When you want to cure panic attacks, one of the best things you can do is improve the quality of sleep you’re having, and here are three good ways to achieve that.
***Method #1. No More Negative Thinking In The Bedroom***
You experience much more worrying and anxious thoughts when you’re awake in bed than you do in any other situation. That’s a weird situation to be in when you think that your bedroom should be the place where you are most calm.
You’ll probably find that this problem is at its worst at 3 particular times: when you’re lying awake immediately after you go to bed, in the middle of the night after you’ve woken up, and possibly in the morning as well, when you’ve woken up but you haven’t got out of bed yet.
To stop these situations, you need to stop as much of your “worrying in bed” time as you can. The simplest one to solve is the one where you’re lying in bed in the morning after you’ve awoken. All you need to do is get up as soon as you wake up!
This may sound like a very simplistic eliminate a lot of your morning anxiety. Getting yourself up and out of bed so that your mind can’t find things to worry about will give you an excellent start to your day.
Finding a solution for the occasions when you worry during the night after you’ve woken up is slightly trickier, but there are still good methods. To begin with, always get up out of bed if you’re lying awake for more than 10 minutes. If you stay there in bed, in the dark and the silence, it’s only going to make your anxiety get worse.
Have a warm shower or wash your face with warm water, potter around for 10 minutes doing something that doesn’t need much focus (a bit of tidying, listening to some soft music, skim-reading a magazine etc.), and then go back to bed. The key here is to recreate a “natural” going-to-bed routine.
By getting up when you’re awake, and going back to bed in this way after you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s far more like you’re going to bed for the first time. This is far more natural for your body, and you’re going to be able to get back to sleep much more quickly than if you’d just stayed in bed the entire time.
***Method #2. No More Ever-Changing Schedules***
If you’re suffering with a sleep problem for any reason, not just one that’s caused by anxiety and panic, then sticking to the same schedule every day is great advice.
And yes, by doing nothing more than going to bed and getting up at the same times, every single day, your internal clock will go back to normal and your sleeping can’t fail to get better. You’ll also correct any problems with things like irregular hormone release, which can be affected by bad sleep habits.
You know that feeling of being constantly “burnt-out?” That’s often because your adrenal glands are working even when they should be resting. One of the common causes of this is an irregular sleeping schedule. Getting back into a regular routine will fix this and many other problems too.
So do your best to go to bed each night at the same time, and get up each morning at the same time too. When you start out doing this, you may go through a couple of tough days while you get back into the correct routine, but it will be worth it. And also beware of sleeping in late on weekends, or days when you don’t have to be up early. All your hard work can be undone with a couple of late lie-ins!
Right, now the 3rd and final way to get better sleep, and this one is all about stopping all stimulants in the lead up to bedtime.
In my own case, a lot of the problems I had with my sleep were due to what I was exposing myself to in the time leading up to bedtime. I admit that I often watched fast-paced TV, listened to loud music, and played action-packed video games right up until I turned my lights out. Obviously this is a bad idea.
So something you should try to do right now is to totally stop anything that stimulates you in the last hours before bed time. Make this a part of a new routine you stick to before bed, where you try to slow things down.
Consciously begin to ease back on everything for the last hour before you go to bed. Stroll around like you’re on vacation. If you like to have a bedtime drink of some kind then sip it outside if it’s a nice night and enjoy the fresh air. If it’s too cold outside, curl up on the couch and relax for 20 minutes while you enjoy your drink.
It may sound a bit obvious to give this kind of advice, but how many of us really give ourselves time like this? Even those of us who do don’t do it enough.
If you’re a bath-taker, then whenever you can take one right before you get into bed. Make it warm, but never too hot. A warm bath has been proven in many studies to put the body in just the right state for great quality sleep. So make this slow winding-down hour a new part of your pre-bed routine. It can work unbelievably well when you’re not sleeping.
tips for panic attacks