Needle like pain in chest that comes and goes

Chest pain is one of those symptoms that immediately makes you think the worst: that maybe you’re having a heart attack. But there are a lot of reasons you may feel discomfort, pressure, or tightness in your chest that have nothing to do with your ticker.

Chest pain when lying down but not standing up

In fact, half of the people that cardiologists see for chest pain have no heart problems at all.

“Lots of people experience non-cardiac chest pain,” Jeffrey Huffman, MD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the director of the cardiac psychiatry research program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), tells SELF.

“Being told you’re not having a heart attack is great [but] it doesn’t make your chest pain go away.” In other words, you might have to do some detective work with your doctor, Dr. Huffman says, which will provide some clues that can guide you to treatment options for relief.

So next time your chest feels a little weird, try not to automatically assume the worst.

Here are five causes of chest pain that are totally unrelated to your heart.

1. You hurt the cartilage or muscles in your

middle of my chest is sore to touch

my chest feels sore to touch