3 Ways to Improve Sleep Even if You Suffer with Anxiety
If you suffer from anxiety, you’ve likely found your sleep suffering too. It’s a vicious cycle. The more anxious you are the worse your sleep gets, and the worse your sleep gets the more anxious you will feel.
However, the good news is we can fix this. By tackling either your sleep or your anxiety you can start making steps towards improving both.
Whilst anxiety is a really common trigger for insomnia, and also one of the main factors in keeping insomnia going, this doesn’t mean that you can’t improve your sleep while you have anxiety.
Try the following tips to start your journey to better sleep.
Be curious. What is on your mind? When we are worried, we often try to ignore it, distract ourselves or go down a rabbit hole of anxiety. Instead, sit down for a quiet moment and just notice what is on your mind.
Write it down. Grab a pen and paper and just let your mind go wild. Write everything down - it doesn’t need to make sense and you don’t need to keep the piece of paper, but it is a very therapeutic way of saying to your mind - I’m listening. This makes your mind quieter at night.
Notice your body. We hold a lot of tension from our thoughts in our body and this contributes to keeping us awake at night. Next time you have a worrying thought, take a second to notice where in your body you feel it. Zoom in on the area where you feel the tension and focus on it - it can feel really hard at first but stay with it and you will notice it reduce. This is your body learning that this thought is not life-threatening.
In the Sleep Well Live Better Online Course we work a lot on how your thoughts affect your sleep. So, if we can start to get underneath those triggering thoughts and start to change the pressure that we build to sleep well, starting to make some challenges there, then not only will that take the pressure off so you can sleep better, but you will find that your anxiety can reduce as well.
If your anxiety is very severe and extremely debilitating, then you may need extra help from your doctor, or through medical help or therapy, but there are still really helpful changes you can make to your sleep to improve it as you go.
Want to find out more about how you can improve your sleep? Why not join my free sleep webinar?
Free Sleep Webinar:
How to fall asleep easily and sleep through the night.
Join Kathryn, founder of the UK’s largest and leading insomnia service, for a short webinar that is guaranteed to give you the confidence to quickly improve your sleep!
Just over 30 minutes long, you’ll also get the opportunity to ask anything about your sleep.