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.
Okay, method number one is simply to eliminate negative thoughts that you have 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 bothers you most when you’re trying to fall asleep when you first get into bed, in the middle of the night when you wake up, and first thing in the morning before you get up.
To overcome these situations, you need to stop 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 is a very simple idea, but it’s amazing how much anxiety this will remove from the start of your day. Getting up before your mind has a chance to remember all the things it could be anxious about will give you a better start to the day than you’ve had in a long time.
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.
So instead of lying awake for hours you get up for a bit, and then finally when you return to bed you treat it as if you’re going to bed for the first time. This is much more natural for your body to accept than it is to lie there for hours when you can’t sleep. It’s far more likely that you’ll get back to sleep doing this than simply lying there.
***Method #2. No More Ever-Changing Schedules***
By sticking to the same routines and times, you’re sleeping will improve, whatever the cause of your sleeping problems.
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 cannot fail to improve. You’ll also correct any problems with things like irregular hormone release, which can be affected by poor sleep habits.
Do you ever feel burnt out? In many cases, that will be because your adrenal glands are active at times when they shouldn’t be, and this is often 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 try your best to get to sleep every night at the same time, and also get up in the mornings at the same time. Be wary not to undo your good work by sleeping in late on weekends or on days when you don’t need to be up early.
***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 totally 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.
Go out of your way to slow everything down for the last 60 minutes before heading off to bed. If you have a favourite bedtime drink, this is the time for it. If it’s hot outside, maybe drink it in the fresh air. If it’s cold outside, curl up and drink it inside. But the bottom line is, relax.
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 enjoy warm baths then incorporate that into your routine. Warm baths are known to promote deep and relaxing sleep, which is just 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.
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