When trying to fall asleep at
night, anxious thoughts and embarrassing memories often come racing into our
minds, preventing us from drifting off. Why does this happen? And is there
anything we can do about it?
اضافة اعلان
Whether you are ticking through tomorrow’s
to-do list or dwelling on past regrets, it is normal for worries and fears to
surface at night, experts say.
According to an October 2022 survey of
3,192 US adults, 34 percent of respondents reported feeling anxious or nervous
within the past month. And 32 percent said their stress had led to changes in
their sleeping habits, including difficulty falling asleep.
When your anxiety keeps you awake, you not
only miss out on the health benefits of sleep, you might kick off a vicious
cycle of poor sleep and increased anxiety that can be hard to break.
“Sleep loss is often a precursor for
anxiety disorders, and anxiety leads to sleep loss,” said Dr Sarah Chellappa, a
neuroscientist at the University of Cologne in Germany.
Insomnia and anxietyAnxiety can surface at any time, but it may
feel more intense at bedtime, said Candice Alfano, director of the Sleep and
Anxiety Center of Houston at the University of Houston.
“Most of us are incredibly busy during the waking hours. But at night, while we lie in bed, there are few distractions from the thoughts that make us anxious.”
“Most of us are incredibly busy during the
waking hours,” she said. “But at night, while we lie in bed, there are few
distractions from the thoughts that make us anxious.”
Worse, sleep loss has been shown to beget
more anxious thoughts. In a 2019 survey of 13 studies published in the journal
Sleep Medicine Reviews, researchers concluded that insomnia was a significant
predictor of anxiety, among other mental health conditions.
Since better sleep helps decrease anxiety,
general good sleep hygiene practices — like going to bed and waking up at the
same time every day and avoiding screens before bedtime — can help, Alfano
said.
The tips below might help you reduce
anxious bedtime thinking.
Establish a caffeine cut-off.Caffeine’s half-life is approximately five
hours, meaning if you have an 250-ml cup of coffee at 4pm, you will still have
half that cup’s caffeine in your system by 9pm. Consider sipping your last cup
of coffee at least 10 hours before your bedtime.
Put your worries on paper.If you are prone to overthinking at night,
both Alfano and Dr Rafael Pelayo, a clinical professor of psychiatry and
behavioral sciences in sleep medicine at Stanford Medicine and author of the
book “How to Sleep”, recommend writing in a journal at the end of the day.
Writing down your competing thoughts and tasks can keep the thoughts from creeping up later.
Writing down your competing thoughts and
tasks can keep the thoughts from creeping up later, Pelayo said.
Look forward to something.“If you lie in bed thinking, ‘I hate my
job, I hate my commute,’ then of course you’re not going to sleep well,” Pelayo
said. But if you can give yourself something to look forward to in the morning
— a nice breakfast, a walk — you have positive thoughts that can replace some
of the more negative ones keeping you awake, he explained.
Incorporating a few of these suggestions
might help quiet your bedtime thoughts, experts said, but if you are
consistently waking up tired, ask your doctor to refer you to a sleep medicine
specialist.
Pelayo had some words of comfort: “I want
people to know that they don’t have to feel this way.”
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