling or I can't really feel it when my fave muscles are stretched.

I could only sustain an intense twitch once I fully released my face and did a halfway smile with my lips (without cheecks). It got much more intense and easier to sustain when I forced thoughts about everyone hating me and being a worthless piece of shit and wasting her time and being a pathetic loser.

I don't consciously have thoughts like the ones I forced nor do I believe them. I think  unconscious negative beliefs about myself and how others perceive me and/or negative unconscious thought patterns trigger and intensify the twitch. I would like to know what you think and I'll let you know what other conclusions we arrive at as we continue this.

Thank you

[Lucasxp64]

When I'm making a fake smile, it can twitch. It's like if I were controlling it consciously.

But I don't think it's too weird on me at least, it's very imperceptible.

Edited April 5 by Lucasxp64

[universe]

Closed for being ancient/old.