Is This To Do With Anxiety/ Stress?

[wewantfun]

hey all, i been coping pretty well lately with all my stresses and worrys, moved house sucessfully, very happy now but 1 thing that keeps on bringing me back down again is the god awful tooth pain.
I have seen dentists, and specialist at the hospital who have giving me panoramic x rays of my teeth and jaw and gums etc, and say that yes while my bite is abit off, there is nothing else wrong with your teeth, in fact i was told i have lovely teeth and a lovely smile.
i do suffer with TMJ, and that plays up every now and then but i just keep getting this awfull pain in my bottom teeth, along my molars and canine tooth, it seems more from the gum then the actul teeth.
i take pain meds all the time and im getting concerned about the amount i take every day, thing is they are not reliving me of the pain and i get pretty strong painkillers from the doctor.
is it posssible that stress and anxiety can cause tooth pain or phantom tooth pain? as i know some dentists call it
i check my teeth and gums evry day and its now becoming an obsession that i study them all the time, to the point that i think my teeth move every day in a different position.
i dont know what to do about it, as it brings me down so much :(

[Vixxy]

Aww you poor thing. Could the pain be coming from you tensing your jaw? I know when I get sinus pain I get really bad tooth ache, so maybe this is the pain transferring to another nerve. Does that make sense? XD

[wewantfun]

hey, thanks for replying. i see what your saying and im trying to make a concious effort of not tensing my jaw. i have a habit of when i stretch in the mornings i seem to bite down on my teeth and they really hurt after, but im trying to be more aware of that now. i had no pain this morning when i woke up yet i been sitting here on the computer for about half hour and my teeth are starting to hurt again, and i can feel my jaw muscles tensing yet im not clenching my teeth? i just dont no what it could be. x

[unspoken]

Do you clench your teeth in the night? I go through phases of doing that and it is the most horrible pain, nothing seems to make it go away. The pain I have is in the jaw, around the ears and headaches. It's hard to know if you clench your teeth in your sleep but if you wake up with a tense-feeling jaw, that could be it. I can tell it's jaw pain because the muscles around my jaw feel tender when I prod them, around where the jaw connects to the skull. I have TMJ as well, my jaw is hypermobile.

I don't really know what made me stop clenching my teeth. It seemed to get really bad when I was really depressed but then it went away when I took sleeping pills. Low dose amitriptyline (5-10mgs) taken in the evening actually helped for me. Temazepam also worked but isn't good to take benzos in the long run. I hope you manage to find something that works for you. You can also get mouthguard things to stop you clenching/grinding your teeth in your sleep but I didn't find that helped me.