When To Seek Professional Help
If nighttime wake ups are frequent, bothersome, or impact your quality of life, dont hesitate to seek help from a therapist or a sleep medicine specialist. If you have anxiety, treatment may also include medication, like SSRIs or SNRIs, as previously discussed.
You should also focus on healthy lifestyle measures, like diet and nutrition, physical activity, mindfulness, and relaxation exercises. Your doctor, therapist, psychiatrist, or sleep medicine specialist can help you come up with a plan that will work for you.
Next, learn about the signs of high-functioning anxiety.
If You Are Hit With Stress In The Morning Here Is How To Reset Your Day
Have you ever felt like youve had one of those days before the day has really even begun? Some days can be so stressful that we still feel stressed when we wake up the next morning, though all weve experienced for the last several hours is sleep. At times, the stress of a day can plague your dreams so your night feels anything but restful as the challenges of the day become characters in your stress-fueled dreams. Other days are set up to be so busy or challenging that we feel the weight of them as soon as we wake up. How can we manage these stressed before we become stressed feelings and have a better day? The following strategies can help you to make the most of each day, and let the stress roll off your back.
Youre Not Getting Enough Quality Sleep
As PsychCentral reported, research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that sleep loss increases anxiety, particularly for people who already have anxiety to begin with. Lack of quality sleep exacerbates anxiety and you might feel those effects the most right when you wake up. Its during good sleep that brain chemicals related to mental health are replenished, licensed professional counselor Katherine Glick told SELF. So if you dont get good sleep, youre going to wake up anxious off the bat. She also said not getting good sleep means that youre starting off the day in a biologically stressed place. If this sounds like you, here are some tips on how to get a better nights sleep.
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Alcohol: ‘the Social Lubricant’
It can sometimes seem, not least in Britain, that alcohol has to be a factor at any social event. Dutch courage, a bracer, a stiffener booze has been marketed as the short-cut to having a good time if youre shy, the fizz that gets the party going, the substance to drown the sorrows.
Interestingly, some studies show that people who describe themselves as shy might experience worse hangxiety. This could be on a personality or social level that they are less familiar with disinhibition, getting messy, more likely to agonise over something said off-the-cuff and so on it has also been suggested that Gaba levels may be lower at baseline.
Regardless, medicating shyness or social anxiety with alcohol might or might not work at the time, but is going to cause problems the next day, because of the effects it has on the brains neurotransmitters.
And that cycle of
feeling anxious => drink to calm yourself down => brain makes you more anxious
is a horrible one to be trapped in. Not least because of the disturbed and disrupted sleep, as well as the feelings of regret and stress, shame and self-recrimination. These are the sort of issues that you might wish to explore in therapy.
How To Prevent Night Anxiety
To prevent anxiety at night, the most important thing to avoid is to lie in bed and try to fall asleep.
Get up and do something else
A few more effective ways to prevent night-time anxiety are:
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3. Avoid Caffeine, nicotine, or wine in the evening these only made the problem worse.
I actually tried living with or without them and saw the difference.
These can actually make your attacks worse and caffeine can cause insomnia, so you cant sleep at all.
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Why Do I Wake Up Anxious
Do you sometimes wake with feelings of anxiety and racing thoughts before youve even had time to hit the snooze button on your alarm? And, instead of waking up feeling energised and refreshed, you start to excessively worry about the day ahead? If so, you are not alone.
Anxiety is an unwelcome visitor that often pops up when we least expect it. For some, it has a habit of kicking in at the start of each day. This may be worried thoughts about what happened the previous day or what might happen today. For others, it may be more extreme and include panic attacks upon waking each morning. Whatever the case, morning anxiety can rob us of our peace of mind and set a negative tone for the whole day.
The good news is that there are plenty effective ways that you can address morning anxiety to ensure you have a happy and healthful day ahead.
Negative Thoughts Are Circling Your Brain
One of the major tools of Julie Camerons The Artists Way is the Morning Pages. If youre unfamiliar, Cameron says you should write three handwritten pages every morning when you first wake up that will help your creativity later in the day. These Morning Pages are written in stream of consciousness and Cameron says, Youre becoming acquainted with all the dark corners of your psyche. If you find that your brain is full of negative thoughts when you wake up, they could be whats causing your anxiety. So even if you arent a creative or self-help type of person, they might be worth a try. Many people swear by Morning Pages and Cameron says, What I find is that when you put the negativity on the page, it isnt eddying through your consciousness during the day.
