Night-Time Anxiety: Why It Happens and How To Break The Cycle

Do you struggle with night-time anxiety?

For some people, their anxiety doesn’t just affect them during the day. At night-time, when you want to switch off and relax, your anxiety starts to take over. For others, they keep distracted during the day and then their anxiety comes racing back at night. And some people struggle with anxiety that increases towards bed time and they worry whether they will get enough, or any, sleep.

Whether you worry about sleep itself or your anxiety races at night, the end result is the same. You feel tense, agitated and restless. Your mind accelerates through all sorts of unwanted anxious thoughts. Just when you want to rest and sleep, you find yourself lying awake. Your thoughts race thinking about your day or what might happen tomorrow. You stress about getting enough sleep and how tired you’ll be the next day. It can become a cycle where night-time anxiety becomes linked with bed time.

We’ve all had those nights where sleep just seems never to come. Maybe you haven’t yet switched off from the day, or you’re still thinking about what you need to do the next day or you just aren’t ready for sleep yet. However, with night-time anxiety it becomes an unwelcome habit. Night after night you are filled with dread and foreboding about the night ahead. Will you sleep? Will you disturb others? Is it going to be another long night in the dark, alone with your thoughts?

Night-time anxiety is stressful and frustrating. The dread and anxiety can start as the evening unfolds. You are desperate for a good night of sleep but worried about another night of anxiety. You’re exhausted and longing for sleep. Yet your mind refuses to co-operate. It becomes an ongoing pattern where anxiety leads to poor and disturbed sleep. Your lack of sleep then makes it harder to deal with your thoughts and you struggle to cope with even more of the anxiety.

You find yourself stuck with night-time anxiety that you can’t find a way to find relief from. So why does night-time anxiety happen and how can you start to break the cycle so that you feel calm and relaxed enough to sleep soundly and restfully?

 

Why Anxiety Feels Worse At Night

Somehow, anxiety always feels worse at night. You lie there, in the darkness and silence, aware of the unwanted thoughts that dominate your mind and the unhelpful feelings in your body. You think and think and think. It’s like you just need an off switch for your brain so you can sleep.

During the day, you can keep yourself distracted by the things around you. You can do stuff and get on with things. Other people are around for support. You can even just go on your phone to try and occupy your focus on something other than the anxious thoughts. But when night falls and the world becomes quieter, those external distractions fade away. You lie in bed in a world of anxiety, hoping in vain for relief. You may also worry about all your restlessness disturbing others.

Anxiety loves the quiet. All the anxious things you’ve tried not to think about coming racing back. Your mind fills with worst case scenarios and potential catastrophes. You get caught in the cycle of anxiety and those fearful, imagined future disasters. You struggle to switch off or reason your way through your own web of thinking. In the seemingly endless quietness, it is just you and your thoughts and feelings. And, of course, now you also stress over not sleeping and how you’ll cope with your exhaustion the next day.

With nothing to distract you, your anxious thoughts savour the opportunity to make themselves known.

You may become very aware of things like:

• Racing thoughts that go over and over things that have happened or that could happen
• Physical sensations of anxiety such as a tight chest, accelerated heartbeat, feeling hot or restless
• A sense of dread and unease that makes it hard to switch off, relax and get to sleep

From a more biological perspective, your brain and body may also be reacting to changes in hormone levels and to fatigue. When you are tired and exhausted, your ability to regulate your thoughts and emotions decreases. Your anxious thoughts can feel even more intense or out of control.

However, you’ve had many, many nights in your life where you have felt happily tired at night and have slept well. So we know you have the capability. You just need to find a way to reset so that your body and mind unwind and relax at night-time.

 

How Night-Time Anxiety Can Become a Cycle

When I work with clients, they often tell me how their night-time anxiety has become a repeating cycle. Having experienced anxiety and panic at night, they start to dread the approach of bed time.

Anxiety starts to become an unwelcome habit that you can struggle to escape from. As the evening unfolds, you start to feel anxious about what if you spend another night of restlessness and poor sleep. The dread starts to build and you may even struggle to focus on anything else. Your foreboding lurks at the front of your awareness. You go to bed expecting anxiety, you feel tense before you’ve even switched off the light, and you just know it is going to be another long night battling anxiety.

The tension and worry makes it impossible to switch off and relax. You lie there with your uncomfortable feelings and negative thoughts. It all goes around and around leading to more tiredness and more anxiety the next day.

You start to associate bedtime with stress and struggle. You hope for a restful night but it just doesn’t come. You may reach a point of exhaustion where you get some sleep at night, yet it is disturbed and you can easily wake and feel anxious again. You’ll have tried things like herbal remedies, making sure the room is dark enough and switching off screens early enough. None of it makes any difference. Over time, even thinking about going to bed and sleep can lead to a surge of worry.

Your cycle of night-time anxiety continues to take more and more of a hold over you.

 

Breaking The Cycle of Night-Time Anxiety

No matter how hard you have been finding things at night, it is possible to break that cycle. You can calm your mind, retrain your night-time patterns and relax into better sleep again.

