Sleep and Anxiety

Your sleep and mood are very closely connected, as you know from personal experience, inadequate sleep can lead to mood swings, it can make you get annoyed at things that you typically wouldn’t get annoyed at, that being said healthy sleep can enhance your mood and well-being.

New research suggests that lack of sleep or lack of adequate sleep can cause someone to have an anxiety disorder. Sleep and mental health go hand in hand together, getting a good night’s sleep can make it better whereas poor sleep can make it worse. Though this can go for everything, in terms of health it is still important to point out. There has been research that has been shown that nearly all psychiatric disorders have some sort of sleep disruption. Studies that also shown that people who suffer from chronic insomnia are at a high risk of developing an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety and stress can cause you to have sleeping problems or the can make you existing sleeping problems worse, that is why is it important for you to try and do things that will hopefully reduce the amount of anxiety and stress that you are currently dealing with so that you can sleep well. Here are some things that you can try and implement into your routine that may reduce your anxiety and stress levels:

• Talk about your problems

Talking about your problems can release pent-up feelings, and if you have problems that you are unable to find solutions for by yourself, talking to someone could mean that they can give you a solution to your problem. Often people find it hard to talk to someone they know about a problem, so there are always hotlines that are available for you to use to talk about your emotions or problems too, this can prove to be very helpful when it comes to reducing your anxiety and stress levels.

• Play music

Studies have shown that listening to music can help calm your nervous system and lower cortisol levels; which is the stress hormone, both of these can help reduce stress. Research has also shown that creating and making music, can help release emotions as well, as it decreases anxiety and improves overall mental health.

• Sleeping well

If you sleep too little or don’t get an adequate amount of sleep then this can affect your mood, making you more irritable. Vital functions happen throughout different stages of sleep, the things that have to have in your brain for you to store your memories, help you learn, and in order for you to feel well-rested and energized you need to sleep. However, sleeping can become very difficult whilst dealing with anxiety, so if you are unable to sleep and you feel like your anxiety is getting worse then paying a visit to a mental health professional can prove to be very useful.

• Exercising

Exercising regularly can help ease your anxiety and depression, when working out your body releases feel-good endorphins, your brain releases chemicals that enhance your sense of well-being. Not only that but exercising gets your heart rate up which changes your brain's chemistry, thus increasing the availability of the important anti-anxiety neurochemicals, including gamma-aminobutyric acid (GAMA), serotonin, endocannabinoids, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).

• Meditation

Meditation can produce a deep state of relation and but you in a mind of tranquillity, while you are meditating you focus your attention and eliminate the thoughts in your head that may be causing you to have anxiety and to stress out. Meditating may result in you enhancing your physical and emotional wellbeing.

Anxiety is, unfortunately, something that is very difficult to deal with, it makes a lot of your everyday tasks hard to complete or to deal with, although there are some things that you can do that may help you deal with it like the things listed above there isn’t a guarantee that those things will make it easier on you. If you feel like it is getting harder for you to deal with it then you should try and visit a professional about it to may get some medication or for cognitive behavioral therapy, to try and make it easier on you.