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What To Do When You Wake Up Anxious At Night
Get out of bed. This is a strategy for dealing with insomnia and sleep-maintenance insomnia that experts like Runko teach their patients, and it comes from CBT for insomnia .
If youre anxious, youre physiologically more awake, which can lead to conditioned arousal, she says.
Move away from your bed and try a calm, sedentary activity that you consider to be a pleasant distraction. That can include TV , meditation, or reading a book.
Once you are again drowsy, go back to bed.
Why Do Some People Feel Unhappy All The Time
Of course, some people feel unhappy and negative because they are clinically depressed. They are suffering from an illness that impacts chemicals in their brains that affect mood. Depression is a serious condition that requires medical treatment, so be sure you know the symptoms of depression .
But stress and fatigue also go hand in hand. Its actually fairly common to feel the need to fall asleep when youre incredibly high-strung, although nothing has been definitively confirmed in scientific literature as to why. Experts do have some theories, however.
Of course, some people feel unhappy and negative because they are clinically depressed. They are suffering from an illness that impacts chemicals in their brains that affect mood. Depression is a serious condition that requires medical treatment, so be sure you know the symptoms of depression .
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Put Your Devices On Silent And Keep Them Out Of Sight
Late-night news notifications, celeb tweets or a conversation in a group text can all wait till morning. All of these alerts keep your brain buzzing, and make it harder for it to reach a state of relaxation. Plus, the blue light from screens can disrupt your sleep, and it can also prevent your body from producing melatonin, a hormone thats key for a regulated sleep cycle. Its well-established that poor sleep quality is closely linked with feelings of anxiety. You deserve a rest, as do your devices.
Association With Anxiety Stimuli
If youve got a highly stressful job, or if you otherwise face a demanding challenge each and every day, youre likely to develop anxiety during the morning before you have to face-up to that challenge. Furthermore, your brain often creates associations: if you’ve ever had a panic attack in the morning, fought with your partner or lost your keys as you try to rush out the door, your brain and body may have started linking morning time with a sense of anxiety. In such cases, when you wake up you start to feel anxious automatically.
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How To Use This Tool To Stop Morning Depression
1. Listen day and night.2. Allow the recording to play in the background at a comfortable volume.3. Headphones are not a must.4. Never listen in a moving vehicle and/or when doing activities that might put you or others at risk.
The affirmations of this session are:
I love waking up in the mornings.I feel vibrant, vital and happy to wake up in the mornings.Life is wonderful I enjoy my life.I feel complete Im a whole.It feels great to wake up in the morning and start my day.My life is great, I appreciate every bit in it.I am grateful for my life and for who I am.My subconscious mind is wired to feel good.Thinking positive is a natural part of who I am.I look at the positive side of everything in this world.My frequency level is high because I feel great during day and night.Everything always works out for me.Senses of joy and happiness wrap my heart, mind, and soul.I attract amazing opportunities, people, and circumstances on a regular basis.Every day, in every way, I feel more and more happy.When I wake up in the morning, I feel highly motivated to start my day.
Tips For Coping With Morning Anxiety
View all blog posts under Clinical Mental Health Counseling | View all blog posts under Infographics
Given the stress of living through a pandemic, moderate anxiety is common. Waking up in a panic every morning is more troubling, as it sets in before coping mechanisms can be deployed. Morning anxiety has a biological cause: Cortisol, often called the stress hormone, is higher during the first hour after waking for people experiencing stress. Sometimes people feel a measure of control when they worry, so they have trouble stopping the cycle.
To learn more, check out the infographic below created by Wake Forest Universitys Master of Arts in Counseling program.
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Dont Let Anxiety Impact Your Recovery
Stress and anxiety are normal parts of life. However, chronic worry can have a detrimental effect on your physical, emotional and mental well-being, especially if you struggle with addiction. If you need help, 7 Summit Pathways is here for you.
We understand that issues like anxiety or depression often serve as catalysts for addiction. Our team of interdisciplinary specialists addresses not only the addiction but also any underlying conditions that may have triggered your substance use.
Dont let anxiety or addiction leave you feeling hopeless. Contact 7 Summit Pathways or schedule an appointment with a caring member of our team to learn more.
