What on Earth Is an Eye Twitch!?
A comprehensive guide to one of the body’s most irritating quirks (and how to make it stop)
Jake Cooper was working for a Fortune 50 company in the Midwest when he found out his management job was on the line. Right before Christmas, in the midst of significant layoffs in his office, his right eye started twitching on and off. He chalks it up to extreme stress and fatigue.
“I dreaded going to work, and I wasn’t sleeping well,” Cooper says. “I finally went to my family doctor, and that was the first time I started putting a name to what I was experiencing: generalized anxiety disorder.” With a combination of anti-anxiety medication, psychotherapy, and time—he says it took around six months to dissipate — Cooper’s eye twitching finally stopped, and it hasn’t come back.
Twitching around the eye, which is medically referred to as eyelid myokymia, happens when the muscle around the eye — the orbicularis oculi — contracts involuntarily. Dr. Stephanie Erwin, an optometrist at the Cleveland Clinic Cole Eye Institute, says most myokymia cases involve twitching of the lower eyelid, but some people experience these muscle spasms on their upper eyelids, too. Usually, people experience intermittent twitching of just one eye.
