Explore the link between anxiety and sleep problems, and discover effective strategies to manage stress and improve your sleep.

Understanding the Link Between Anxiety and Sleep Problems

As we have covered before, anxiety is the incessant feeling of nerves or fear. There isn’t always a defined reason for it and more often than not, anxiety is caused by a trigger. Whether it is a memory, an event or something someone said or did. 

Having this many overwhelming feelings and emotions can cause other problems in life. One of the biggest being losing sleep. 

Losing sleep due to anxiety can be caused by a few different things like:

  • Overwhelming thoughts 
  • Fear
  • Nerves
  • Loud brain activity 
  • Fight-or-flight response 
  • Insomnia
  • nightmares

Overall, the link between anxiety and losing sleep basically means that your body is on high alert at all times, which does not allow your body or brain to relax enough.

Anxiety can be annoying at the easiest of times and overwhelming at others. Not much of which you can control 24/7. But the one thing you can try to control is your sleep schedule. 

Trying to be in bed to go to sleep and waking up at the same time everyday is a start. Making this a conscious effort to schedule a time for when you shut off your phone and all other distractions then go to sleep is the first step. The second step is to schedule a time to wake up.

Making this a continuous thing that is consistent for 90% of your days will begin the change of allowing your brain to relax and reset, allowing for a full night’s sleep. 

When you work on a schedule, it helps reset your brain. This makes it easier to let go of worries, stressors, or nerves when it’s time for activities like going to sleep.

Another link to losing sleep because of anxiety are our devices

About 92% of people are on their phones right before they go to sleep. As we all know, the media is a big problem with our self conscious thoughts and ideas. It is also overwhelming to try to keep up with everything that is going on in the media, whether it is friends, family or perfect strangers. 

Being on our phones before we go to sleep has a few different affects:

  • Staying up too late and not getting enough sleep
  • The need to constantly check your phone for notifications throughout the night.
  • Blue light from your phone can trick your brain into thinking it is daytime and keep you awake/wake you up.
  • Stimulate your brain too much to where it is hard to relax to fall asleep. 

All of these effects make it either difficult to fall asleep or difficult to stay asleep. And they are all linked to anxiety. 

Anxiety over missing notifications, anxiety with having FOMO, anxiety about whether it is daytime or not, anxiety about knowing you should go to sleep but there is too much happening on the media… and the list goes on and on. 

Your phone should be shut off at least an hour before going to sleep, allowing time for your brain and body to relax from the anxieties of the day. 

Anxiety and sleep problems are linked in so many ways, it can be hard to pinpoint what that trigger may be for you. 

Whether it is your phone, stressors from the day, your brain not being able to slow down or any other thing keeping you awake, you can usually find a solution for it. 

Talk to your doctor if you feel medication would help you. If that is not the route you want to take, then look at your everyday life and see what is a key trigger for your anxiety right before you go to bed. Addressing it and working to find a helpful solution, or at least a way for you to adjust the problem, can help you get on track for getting more sleep each night. 

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