Indeed the pressure and tension are by-products of anxiety. The pressure is actually a misperception and contrary to what people who experience it believe, it has absolutely nothing to do with your blood pressure. It is merely a sensory disturbance. Muscular tension, particularly in the trapezius muscles which extend upward from the back into the neck and the base of the skull, constitutes one of the most common musculoskeletal complaints by persons with anxiety disorder or experiencing significant stress.

The reason that you experience emotional breakdown from the palpitations is that while they are disruptive, you also believe them to be dangerous or constitute a threat of some type. You need to understand that these palpitations do not originate from within the heart and have absolutely nothing to do with your heart's established rhythm and performance. They can never cause you to suffer a heart attack or put you at risk in any way, shape or form. It's not medically possible.

You need to ponder the underlying nature of your anxiety, which has been present to the extent that it has produced somatic features, ie palpitations. Life events which can cause this to happen are things like divorce, loss of a loved one, financial difficulties, loss of a job or even a brand new job, and so on. These are just examples and by no means represents the exhaustive list of possibilities.

Understand that your body is physiologically in a state of low-level fear or apprehension that causes changes to occur that you sense as palpitations and other odd manifestations. But you need to firmly understand that simply because you experience a palpitation of this type in no way constitutes a direct link with danger of any kind. This is an irrational fear and one that you must face head-on.

Palpitation frequency can also be increased by things like GI problems. The vagus nerve innervates the GI tract as the pneumogastric nerve and when air becomes trapped in the lumen of the intestines, it can cause the vagus nerve to produce an evoked potential, or nerve impulse, which travels upward along the nerve until it reaches the terminal points, one of which is the heart.

You simply need to think of benign palpitations as dialing the wrong telephone number. When the signal reaches the unintended recipient, they simply respond to the call but it doesn't cause damage to the phone or suddenly cause the phone to stop working. The phone is simply performing as intended. The same is true for the heart. It's simply responding to an unintended signal from the vagus nerve, but it's entirely incapable of damaging your heart or causing it to stop working. In fact, the vagus nerve is critical to heart function. It's doing it's job just fine, but simply producing unintentional signals due to stress and or anxiety. It is a physiological alteration, not a symptom that something is wrong.

You should not let the palpitations disturb your social life. You simply need to work through them without the fear that something horrible is about to happen. Again, it is not a problem with your heart whatsoever. If you experience them while out with friends, simply drink some water and breathe deeply and regularly for a moment and just relax. They will always pass and will never result in some type of event. Only your fear is producing panic and emotional breakdown, so you need to better understand what is actually taking place rather than what you're allowing yourself to believe.

Magnesium does not eradicate the presence of the palpitations. People will advise you concerning all sorts of concoctions, herbs, minerals, vitamins, etc, but they have confused the response with a placebo effect in all of these instances. This should, however, represent a very critical fact that the palpitations are emotionally driven and do not constitute a heart problem.

Best regards and Good Health