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.
Okay, method number 1 is simply to eliminate negative thoughts that you experience in your bedroom.
You experience far more worrying and anxious thoughts when you’re awake in bed than you do in any other situation. That’s a strange situation to be in when you think that your bedroom should be the place where you are most calm.
You’ll probably find that this problem is at its worst at 3 particular times: when you’re lying awake right after you go to bed, in the middle of the night after you’ve woken up, and possibly in the morning as well, when you’ve woken up but you haven’t got out of bed yet.
So what’s most critical in this situation is quickly stopping as much of your anxiety in the bedroom as possible, and the easiest area to solve this problem is with the worrying you do when you wake up in the morning. The solution? Get up imediately, as soon as you open your eyes.
This may sound like a very simplistic eliminate a lot of your morning anxiety. Getting yourself up and out of bed so that your mind can’t find things to worry about will give you an excellent start to your day.
Okay, now to stop those times when you worry in the middle of the night after waking up. I’ll admit, this one’s slightly tricky to solve, but there are solid methods you can use. Right away I should tell you that if you’re ever awake for more than a few minutes, get up right away. Staying in bed won’t solve anything, and will probably triple your anxiety.
Have a warm shower or wash your face with warm water, potter around for 10 minutes doing something that doesn’t need much focus (a bit of tidying, listening to some soft music, skim-reading a magazine etc.), and then go back to bed. The key here is to recreate a “natural” going-to-bed routine.
This whole appraoch has to beat lying in bed for hours on end, with nothing to do but worry. And when you eventually go back to bed, you’re much more likely to drift off to sleep without any problems.
The second sleeping mistake to eliminate to help cure your panic attacks is to allow no more constantly-changing schedules.
If you’re suffering with a sleep problem for any reason, not just one that’s caused by anxiety and panic, then sticking to the same schedule every day is great advice.
And yes, by doing nothing more than going to bed and getting up at the same times, every single day, your internal clock will return to normal and your sleeping cannot fail to get better. You’ll also correct any problems with things like irregular hormone release, which can be affected by bad sleep habits.
Do you ever feel burnt out? In lots of cases, that will be because your adrenal glands are active at times when they shouldn’t be, and this is frequently caused by irregular sleeping cycles. If you can get your sleeping habits into a predictable routine, problems like this will often disappear all on their own.
So do your best to go to bed each night at the same time, and get up each morning at the same time too. When you start out doing this, you may go through a couple of tough days while you get back into the correct routine, but it will be worth it. And also beware of sleeping in late on weekends, or days when you don’t have to be up early. All your hard work can be undone with a couple of late lie-ins!
***Method #3. No More Stimulants Before Bedtime***
Many of the problems that I had sleeping were because of what I was doing before I actually went to bed each night. I was often watching TV in bed right up until the moment I turned out the light and tried to sleep. This is a very bad idea! The same goes for any loud or heavy music, and even for reading if the subject is heavy or extreme.
So the first thing to do is eliminate anything stimulating for at least an hour before you go to bed. You should also not do any exercise at all for at least a couple of hours before bed. And try to develop a new pre-bed routine a “slow-down” routine, as I like to call it.
Go out of your way to slow everything down for the last 60 minutes before heading off to bed. If you have a favourite bedtime drink, this is the time for it. If it’s hot outside, maybe drink it in the fresh air. If it’s cold outside, curl up and drink it inside. But the bottom line is, 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 like warm baths then incorporate that into your routine. Warm baths are known to promote deep and relaxing sleep, which is just the kind of sleep that cures panic attacks and fights off panic generally. A warm bath will be an excellent addition to your new “calm down” hour before bed.
tips for panic attacks