Here are a few initial pointers to help you to start to reset your mind and body for calm and relaxation at night:

 

1. Create a Calming Evening Routine

You may have already started work on creating a calming evening routine. However, it is easy to give up too soon, think it isn’t helping and go back to unhelpful routines. This won’t be all you do to reset, yet you do need it in place to support your other actions.

A consistent wind down routine signals to your mind and body that it is time to rest. You may need to experiment a bit but some people find some gentle stretching, reading a physical book or listening to something relaxing can help (e.g. try this free hypnosis download).

You already know that you want to avoid screens for about an hour before you go to bed to sleep. Avoid caffeine after midday and don’t eat a heavy meal or exercise intensely too late in the day.

This step is basic stuff, but you’d be surprised how often people skip the basics when it comes to night time routines.

 

2. Grounding Techniques to Interrupt Anxiety

When the structure of a calming evening routine is in place, it’s time to start working on those unwanted thoughts and feelings that go on inside you.

Anxiety lives in the future. You worry about what will happen that night and whether you will sleep. You stress about how you’ll cope the next day if you don’t sleep. The negative thoughts and worry flow from one thing to the next inside you head.

Grounding exercises can help you to bring your focus back to the present moment. You don’t allow your mind to imagine the worst happening later. Techniques such as the 5-4-3-2-1 method for anxiety and the 3-3-3 rule for anxiety can be particularly helpful. Practice these during the evening to interrupt dread and you can use this when lying in bed. You could do them with your eyes open yet equally (or subsequently) you can do the steps in your imagination with your eyes closed.

 

3. Get Thoughts Out of Your Head

Some people tend to overthink as they lie awake in bed at night. It may not even be about anxious things. Your mind just starts to plan what you need to do. Maybe you write whole emails you need to send in your head. Or perhaps you play out entire conversations that could happen with others. Whether or not these things are stressful or challenging things, they keep your brain working and they keep you awake.

If you tend to do this sort of overthinking and nighttime planning in your head, then set some time aside for it much earlier in the evening. Write down the things you need to get done and remember so you don’t have to hold it in your head. If it is written down you’ll remember it and deal with it at the right time. You can relax knowing nothing will be forgotten. You can always keep a pen and paper by the bed to capture anything else that comes to mind later so that it is out of our head and you can leave it until the morning.

 

4. Focus on Your Breathing

When you feel anxious, your breathing gets faster and shallower. When you are calm and relaxed, your breathing is slower and deeper. Controlled breathing is one of the easiest ways to calm anxiety. It links to how your body works.

When you notice anxious thoughts and feelings at night, shift your attention to your breathing. Aim for slow, steady breaths to activate your relaxation response. Try breathing in for a slow count of four, hold for a count of 2 and exhale gently for a count of 6. Do this during the evening and when you first get into bed. The numbers you count don’t matter as long as the out breath is longer.

Although you are desperate to sleep, your goal is not to try and make yourself directly drift to sleep. You can’t go from awake to asleep without relaxing and you can’t force yourself into sleep. Sleep is a by-product of relaxation. Your aim is to calm your mind and your body so focus on this bit, the bit you can control.

 

5. Address The Anxiety 

Night-time anxiety can be a consequence of daytime stress and worry. Those unhelpful patterns ripple into the quiet of the night and grow in the darkness and silence. In other cases, the daytime anxiety has passed, but the night-time anxiety continues with a life of its own.

However your anxiety at night has arisen, it has become a habit that continues to cause frustration, stress and misery. The strategies above can help you to interrupt anxious thoughts and feelings. However, it is far more effective to change the patterns of thought and emotions that drive and maintain anxiety. This will means you can feel calmer and sleep more peacefully.

Many of my clients in Ely, Newmarket and Online have found that hypnotherapy helps them to regain control over their thoughts, reduce worry and finally break free from the night-time anxiety cycle. You can become routinely more mentally calm and physically relaxed at night so that you drift into a deep, refreshing, restorative sleep.

 

Help To Feel Calm At Night

If your mind seems to fill with anxious thoughts through the evening and when your head hits the pillow, then you’re not alone. Night-time anxiety is incredibly common. Yet you don’t have to stay stuck in the cycle of struggle. With the right techniques and support you can quieten your mind, relax your body, enjoy your evenings and sleep better and better.

If you could use some help to break the cycle of night-time anxiety then you can get in touch today and ask to book your free initial consultation. The start of better sleep could be just one message away.

 

To your health and happiness, 

Dan Regan

Help To Overcome Anxiety Ely, Newmarket and Online

 

Hypnotherapy for Anxiety: Anxiety

Help to overcome anxiety in Ely, Newmarket and Online: Could use some help to tackle your anxiety? Struggling with anxiety, stress, worry and fear and need some help? Find out how I can help with a Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session. Learn more here: Appointments

Find out what hundreds of other people have said after their anxiety hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: Hypnotherapy Testimonials

And check out these popular and powerful hypnosis downloads that can start helping you right away with anxiety, confidence and more: Hypnosis Downloads