Night-time anxiety is something that plagues many people. It can be associated with insomnia which affects nearly 60 million people in the U.S. per year.
Making sure you get enough sleep is the cornerstone of living a healthy and less stressful life. But it happens that a lot of the time you end up worrying about not getting to sleep and then not sleeping because you’re worried about it. This creates a paradox and is something that a lot of people struggle to overcome.
In this article, we’re going to go over 5 tips that should help you get to sleep faster and stop worrying so much.
1. Relax Your Body
It makes sense to try and relax your body when you are trying to sleep. It makes you more comfortable and gives your mind something to do so you won’t be sitting there spinning your wheels.
Start at your head and relax your face. Focus on each part of your face and make it go limp. When you’re done with your face keep moving lower until you get the whole way to the bottoms of your feet. A lot of people fall asleep before they even get done. But if you aren’t one of those people then don’t be too worried. You have succeeded in completing a great relaxing technique.
2. Figure Out Why You Are Stressing
Now, this is not giving you permission to lay there and examine all your life problems at once. That’s probably got a lot to do with your insomnia anyway and you don’t want to perpetuate it.
What you actually should do is find the thing you are most worried about right now, and counter it with positivity. Reassure yourself that everything is going to be okay. This too shall pass. Nothing in life lasts forever and neither will your problems.
The more you turn these thoughts in a positive light, the less stressed you are going to be.
3. Don’t Think About Sleep
This is a really easy and fun way to get yourself to go to sleep. There are two ways to go about this approach.
Firstly you can imagine yourself in a scene from your favorite movie. For example, think that you are in Hogwarts roaming the halls talking with Nearly Headless Nick. You’ll find yourself drifting off and making up a story as you go. Inserting yourself into a fantasy world and beginning the first stages of dreaming.
Another process you can follow is just to not think at all. Repeat to yourself “Don’t think” over and over again. Think of nothing else than these two words. It sounds stupid but trust me it works. I use this method all the time and it’s a life-changer.
4. Think Happy Thoughts
This sounds a bit like it came from a cheap self-help book but there’s some science behind it. See when you think about something, you are more likely to keep thinking about things that are similar to that topic.
The basic theory is that thoughts multiply. If you think about something you are a lot more likely to think about it a second time. If you’ve ever found yourself repeating a thought to yourself multiple times a day then you have experienced this effect first hand.
So if you think positive and happy things, you are more likely to think about more positive and happy things later on. This will continue to help you fall asleep quickly.
5. Get Into a Routine
It might seem like you already have a bedtime routine but it could just be a really bad one. And it can affect your anxiety as well. If you spend a lot of time on your phone before bed you may be taking in some stressful information and making the problem worse.
Also, the light from the screen is activating parts of your brain that should only be active during the day. It messes with your internal clock and tricks your brain into thinking its daytime. This can make you more anxious as well because your brain will be even more active than it would be otherwise.
Conclusion
Anxiety before bed is something that bothers a lot of people in the world every time they lay down at night. It is very common but also fixable. Follow some of the steps in this guide and before you know it you’ll be drifting off into sleepy bliss. Even if something you’ve read doesn’t seem like its meant for anxiety just putting yourself to sleep is a win when it comes to night time anxiety.
