When you want to cure panic attacks, one of the best things you can do is improve the quality of sleep you’re getting, and here are three good ways to achieve that.
Okay, method number 1 is simply to eliminate negative thoughts that you experience in your bedroom.
More worry and anxiety happens when you’re lying awake in bed than at any other time of the day. That’s pretty incredible when you consider it’s the place where we should be most relaxed!
I’d feel confident guessing that worrying in bed troubles you most when you’re trying to fall asleep when you first get into bed, in the middle of the night if you wake up, and first thing in the morning before you get up.
To overcome these situations, you need to prevent as much of your “worrying in bed” time as you can. The simplest one to cure is the one where you’re lying in bed in the morning after you’ve woken up. All you need to do is get up as soon as you wake up!
This may sound like a very simplistic solution 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 beginning 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.
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 much 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 whole time.
The second sleeping mistake to stop to help cure your panic attacks is to allow no more constantly-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.
By simply going to bed at the same time each night and getting up at the same time each morning, your body’s internal clock will get back to normal. Many of your body’s functions, including the releasing of hormones, are affected by your wake/sleep cycle.
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.
Starting from today, then, begin going to bed every night as close to the same time as possible. And, of course, get up at the same time each morning too. Just don’t undo all your hard work by sleeping in late on the weekends and losing your hard-earned new routine!
***Method #3. No More Stimulants Before Bedtime***
A lot of the problems that you currently have with your sleep could be to do with what you do directly before you go to bed. Fast-paced TV, loud music, heavy reading, and playing video games are all very bad ideas in the last hour or two before you try to sleep.
So something you should try to do right now is to completely stop anything that stimulates you in the final hours before bed time. Make this a part of a new routine you adhere to before bed, where you try to slow things down.
So go out of your way to take it easy. act like you’re on a vacation without a worry in the world. You know what relaxes you, so do that! Have a favourite bed time drink, do some light reading, sit outside in the fresh air if it’s warm. Anything to relax.
These types of suggestions might seem simple, but do you ever genuinely give yourself time in this way? Even if you do, you probably don’t do it often enough.
If you enjoy warm baths then incorporate that into your routine. Warm baths are known to promote deep and relaxing sleep, which is exactly the kind of sleep that cures panic attacks and fights off panic generally. A warm bath will be an excellent addition to your new “calm down” hour before bed.
tips for panic attacks