One of the best ways to cure panic attacks is to improve the quality of your sleep, and here are 3 methods for doing just that.
***Method #1. No More Negative Thinking In The 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 troubles 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 stop these situations, you need to stop as much of your “worrying in bed” time as you can. The simplest one to solve is the one where you’re lying in bed in the morning after you’ve awoken. All you need to do is get up as soon as you wake up!
I know this seems like an ultra simplistic answer, but you will be astounded how much worrying this cuts from your life.
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.
Another great thing to do is to have a warm bath, or simply to splash your face with warm water. Or perhaps just wander around your home for a few minutes, possibly tidying a few things away. Then just go back to bed. This approach works because it recreates a completely natural way of going to bed.
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.
Okay, now time for the second way to get the kind of sleep that cures panic attacks, and this one is about creating and sticking to a consistent routine.
Sleeping problems of all kinds, not just those that are related to panic and anxiety disorders, can be eased by making sure you stick to the same routine every single day.
Your own inner clock will almost immediately reset itself to the natural and healthy default if you just start going to bed and getting up at the same times each day. This will also normalise things like hormone secretion, which often depends on your sleeping cycles.
You know that feeling of being constantly “burnt-out?” That’s often because your adrenal glands are working even when they should be resting. One of the common causes of this is an irregular sleeping schedule. Getting back into a regular routine will fix this and many other problems too.
Starting from today, then, begin going to bed each night as close to the same time as possible. And, of course, get up at the same time each morning too. Just don’t throw away all your hard work by sleeping in late on the weekends and losing your hard-earned new routine!
The third method to get improved sleep is to avoid all stimulants before you go to bed.
A lot of the problems that you currently have with your sleep could be to do with what you do right before you go to bed. Fast-paced TV, loud music, heavy reading, and playing video games are all really bad ideas in the last hour or two before you try to sleep.
What I did, and what I suggest you start doing too from today onwards, is to stop doing anything stimulating for an hour before your bedtime. Couple this with a brand new routine that you stick to before you retire, full of things that you know will caml you.
So go out of your way to take it easy. act like you’re on a vacation without a worry in the world. You know what relaxes you, so do that! Have a favourite bed time drink, do some light reading, sit outside in the fresh air if it’s warm. Anything to 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’re someone who likes hot baths, then take one an hour before you go to bed. A warm bath always helps to ease your body into just the right state for deep and relaxed sleep. Incorporate this warm bath with the bedtime drink and use these new habits to build your own slow-down hour before bed, and see the wonders it can work on your sleep, and your panic attacks.