Why Can’t You Always ‘Complete’ Yawns?

Repeated incomplete, unfinished yawns are often manifestations of underlying anxiety or stress. When you are stressed or anxious, you can’t “let go” enough to relax fully and achieve that full muscular stretch, causing a feeling of annoyance or dissatisfaction with the yawn.

The word “yawn” itself is capable of making people yawn. It goes without saying that yawning is contagious, perhaps most obviously because most people yawn when they see someone else yawn.

However, as pleasant as yawning feels, sometimes it is not “completed”, leaving us uneasy or even annoyed.

As you sense an incoming yawn, you close your eyes, open your mouth and feel the familiar tingling in your throat, but then your mouth closes involuntarily, before the yawn is complete, before you have the yawn, so to speak, “out.”

And this isn’t a one-time affair. Incomplete yawns might happen at intervals of 2-3 minutes, partly to complete the yawn.

All of this is to say that sometimes you don’t get the sense of relief that you normally enjoy following a “good” yawn.

So why does this happen? Why do yawns not ‘complete’ sometimes?

What Is Yawning Anyway?

If you have pets, then you know that humans are not the only creatures that yawn. Throughout the animal kingdom, from birds to fish, reptiles to mammals, all display the characteristic open mouth and body stretch of a yawn.

From a purely biological point of view, a yawn is a physiological cascade of movements over a period of 5 to 10 seconds. A yawn is mainly characterized by opening the mouth and stretching the jaw muscle, deeply inhaling followed by a slow exhale. (Source)

You may not notice it, but yawning is not just about opening your mouth. It involves stretching various muscles in the face, neck, and airways. A yawn is a full-body experience.

Yawning Is Not Just About Sleep.

Interestingly, 60-70% of people yawn when they see another yawn.

Earlier, experts thought yawning was a sign of sleepiness. When a person yawns a few times, it means that they are ready to go to bed. However, recent evidence shows that yawns aren’t always linked to sleep or even being tired.

The question of “why we yawn” dates back to the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates believed that yawning was a way to remove “bad air” from the lungs.

Later, 17th and 18th-century scientists thought yawning had something to do with alertness since the action increases blood pressure and oxygen levels in the blood. This would explain why people stretch and yawn after waking from a nap, but studies have not shown that after a good yawn, either heart rate or electrical activity in the brain increases.

Researchers are still studying the question. The late Robert Provine thought that yawning signaled a transition from sleep to wakefulness, or vice versa, from boredom to alertness.

Others suggest that we yawn to lower the temperature of the brain.

A 2010 study by Molly Helt, Inge-Marie Eigsti, Peter Snyder, and Deborah Fein at the University of Connecticut, published in Child Development, found that contagious yawning emerges around age 4 and that children on the autism spectrum show diminished susceptibility to it, suggesting contagious yawning is an unconscious sign that a person is attuned to the emotions of others.

Why Can’t I Complete Yawns?

This may sound a little unbelievable, but repeated incomplete, unfinished yawns are often manifestations of underlying anxiety or stress coupled with an inability to “let go” fully. Researchers studying yawning (most notably Simon Thompson at Bournemouth University) have linked this dissatisfying, can’t-quite-relax feeling to anhedonia, the broader clinical term for a reduced ability to experience pleasure that also shows up in depression and other mood disorders.

When you yawn, you end up stretching a lot of muscles in the face and the chest, limbs, and abdomen. This stretching sends signals to the part of the brain associated with experiencing good sensations. Being stressed or anxious can prevent completing these actions.

The Thompson Cortisol hypothesis suggests that cortisol, a hormone that plays an important role in stress, is briefly elevated when one yawns. Excessive yawning may be a sign of stress and anxiety, leading to an incomplete yawn in conjunction with an unconscious inability to let go.

If you are stressed or anxious, you will not fully relax and achieve this full muscle stretch, which will make you feel angry or dissatisfied with yawning.

You may be stressed at any given time for various reasons, so it is important to know that the real culprit in incomplete yawning is not the yawn itself but the stress/anxiety you experience at that time!

What Causes Incomplete Yawning Besides Stress?

Stress and anxiety are the usual suspects, but they aren't the only reasons a yawn refuses to finish. A yawn is a coordinated reflex run from deep inside the brain, mainly the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus, where dopamine, oxytocin and a handful of other neurotransmitters trigger the cascade that ends in that big, satisfying stretch. Anything that nudges this chemistry can leave the yawn half-built.

One surprisingly common trigger is medication. Certain antidepressants, especially the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as citalopram, fluoxetine, sertraline and escitalopram, are linked to changes in yawning. In one six-week placebo-controlled trial of citalopram, about 2% of patients on the drug reported yawning compared with under 1% on placebo. The leading idea is that boosting serotonin shifts dopamine activity in the brain and slightly changes brain temperature, both of which feed into the yawn reflex. The good news is that this effect is usually temporary and tends to fade as your body adjusts to the dose, or it eases when the dose is lowered under a doctor's guidance.

Trying too hard can sabotage you as well. Yawning is largely involuntary, so consciously forcing the muscles can interrupt the automatic sequence and stop the yawn short. Anything that limits how much air you can pull in, like a stuffy nose or congestion, can also rob you of the deep inhalation a full yawn needs.

Very rarely, a sudden surge in excessive or unsatisfying yawning can point to a neurological cause such as migraine, multiple sclerosis, or, alongside other symptoms, a stroke. The Cleveland Clinic suggests checking in with a healthcare provider if excessive yawning lasts more than a few days, and treating it as an emergency if it comes with sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm or leg.

How Do You Complete a Stuck Yawn?

When a yawn stalls halfway and leaves you unsatisfied, the trick is to coax the reflex rather than force it. Researchers have shown that a yawn can be triggered on purpose through proprioceptive feedback, the stream of signals your brain gets from the muscles of your jaw and throat.

The technique studied in the lab is simple: open your jaw wide and repeatedly while inhaling slowly and gradually, letting the tip of your tongue retract and drop down. Opening the jaw this way subtly changes the tone of your pharyngeal muscles and briefly narrows the upper airway, and in most people that combination tips the brain into firing off a real, full yawn. In other words, you mimic the opening moves of a yawn and let the reflex take over.

A gentler route is to lean into how contagious yawning is. Around 60-70% of people yawn when they simply see, hear, or even think about someone else yawning, so watching a short clip of people yawning, or just picturing a long, slow yawn, can be enough to set one off. The same reason you may have already yawned a few times while reading this article.

If your yawns keep stalling, the most reliable fix is usually upstream: relax. Because tension is what cuts a yawn short, slowing your breathing and releasing your jaw and shoulders gives that satisfying, tension-releasing stretch the room it needs to finish.