As the alarm breaks the morning, and you begin to gather your senses around you, you can wake up revitalized and ready to tackle the new day – but then again, you can feel besieged by anxiety from the very start. Should the onset of anxiety be quite strong, it can spoil your whole day easily. But how come you are under attack from minute one? And can anything be done to stem the onrush? Here are some tips on how to cope with morning anxiety.
First, what on earth is it?
Morning anxiety cannot be classified as a medical condition. It is just when worry and fears assault you as soon as you open your eyes. It is a much worse thing compared to when you don’t relish getting up and leaving for work. It occurs when you are overwhelmed by your oncoming speech or presentation, or there is a difficult conversation looming on the horizon. This kind of anxiety is defined by the following symptoms:
- Strong and fast heartbeat
- Acute feeling of alarm
- Breath comes too fast and is too shallow
- Strong fear or forebodings for good reason or sometimes no reason at all
- You feel incapacitated to get up and set about your affairs
- You are intensely irritable though you have no reason to be
- After a good long sleep, you still feel languorous and worn out
What causes morning anxiety?
Actually, when people feel snowed under anxiety immediately upon waking, it can be for various reasons. Of the most common ones we can consider the following:
- It can be due to what is known as CAR, the cortisol awakening response: with people who are living in the state of ceaseless stress, cortisol will peak as you wake up in the morning.
- Future fears can easily cause a worried awakening. If you anticipate difficult situations during the day, your worried mind can get your heart pounding and heavy thoughts storming in your brain.
- The food you begin your day with: heavily sugared victuals and strong coffee can make anxiety sharper.
- Anxiety can also be aggravated by insufficient intake of food because your blood sugar level decreases.
- If you felt stressed out when you went to bed you might not have had a good rest and chances are you will wake up with your stress unabated.
- Finally, if you have an undiscovered anxiety disorder, regular morning anxiety could be an indication to check your mental health.
Ways to shake off the worst of morning anxiety
Afflicted individuals can find and employ a number of techniques that help assuage the pangs by addressing the underlying causes.
Admit that you have an anxiety problem
If your life is darkened by recurring morning anxiety you first have to admit that you have a problem to sort out. Don’t assume that it will be plaguing you forever now! You can introduce routine and psychological changes that will take care of the condition.
Change your sleep habits
To begin with, make sure that you maintain your mind and your body in good shape by enjoying sufficiently long and deep sleep. Any sleeping deficiencies can result in fatigue, inability to concentrate and commit things to memory, headaches, anxiety, and aggravate physical and mental conditions.
If you need to improve your sleep, heed these pieces of advice:
- Some three hours before you go to bed, lay off any activities that could be too involving or exhausting: doing important work at the computer, working out, even watching emotional movies.
- As your sleep time approaches, switch on to something relaxing like reading.
- Make a point of retreating to bed (and waking up) at the same hour to set your inner clock. Make no exception for weekends.
- Create a cool atmosphere in the bedroom – best 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit – and get thicker shades to make it darker.
- Use your beed only for sleep and sex.
- If you are worried by thoughts teeming in your head, write them down or sum them up in the evening so as to get them out of the way when you close your eyes.
Set yourself for an active morning
You can fight anxiety with activity. Tune yourself up to burst into activity as soon as you are on your feet – physical activity can dissolve worries. A morning visit to your gym would be the best bet, but if you are not up to it, you can execute a few simple exercises at home or take an energetic walk.
Mind how you breakfast
You have been fasting since the evening before, so in the morning your blood sugar is down. It is conducive to having troubled or anxious mood, negative thoughts and some unpleasant physical phenomena like excessive sweating. Breakfast high on magnesium will provide the answer. It means including the following foods:
- Any nuts that are at hand: hazelnuts, almonds, cashews, etc.
- Any kind of seeds: sunflower seeds, sesame, flaxseeds, etc.
- Whole grain toast, oatmeal, bran cereals and other foods in that line.
- Protein-rich foods: turkey, fish, cottage cheese, eggs.
When you have woken up and are stuffing yourself with a healthy breakfast, it should take care of the worst of anxious assaults.
Practice meditation or pray
Humankind developed several techniques for divorcing the mind from worries about the future and keeping it tuned firmly to the present. The most common are prayer, meditation, and mindfulness. You can invoke mindfulness the minute you opened your eyes. Scan your feelings, your general condition, your thoughts without reacting. Breathing deeply, sift through the inner stuff and put out of your mind things that are beyond your control. Think about what you can manage.
Try breathing exercises
Breathing exercises serve to improve breathing which is often shallow. When we don’t watch the way we breathe and indulge in breathing that is too shallow, the body’s oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange diminishes. With individuals prone to panic attacks and onsets of anxiety, this weakens psychological resistance. If you take pains to breathe deeply, your blood gets oxygenated better and you feel brighter and more energized.
Practice guided imagery
If you are good at visualizing, while you are still lying in, imagine another setting you are in – something serene and restful, a remote beach, a green morning forest, or a field abounding with flowers.
Journals can come in useful
Of all the feelings and thoughts that cross our minds during the day, some of them are worth writing down and musing over. As you keep filling in your journal of your inner life, you can understand better and tackle stressful, fearsome and unnerving situations by coping with those you can handle.
Give progressive muscle relaxation a try
To ensure better relaxation before you fall asleep, use the technique of tensing and then relaxing your muscles from the feet upwards.
Stay positive
No matter how powerful anxiety might be, it could be eliminated by the simple expedient of driving your mind forcefully from the negative towards the positive. Use a journal to register the events and circumstances that brightened up your life and fill you with gratitude. Write about your expectations that evoke enthusiasm. While writing it down and browsing on it, you will be focusing on the positive things in your life.