Reshape Your Brain Conditioning
Be sure that your subconscious mind will absorb all of the hidden affirmations. According to world-famous researchers, the unconscious processes 40 million bits of information every second! On the other hand, consciousness processes only 40 bits of information. In other words, the subconscious mind is a million times stronger than your consciousness!
Now imagine that throughout the night you will be exposed to tens of thousands of repeated hidden affirmations that are specially designed to beat morning depression, without any internal resistance whatsoever.
What do you believe is going to happen? Thats right! Youll start creating new neural pathways. This method has been explored in many studies and has been found to be an efficient means of decreasing depression, anxiety, and various addictions such as alcohol and food, and helping with other areas of life.
I recorded it using multi-layers a unique formula that has changed the lives of thousands of people worldwide! They will do the same for you.
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Why Do I Wake Up With Anxiety
Feeling anxious in the morning is common for people with and without anxiety disorders, says Mayra Mendez, PhD, a licensed psychotherapist.
Although there’s not a lot of research specific to morning anxiety, many mental health practitioners see it in their practice. Oftentimes, putting a name to the condition is helpful.
“Many people are comforted to know there is a syndrome, and that what they are experiencing is not unique to them,” says Moe Gelbart, PhD, the director of Behavioral Health at Torrance Memorial Medical Center.
Reasons Why You Could Be Stressed About Nothing
The first three points are likely causing you to feel overwhelmed at times . The latter two are the probable results and are signs that the demands on you outstrip your resources.
And, lets face it, on top of everything else that could befall you in life, youre probably now also have to cope with the fall-out from the pandemic. Covid lockdowns, quarantines and/or closures with all their financial, social consequences are, of course, super-stressful with an inevitable impact on our mental health.
Then there are the less obvious things that contribute to you feeling stressed for no reason.
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How To Stop Waking Up With Anxiety
Stopping morning anxiety can be a complex task, because ideally you need to address the cause of your anxiety and learn how it affects you. A big part of that is trying your best to figure out why you have anxiety. If you’re waking up anxious because you fear anxiety, for example, then you need to be aware of this and find ways of coping adaptively. If you fear anxiety because you dislike your job, then you need to find ways to make your job less stressful or find effective ways of minimizing the effects of stress. Here are several strategies you can implement:
A very important part of dealing with this anxiety is simply recognizing it and understanding why it occurs. By reminding yourself that your anxiety doesn’t need to control your life – and by practicing some of the coping strategies we have discussed today – you may find that your ability to cope with it improves.
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The Ultimate Approach To Stopping Morning Depression
All of the above are wonderful ways to stop morning depression. But there is another method, both super-efficient and easy, that has proven itself scientifically time after time. This method is called subliminal messages.
They contain positive affirmations and suggestions that you cannot fully hear and understand by that, they effortlessly bypass your consciousness and natural resistance.
If, for example, you hear clear-spoken affirmations such as, I feel wonderful to get up in the morning, you will reject it right away because this kind of statement is the complete opposite of your built-in depression-based thought patterns.
However, when you dont hear this suggestion, you will not have the option to resist it in other words, the suggestion has the ability to leave behind your depressive mornings.
Once you have no resistance, there is nothing that will stop these powerful affirmations from syncing in and reaching deep inside your subconscious mind.
They are recorded in a way that bypasses conscious processing. Allowing them to take root deeply and permanently rewire your mind to feel happier in the mornings.
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Why Anxiety Can Be Worse In The Morning
Three women explain why they feel more anxious earlier in the day.
Let’s face it: anxiety can occur at any time of day and, when it does, it can be the actual worst. But for some, anxiety has a particular habit of rearing its ugly head in the mornings.
At the start of a new day, its easy for the mind to ruminate on what’s ahead and become overwhelmed with negative thoughts about what you need to achieve that day. This can leave us with a sinking feeling and a high level of anxiety, says Dr Elena Touroni, a Consultant Psychologist and co-founder of London’s The Chelsea Psychology Clinic.
And it turns out there’s a scientific reason why anxiety can be so common in the morning for some. “For most people, the stress hormone cortisol is highest in the first hour upon waking, helping us to stay alert and focused in the morning,” says Elena. “However, going to bed feeling anxious can cause cortisol levels to spike too early, which might lead you to wake up with a racing mind. Blood sugar levels are also lower first thing in the morning, which can trigger anxiety for those who are prone to it.”
Here, three women whose anxiety was worst in the morning explain why it happened, and how they’ve learned to cope.
