Jenevora Williams and Stephen King
Guarding is the body’s instinctive protective response. When injured or anticipating pain, muscles tighten around vulnerable areas to limit movement and reduce risk. This response may be voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious. Anyone who has stiffened their shoulders before lifting, or clenched their jaw in anticipation of discomfort has experienced guarding.
In clinical and research settings, muscle guarding is well documented across chronic lower back pain, abdominal pain, and shoulder injuries. Importantly, guarding arises not only in response to existing pain but also in anticipation of pain or injury, linking it closely to fear, anxiety, and expectation. In this way, guarding bridges physiology and psychology.
In voice work, tension patterns in both intrinsic and extrinsic laryngeal muscles are commonly observed. Singers and speakers may report sensations of tightness, holding, or effort, particularly under stress, fatigue, or vocal overload. Despite its frequent presentation, the term laryngeal guarding has not been formally established. This article explores whether anxiety, past pain experiences, or vocal strain might activate laryngeal protective reflexes resembling guarding elsewhere in the body.
Reviewing literature across four domains: pain science, fear-based muscle tension, psychoanalytic and phenomenological theory, and voice-specific research, yields four themes relevant to laryngeal guarding:
Phenomenological research on sensorimotor expectations and stress in performers further supports the notion that the larynx can adopt defensive or compensatory postures as a form of guarding.
Historically, Wilhelm Reich described muscular armour as chronic tension patterns reflecting psychological defence. Today, guarding is understood as an unconscious or semi-conscious strategy to minimize threat, whether physical or emotional, manifesting as bracing, restricted movement, or altered posture. The term “guarding reflex” first appeared in the 1950s to describe involuntary urinary muscle contraction, and has since been recognized across medicine and psychology.
Early mechanistic views of reflexes, rooted in Descartes’ mind–body dualism, framed the body as a machine responding automatically to stimuli. Modern health science, through the biopsychosocial model, emphasizes the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors. Muscle guarding is therefore not merely mechanical; it is a learned, adaptive response shaped by meaning, memory, fear, and context.
Guarding emerges when the body anticipates threat. Acute injury may provoke immediate bracing, while chronic pain can produce long-term habitual tension. Problems arise when protective tension persists after the threat has passed, limiting movement, amplifying discomfort, and reinforcing fear and anxiety.
Neurobiologically, guarding is a learned motor strategy. The brain updates internal predictions about danger after injury or threat, pre-activating muscles in similar contexts even without actual harm. Over time, these patterns can become automatic, energetically costly, and decoupled from conscious fear. Motion capture and muscle activity studies now detect subtle guarding markers: slowed movement, interrupted transitions, and excessive co-contraction, allowing targeted rehabilitation.
Guarding protects vulnerable structures, but persistent bracing feeds sensory input into the nervous system, sustaining pain and reinforcing threat perception. Examples include:
The larynx is similarly equipped with protective reflexes, such as the laryngeal adductor reflex, which closes the vocal folds in response to irritation. Overactivity of these reflexes is observed in muscle tension dysphonia (MTD), chronic cough, inducible laryngeal obstruction, and functional neurological voice disorders (FNVD). Behavioural retraining often yields better outcomes than medical interventions, highlighting the functional nature of these responses. Neuroimaging shows that threat appraisal, bodily awareness, and motor preparation networks are active during airway irritation, and dysregulation can produce a “guarded” voice.
At the extreme, guarding may underpin FND, where maladaptive threat learning and motor adaptation generate symptoms without any structural damage present. Pain often precedes functional deficits. Fear-driven bracing can entrench weakness, voice loss, or movement disturbance, but symptoms may reverse with graded, safe reintroduction of movement. Guarding is learned - and can be unlearned.
Performance anxiety illustrates the reflexive impact of guarding. “Choking” under pressure arises not from lack of skill, but anxiety-driven self-monitoring. For performers, scrutiny triggers freezing, breath restriction, and laryngeal closure. Personality traits, such as high conscientiousness, introversion, or conflict avoidance, will increase vulnerability. Life events, trauma, or role conflict can intensify guarding, making it muscular, relational, and existential.
Practitioners can distinguish between:
Reflexive guarding: Fast, automatic, triggered by immediate threat, often responsive to cognitive-behavioural strategies and environmental reassurance.
Behavioural guarding: Slower, learned, enduring, embedded in musculoskeletal patterns, often requiring holistic, experiential intervention.
Most voice users present with both. Practitioners can identify the dominant pattern and tailor interventions accordingly.
Guarding often co-occurs with hypersensitivity to throat sensations (tightness, burning, globus) after infection, reflux, or stress. Endoscopy may show no pathology. Fear of “doing damage” frequently drives tension, which may persist after pathology resolves.
In hypermobility, increased muscle co-contraction stabilises lax joints but leads to fatigue, stiffness, and secondary pain over time. These patterns are especially prevalent in dancers, athletes, and performers - populations that rely heavily on physical precision while operating under high psychological pressure.
Protective strategies can backfire: ‘marking’ in rehearsal incorrectly, whispering, or over-efforting increases tension. Conversely, over-endurance in performers may rely on guarding to maintain function, even at the cost of long-term efficiency.
Conflict Over Speaking Out (COSO) exemplifies guarding in response to social threat. Fear of negative consequences such as occupational loss, judgment, or replacement, can produce persistent laryngeal bracing.
Effective intervention begins with establishing safety. For any voice disorder with psychological complications, it is useful to begin the process of untangling this with conversation in the form of gentle and appropriate questions. Ask open questions before closed ones. The patient or client can begin the journey of understanding, as they piece together the story behind their current situation. The aim is not diagnosis but recognition and safety. Therapeutic tasks may not appear to relate to singing or speaking:
Practitioners should frame guarding as unconscious and protective, removing blame and shame. Observational cues (persistent breathiness, harshness, loss of upper range) will guide assessment but are not diagnostic. A biopsychosocial approach, integrating motor retraining, graded exposure, and attention to psychological meaning, is essential. Addressing secondary gain, where guarding may provide relief, attention, or permission to withdraw, is also critical.
Laryngeal guarding is a multidimensional phenomenon encompassing reflexive defence and learned fear-avoidance. It exists along a continuum from transient stiffening to entrenched functional voice loss. Recognizing and naming it allows clinicians to integrate motor, psychological, and social considerations in treatment. Early identification and graded intervention may prevent chronic dysfunction, helping clients reclaim vocal ease safely and compassionately.