Can't sleep because of anxiety? Try these strategies
So it's probably the middle of the night when you're watching this video because your early morning anxiety woke you up again way too soon, way before you actually need to get up and get out of bed.
Try these 5 strategies to cope with your early morning anxiety so you can fall asleep fast.
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Get OUT of Bed
The very first thing that I need you to do is to get out of bed. Yeah, I know, you're probably like, “Wait a second, Mallory, how am I supposed to get back to sleep if I don't stay in bed?”
Well, here's the thing- according to CBT-Insomnia, or Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia, they actually recommend while you are resetting your sleep schedule and getting reacquainted with sleep, that you only use your bed for sleeping purposes.
If you're reading this post in the middle of the night, you've probably been awake for 45 minutes or longer and still struggling to get to sleep. So at that point, I want you to actually get out of bed, go somewhere else, you can even sit on the floor if you need to, just don't read or watch the rest of this video blog post in your bed.
2. Declutter
All right, now that you've done that, I want you to try to declutter. So when you declutter or organize your space, it signals to your brain that you are wrapping things up, you are putting things away, which gets your mind ready to relax and cool down so that you can fall asleep more easily.
Plus, if you start doing things that might be troubling or feeding your anxiety, like crossing some things that are really mild off of your to-do list, it's fewer things for you to be anxious about.
This could be something as simple as:
🎒 getting your school bag ready for the next day
👚 selecting your outfit for the day
🧺 putting away that load of laundry that you have in the corner.
Try to declutter a little bit of your space to give your mind some decluttering space so that it can rest and go back to sleep.
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3. Stretch
If you have decluttered your space or there's nothing to declutter or get ready for the next day, then I want you to physically relax by doing some light, gentle stretching.
Stretching can help you physically relax the muscles in your body that are tightening up as a result of that cortisol and anxiety. Because anxiety is really about getting you to wake up and stay alert because there is a potential danger that could be coming up, one of the things that happen in our bodies is our muscles physically tense up in an effort to get ready to fend off any sort of danger.
If you can physically relax those muscles by doing some light gentle stretching, that can really help. You can follow along with a brief yoga video on YouTube, or you can just do some gentle movements with your own body.
Do what feels right and good for you, and if you're not sure, check with your pediatrician or primary care physician because they'll be able to guide you if there are any modifications that you need.
Another way that you can physically relax is to use some paired, progressive muscle relaxation where you are in control of rolling with the tension in your body. To do this you actually tense up your muscle groups and then quickly release and relax. The tensing up you can do gentle, but that release you wanna do quick and fast.
When that release is happening, you're signaling to your muscles that, “oh, I don't have to be so tight and so firm, I can relax.” When you do that, it helps your body to physically relax and get ready for sleep. You can go muscle by muscle, whatever works for you, or you can follow along with a guided body scan meditation to work through different muscle groups.
I really recommend starting with the top of your head and working down to your toes if you're trying to go back to sleep. That way, it kind of signals this almost kind of like a downward setting.
4. BEDROOM game
If you have tried all these things and you are still struggling with your early morning anxiety keeping you wide awake, then I want you to try this neurologically-based game called the BEDROOM game.
Get your mind out of the gutter. It's not that kind of bedroom game. There's a time and a place for that, but not in this video blog post.
So this BEDROOM game is a little bit different. What you want to do is you want to spell out the word bedroom. So that is B-E-D-R-O-O-M. And you want to go letter by letter and you want to think of all the words that you could potentially think of that start with that particular letter before you move on to the next.
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So for example, if we are starting with the letter B, you might think of the words:
→ bluebird
→ ball
→ bologna
→ ballroom
the list goes on and on.
Once you can no longer think of any more words that begin with the letter B, that is when I move on to the next letter, E. So then you might think:
→ egg
→ eggshell
→ egg white
→ elegant
→ excellent
and the list goes on and on.
After you have considered all the words that you know that begin with the letter E, that is when you move on to the letter D and on and on and on.
I will tell you, I use this for my own early morning anxiety because as you could imagine, being a teen therapist, life gets a little stressful sometimes. I am no stranger to early morning anxiety waking me up in the middle of the night and this is a strategy that I use over and over again that really, really helps me when I just can't turn off my mind. And since I've started using this strategy, I will tell you, I have only two times made it to the letter E. I usually fall fast asleep on that first round.
5. Positive Affirmations
One of the ways that I really encourage myself and my clients to tackle early morning anxiety is to reprogram your mind with more positive thoughts.
So we do this with positive affirmations. I know positive affirmations kind of get a little woo, and a little loosey-goosey because the whole manifesting community, I think they misunderstand them a little bit.
Positive affirmations are telling your mind what you would rather believe about yourself or a situation instead of just rolling with that automatic negative thought that pops into your head.
So if you are struggling with early morning anxiety and you keep thinking, “oh my gosh, I will never go back to sleep.” Perhaps, a more positive affirmation that you can tell yourself is “I will go to sleep eventually.”
If you are struggling with coming up with your own positive affirmations, I've got 20 of them that you can follow along right over here in this video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JZMK4k38O-w
In fact, they're all geared towards helping you cope with your morning anxiety.
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