Eye muscle pain most often comes from strain caused by prolonged screen use or near-work, but it can also signal inflammation, nerve irritation, or an underlying health condition. The sensation typically feels like a deep ache behind or around the eye that worsens when you look in certain directions. Understanding the pattern of your pain, when it started, and what makes it worse can help narrow down the cause.
Screen Time and Eye Strain
The most common reason your eye muscles hurt is simple overuse. Staring at a screen or doing close-up work for hours forces the small muscles inside and around your eye to continuously adjust focus. Your eyes constantly refocus on pixelated characters, and the shorter the distance between your face and the screen, the harder these muscles work to keep the image sharp. Over time, this sustained effort causes fatigue, soreness, and that familiar aching sensation.
This problem is widespread. Studies of office workers report that roughly 70% experience symptoms of digital eye strain, and a UK survey found that nearly 90% of workers had symptoms at some point, with about a third dealing with them regularly. Working six or more hours a day on a computer and being over 35 both increase the risk. Symptoms go beyond sore eyes: blurred vision, difficulty shifting focus between near and far objects, double vision, and headaches are all part of the picture.
Posture plays a role too. If your screen is at the wrong height or distance, you end up craning your neck or leaning forward, which strains the muscles around your eyes and head indirectly. The discomfort you feel around your eyes may partly be tension radiating from your neck and shoulders.
Pain That Gets Worse When You Move Your Eyes
If the pain sharpens specifically when you look up, down, or to the side, the cause is likely something beyond simple fatigue. One important possibility is optic neuritis, an inflammation of the nerve that carries visual signals from your eye to your brain. About 92% of people with optic neuritis experience pain with eye movement. The reason is mechanical: the optic nerve runs close to the muscles that rotate your eyeball. When those muscles contract, they tug against the inflamed nerve sheath, producing a sharp or deep ache.
Optic neuritis often affects one eye at a time and can cause blurry vision, dimmed colors, or a blind spot alongside the pain. It’s most common in adults between 20 and 50 and is sometimes an early sign of multiple sclerosis, so it warrants prompt evaluation.
Inflammation of the Eye Muscles Themselves
Sometimes the extraocular muscles, the six small muscles that move each eyeball, become inflamed directly. This condition, called orbital myositis, causes moderate to severe pain behind the eye, double vision that worsens with movement, swelling of the eyelids, and redness. The eye may appear to bulge slightly. In many cases, no clear trigger is found.
Orbital myositis responds well to steroid medication, which is tapered over 6 to 12 weeks. Most people notice significant relief within days of starting treatment, though the condition can recur.
Trochleitis: A Pinpoint Pain Near the Inner Brow
If your pain is concentrated in one very specific spot near the inner upper corner of your eye socket, it may be trochleitis. The trochlea is a small ring of cartilage in that area through which one of your eye muscles (the superior oblique) passes like a rope through a pulley. When this structure becomes inflamed, it produces a localized headache that spreads from the inner brow across the forehead or temple on the same side. You can often reproduce the pain by pressing on that spot. The pain may worsen with physical or emotional stress, or when the superior oblique muscle contracts during downward eye movements like reading.
Unlike many other causes of eye pain, trochleitis doesn’t cause red eyes, tearing, or nasal congestion, which helps distinguish it from sinus or migraine-related pain.
Thyroid Eye Disease
An overactive thyroid, particularly Graves’ disease, can cause the muscles around your eyes to swell significantly. About 90% of people with thyroid eye disease show measurable muscle enlargement on imaging. The muscles can swell to more than double their normal size, creating pressure, stiffness, and pain, especially when trying to move the eyes. Double vision is common because the swollen muscles can’t coordinate smoothly.
The muscles most affected tend to be those that move the eye up and down. If you have eye muscle pain along with bulging eyes, a feeling of grittiness, puffiness around the eyelids, or you already know you have a thyroid condition, this is a strong possibility to discuss with your doctor.
Sinus Infections That Mimic Eye Pain
Your sinuses sit directly behind and around your eye sockets, so infections there can produce pain that feels exactly like a sore eye muscle. The sphenoid sinus, located deep behind your eyes, is particularly deceptive. When it becomes inflamed, pain can appear behind the eye, at the top of the head, or at the back of the skull. This happens because the sinus is supplied by branches of the trigeminal nerve, the same nerve that carries sensation from much of your face and eye area.
A clue that sinuses are the culprit: the pain is often a dull, deep headache that doesn’t respond well to standard pain relievers and gets worse with head movements rather than eye movements specifically. Nasal congestion, pressure in the face, or a recent cold can point toward this cause.
Simple Steps That Help
For strain-related eye muscle pain, the 20-20-20 rule is a good starting point: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. This relaxes the focusing muscles inside your eye. Adjusting your screen so it sits at arm’s length and slightly below eye level reduces both eye and neck strain.
If your eyes feel sore because they struggle to converge (focus inward on near objects), a common home exercise is the pencil push-up. Hold a pencil at arm’s length, focus on the tip, and slowly bring it toward your nose while keeping it in single, clear focus. Repeat for a few minutes daily. Research shows this simple technique produces meaningful improvement in convergence ability, and it’s the exercise most commonly prescribed by eye care practitioners as a first step.
For pain not clearly linked to screen use, applying a warm compress over closed eyes for 10 to 15 minutes can ease general soreness. Ensuring you have an up-to-date glasses or contact lens prescription matters too, since even a mild uncorrected vision problem forces your eye muscles to compensate constantly.
Signs That Need Prompt Attention
Most eye muscle pain resolves with rest or minor adjustments, but certain features signal something more serious. Reduced or blurry vision alongside the pain, sensitivity to light, one eye visibly bulging forward, severe redness concentrated on one side, or pain following any kind of eye injury all warrant same-day evaluation. Double vision that comes on suddenly, a pupil that looks different in size from the other, or eye pain accompanied by fever or severe headache are also reasons to seek care quickly rather than waiting to see if symptoms improve on their own.