I have tmj problems, mainly just extreme tightness in the joints, and limited jaw range. Virtually no pain, except for a few rare times. My jaw doesn't open straight rather it quickly shifts back as the joints aren't moving much. I also get clicking sometimes, but this isn't particularily frequent unless chewing a harder food or sometimes upon opening wide.

As the jaw tension has heightened over time i've observed a difference in my tooth structure... I can also remember a specific incident when lying on my pillow when the jaw shifted significantly into its current tighter position.

This whole thing was anxiety and obsessive compulsive activated. I used to compulsive crack my jaw almost constantly, and then I when I stopped doing that I began a variety of other strange compulsive daily jaw movements.

One problem I have is that i'm worried i'll further disconfigure it from this point on, so the jaw is very very tense - i'm often finding myself reluctant to move it around.

I'm twenty years old. The jaw cracking was about eight years ago for maybe a year.. A lot of the newer changes to the jaw joint happened three to four years ago.

I'm wondering what I could do that would help stretch the joints a bit without having to worry about further altering the landscape. I've been gifted not to have pain so many tmj sufferers have, so I want to keep it that way, at the same time I have so much tension and i'm so worried about making the slightest movement in my jaw that i'm really quite unhappy.