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 3 good ways to achieve that.
The first way to have better sleep is to stop all negative thinking while you’re in bed.
You experience far more worrying and anxious thoughts when you’re awake in bed than you do in any other situation. That’s a strange 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 specific 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.
So what’s most critical in this situation is quickly stopping as much of your anxiety in the bedroom as possible, and the easiest area to solve this problem is with the worrying you do when you wake up in the morning. The answer? Get up imediately, as soon as you open your eyes.
This may sound like a very simplistic idea}, but it really does work and will stop 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.
As for the times when you wake up during the night and start to worry/panic well, this one’s slightly trickier. But there are things you can do! First of all, if you’re awake longer than a few minutes and you feel your anxiety increasing, get up out of bed. Being in bed in the silence will just make any anxiety you feel seem even 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.
This entire appraoch has to beat lying in bed for hours on end, with nothing to do but worry. And when you eventually go back to bed, you’re far more likely to drift off to sleep without any problems.
Okay, now time for the second way to get the kind of sleep that cures panic attacks, and this one is about creating and sticking to a consistent routine.
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.
Your own inner clock will almost immediately reset itself to the natural and healthy default if you just start going to bed and getting up at the same times each day. This will also normalise things like hormone secretion, which often depends on your sleeping cycles.
Do you ever feel burnt out? In lots of cases, that will be because your adrenal glands are active at times when they shouldn’t be, and this is frequently caused by irregular sleeping cycles. If you can get your sleeping habits into a predictable routine, problems like this will usually disappear all on their own.
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.
Many of the problems that I had sleeping were because of what I was doing before I actually went to bed each night. I was often watching TV in bed right up until the moment I turned out the light and tried to sleep. This is a very bad idea! The same goes for any loud or heavy music, and even for reading if the subject is heavy or extreme.
What I did, and what I suggest you begin doing too from today onwards, is to stop doing anything stimulating for an hour before your bedtime. Couple this with a brand new routine that you stick to before you retire, full of things that you know will caml you.
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