#like 'sure this sucks but 7 years ago you were working on a portfolio 13x as long from the toilet while you shat blood' lmao

[lady-harrowhark]

Ack! If you're still having jaw pain and horrible popping, I'd suggest googling the phrase "temperomandibular joint dysfunction" — it's really common in people with hypermobility and other joint issues — and maybe stop trying to open your mouth that far just to see if you can. Overopening is one of the worst things you can do to exacerbate it and increase the chances of actual dislocation. The muscles need to rest and relax to help your jaw settle back where it's supposed to be; there are exercises you can do to keep it in neutral, such as pressing the tip of your tongue directly behind your upper front teeth and letting your jaw relax/drop gently by itself within that limit, i.e. with your tongue acting as a tether so you don't overopen. If it's TMD, and it sounds like it is, muscle relaxants always help, and heat applied to the neck and shoulders as well as the jaw itself. And if you do see someone about it, a specialty TMD dentist would probably be more helpful to you than a doctor, unless you have a specialist you're seeing for your joints. Good luck, and I hope the academic stuff *lets* you relax! I know at least two people who got TMD along with a PhD. >.> Would be preferable to be a jawless skull...

Ahh thank you, this is so sweet of you. I've looked into TMD a bit before actually, so there's probably something to it. And don't worry, I haven't been pushing it! I just went back and re-worded that tag lol - what I had originally said there was "if I open my mouth very wide" but what I meant was more along the lines of "if I open my mouth much at all" (I feel like maybe that's a grammatical regionalism because the more I stare at it the more I'm like "why do I say it like that?")

I hadn't thought about doing heat on my neck/shoulders though, I'll have to try that one! I've been taking magnesium glycinate for jaw clenching and general muscle tension for quite a while now and it has for sure been helping, I can definitely tell a difference the next day when I forget to take it. One of my other medications gives me some wicked jaw clenching if I take it too frequently, but I've mostly figured out how to walk that line and haven't had that issue for a bit, and that one's a very different kind of pain - that's an intense ache along my cheekbone whereas this is more of a stab in joint itself and an inability to fully bite down. I was using a nightguard that my dentist recommended for a while, but the super obnoxious thing is that I actually don't clench my jaw when I'm sleeping. Sleeping makes it WAY better! I only do it when I'm awake 🙃 I'm actually due for a dentist visit soon so good timing, I suppose! But oof, I absolutely believe that about the PhD to TMD pipeline. When I was finishing up my first master's program we had to do a portfolio that, in hindsight, was objectively bonkers - to give you an idea, the portfolio I just submitted was 26 pages... the other one was 339 and they sprang it on us as a new requirement with about 8 weeks' notice 💀 anyway! I had an awful ulcerative colitis flare during the latter half of that semester - probably totally unrelated to the stress, right? 🙄