615: Waking with anxiety and can’t get back to sleep

This week on the Anxiety Slayer Podcast, we’re responding to questions from our Private Facebook Group about what you can do when you wake up with anxiety in the middle of the night and can’t g get back to sleep.

 

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Notes from this week’s episode:

Things that affect sleep

Caffeine: coffee, energy drinks, medications etc.

Eating late and eating heavy meals in the evening.

Working late.

Watching dramatic TV or movies in the evening.

Taking work into the bedroom.

The trouble with alcohol

Many people use alcohol to get to sleep, but alcohol negatively affects the mind and nervous system and can cause many people to wake up feeling disturbed in the middle of the night.

If you wake up with strong anxiety:

Sit up and put the light on, if you're sharing a room with someone else and you're concerned about disturbing them, get up and move to another room.

Don't try and lay there with it in the dark hoping it will pass, the mind can very quickly start turning over on itself. Put a light on and start doing something to calm the anxiety before it escalates.

The frustration that often comes with anxious nights

Be gentle with yourself, if you start thinking about all the things you have to do tomorrow, or get stressed with yourself for not sleeping, your body will start producing adrenaline and you will escalate the anxiety and affect your chances of getting back to sleep.

Don't think about what you have to do tomorrow - think about what you can do right now to help yourself relax.

Things to keep by your bed

Night Time Rescue Remedy - where to get it and how it helps

Lavender essential oil

A calming book

An MP3 player with comfortable earphones

- make a playlist for sleep for example, guided relaxations for sleep, guided Tapping Sessions for calming anxiety, or audiobooks you find relaxing.

We created a Sleep album for calming anxiety and getting a good night’s rest some years ago, the complete collection is available on our Patreon


Techniques that Help

EFT Tapping is very effective for dealing with any frustration and anxiety you may have about your sleep. It can help you calm anxiety and dissolve your frustration so you can become more relaxed and open about letting sleep happen naturally.

Some ideas for using Tapping to calm anxiety and get back to sleep.


Why Guided Relaxations Help You Sleep

Guided meditation helps improve the quality of our sleep by settling the mind. Being led through a guided practice helps draw the mind away from anxious thoughts and engage it in a restful practice, where it’s turbulence is calmed.

The challenge with trying to sleep with an anxious mind is that the mind catches our attention and then runs with it. One anxious thought leads to another or escalates until we can’t sleep because we’re in a heightened anxious state. At such times, many will turn to their phone or the TV for escape, but those choices don’t support sleep.

Different types of Relaxations

Guided meditations are helpful for settling into a peaceful sleep. There are many different types of meditation for sleep. Some work with the breath, or body, others more with releasing unwanted thoughts and relaxing the mind through visualization. If you want to try guided meditations for improving your sleep it can be helpful to try different types and see which you prefer.

THOUGHT CALMING MEDITATION

Sometimes our sleep is disturbed by worrying thoughts that catch the mind in a stressed and wakeful state. Some meditations encourage the release of anxious thoughts by meditating on them drifting by or floating away.

GUIDED BREATHING PRACTICES

When we are anxious, we tend towards shallow breathing which holds the body in a stress response that can affect our sleep. Following a relaxing breathing practice helps us switch over to the relaxation response. Guided practices can help calm and deepen the breath and also relax the mind and calm racing thoughts.

GUIDED VISUALIZATION

Some meditations create a peaceful journey with supporting music to help immerse the mind in a relaxing experience similar to hypnosis.

USING THE BODY TO RELAX THE MIND FOR SLEEP

The Body Scan meditation is a guided practice that redirects the mind away from racing or anxious thoughts toward different areas of the body. The body scan brings awareness to tension and temperature and other sensations and works through the whole body releasing tension and increasing relaxation.

Join us on our Patreon for over 100 downloads to support anxiety including ALL of our guided relaxations and tapping sessions.

Anxiety Slayer