subject: Anxiety And Sleeplessness [print this page] Do you ever lie awake at night with thoughts racing around in your head? Your mind constantly flitting from one thing to the next. And when you eventually fall asleep, your sleep is broken, you toss and turn in the throes of nightmares. You might find it carries on for nights sleep deprivation and anxiety blend into a constant cycle of sleepless nights.
Unfortunately anxiety can cause a lack of sleep and sleeplessness, you've guessed it, can cause anxiety. What started out as a symptom of anxiety can add to your anxiety, making it impossible for you to get a good night's sleep
Google How to get to sleep and you will discover loads of sites out there telling you how to get a good night's rest. Go to bed early, drink warm milk, read a good book, don't drink coffee or smoke, exercise regularly; whatever the suggestion, the assumption seems to be that anyone can get to sleep under the right circumstances.
But what happens if anxiety is causing your sleeplessness? What then? All the warm milk in the world won't change a thing. Sure it might help you to fall asleep eventually, but that may well have happened anyway simply through being exhausted.
If your sleeplessnessis due to an anxiety disorder you need to sort out the underlying anxiety if you hope to have any chance of returning to a normal pattern of sleepsleep pattern and {the first step you need to take is to stop worrying about you need to stop worrying about lack of sleep initially.
Anxiety disorders can cause bad sleep patterns and once we have had two or three bad nights sleep it is very easy to begin worrying about getting to sleep or staying asleep and this concern keeps us awake, usually with thoughts about what we are going to feel like the next day? Will I doze off in a meeting? How will I cope with the children?What you need to realise is thatyou know the answers. If you have experienced sleepless nights because of an anxiety disorder, the chances are that you have already worked out how you felt the following day.
And I'll bet that you coped. No doubt, you wouldn't have felt at your best, and you may have snapped at your children or your spouse but you coped and the surprising thing is that you will carry on coping despite the sleeplessness.
Eight hours sleep is not essential in order for us to function properly . Leonardo Da Vinci never slept for more than fifteen minutes and he managed just fine. Winston Churchill, the English Prime Minister during world war II only ever had two or three hours sleep a night and he lived until his 90s with a successful political career
We do not need as much sleep as we think; so try to stop worrying about it. Take the fear out of sleeplessness and suddenly you will find that it is much easier to get a good night's sleep
