How To Stop Anxiety When Trying To Sleep

How To Stop Anxiety When Trying To Sleep – Are you struggling to catch some sleep while your brain races with intrusive thoughts poking fun at your effort to drift into slumber? Or is it that you feel wildly unsettled, sometimes wondering why the morning alarm rings almost as soon as you fall asleep? There’s an incredible chance you have anxiety, and its piercing grip won’t let you rest easy.
Studies reveal a link between anxiety and sleep and how it hurts the chances of finding your cognitive balance to get restful moments before bed. But, the glad tiding is that you can still have a peaceful night’s sleep amidst a wave of unsettlement and confusion. This article offers insight into how to stop anxiety when trying to sleep.
What’s the Cheat Code for Sleep Amidst Anxiety?

Mainly, what you do before you sleep determines whether or not you’ll battle out anxiety and finally get some much-needed night’s rest. It won’t bite resorting to medication to calm the raging storms in your mind. However, it creates a dependency such that the problem re toots when you fail to take them. The quicker you fall asleep, the less you’d feel anxious. So, here are the best practices to stop anxiety when trying to sleep.

How To Stop Anxiety When Trying To Sleep:

1. Avoid Taking Caffeine Drinks Before Sleep

Coffee and green tea contain caffeine that deprives you of sleep, which is bad for your anxiety. This substance activates your body cells, keeping them active right about the time they should transition into rest. Remember, the goal is to beat the clock and fall asleep before intrusive thoughts creep in. And the sooner you drift into slumber, the better. Caffeine usually stays in your system for hours before its effects fade away, and taking them an hour or so before sleeping can vastly hurt your chances of getting sleep. But the timing would come in handy if you feel like taking coffee. Therefore, try washing it down about five to six hours before bedtime.

2. Only Go to Bed When You Feel Drowsy

You don’t want to count sheep before you drift asleep – even if it fast-tracks it. There’s a significant chance you’d hardly concentrate, and your thoughts will edge off track to allow intrusive thoughts to take over. A good finesse is to only get into bed when you feel drowsy and your eyelids heavy to fall asleep immediately. That way, it restricts anxiety, giving it no chance to intrude on your thoughts and kick in a chain reaction to chase away sleep. It’s quite a breeze falling asleep when you feel drowsy than when active.

3. Do Relaxing Activities Before Bed

A racy mind won’t help with getting sleep, so how about slacking it with mindful meditation. Anxiety is merely a trick your mind plays on you, boiling and unsettling your cognitive self never to catch sleep. It keeps you worrying about the past or the future while stealing your chance to live for the present. Therefore, meditation helps fine-tune it into the present, keeping away intrusive thoughts that keep you unsettled. You can take slow and deep breaths while being heedful of your surroundings. Observe your breath, with each inhalation a way of infusing positivity while exhaling your negativity.

4. Only Use Your Bed for Sleep at Night

Your bed should primarily be a trove for sleep and none other. Your mind must register that you only get to bed to sleep and not binge-watch or use your computer. That’s more of a mind game and an ideal way to rewire your brain to avoid hours of sleeplessness. The more you stay awake in bed, the easier it is for anxiety to kick in, further exacerbating insomnia. Resist the urge to stay in bed for the best part of the day or sleep for long hours during the day. Of course, you may need a haven to catch up with yourself and unwind in your leisure days. But for battling anxiety when trying to sleep, please keep off your bed during the day.

5. Don’t Use Your Electronics Once in Bed

Scrolling through your Twitter or checking out your friends on Facebook before sleeping is Okay, but it does more harm than satisfying your dopamine. LCD screens emit blue light, which interrupts your circadian rhythm quite significantly. As such, you stay late into the night and long after using your iPad or computer, giving anxiety a chance to torment you. The goal is to fall asleep quickly and beat the time it takes for intrusive thoughts to pierce your brain. It’s typical to think that watching a movie attracts sleep, but it does much harm in the long run. Instead, some calming background music can be an ideal substitute to help you catch some sleep quickly and avoid getting anxious.

6. Create a Consistent Sleep Pattern

A consistent sleep routine is everything you need to help beat anxiety before sleeping. Remember, your body operates under a 24-hour routine (the Circadian Rhythm) and dictates when you should rest or stay awake. However, it’d help if you were consistent enough to create a fixed sleep pattern and routine. That enables you to automatically fall asleep when it’s time, giving no chance for your mind to wildly race and trigger anxiety. Also, try your best to wake up at the same time every day. But quite frankly, judging when you need to wake up can be challenging. So how about investing in a clock alarm to help you out?

7. Practice Good Sleep Hygiene

You’d feel irritable trying to sleep in dirty blankets and grimed bed covers, and more often than not, it obliterates the urge to drift into slumber. Remember, sleep is transitional and starts from slight variations of feeling drowsy until you get into the rapid eye movement phase. Dirty sleeping ambiances won’t make you feel drowsy, and your only instinct would be getting out of bed as soon as possible. However, clean bed covers, blankets, and pillows attract sleep quickly, and adding your favorite fragrances soothes it. That way, falling asleep at the drop of a hat is quite a five-five exercise, and you’ll be in slumber land before anxiety, and intrusive thoughts become a bother.
Conclusion

Anxiety can be punitive, depriving you of the chance to catch some sleep when you get into bed. However, the sooner you fall asleep, the lesser the chance anxiety has to torment you. The good thing is that there’s always a finesse to help you fall asleep quickly. Hopefully, this article will help you stop anxiety as you try to catch some sleep.

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