Keep naps short of less than an hour and give up taking naps after 3 p.m. I once spent the entire night Googling baby monitors that would alert me to a health problem while watching my 3-month-old son's sleep. Buy Snooze Sleepy tea teapots. Right now, Headspace is offering 1 year free if your employer recently laid you off due to the ongoing pandemic.
A study found that lack of sleep could affect the brain's ability to process negative emotions or experiences, which in turn can increase a person's chances of developing mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety. You can also get meditation-themed bedroom decor to make the space more conducive to relaxation, even when you're not trying to sleep. If you have trouble sleeping due to anxiety, insomnia, or a combination of both, this can have some unfortunate side effects on the body if left untreated for an extended period of time. Depression, which is also known to negatively affect sleep, can further complicate the situation, creating additional barriers to quality sleep in people who have depression and anxiety.
Sleep studies will help you identify these problems and can then connect you with a professional doctor or therapist to work on treating the underlying problems. You may want to write down the temperature in your sleep diary to see if the temperature affects your sleep. Trying relaxation techniques can help identify ways to get rid of anxiety and make it easier to fall asleep quickly and peacefully. In addition, anticipatory anxiety and specific sleep anxiety can lead to sleep disorders and insomnia, creating a feedback loop that can worsen both conditions.
As WebMD writer Winnie Yu noted in her article “Fear of sleep, sleep anxiety is a form of performance anxiety. As seen in a collection of sleep studies, lack of sleep can increase a person's risk of death by up to 12% compared to those who sleep 8 hours on a regular basis. Once you start to feel sleepy, allow yourself to go to bed and focus on your breathing instead of any other anxiety. An experimental study that examined the effect of chamomile tea on sleep quality in women with postpartum depression found that this tea improves both sleep and depression symptoms.
As a result, understanding and addressing the links between anxiety and sleep can be critical to physical and emotional well-being. If this means spending the whole night awake, not sleeping at all, then try to save this technique for the weekend so that you can get some sleep when your body wants to sleep naturally. If you don't sleep well, talk to your doctor about adjusting your doses or changing the time of day you take your medications. Sleep deprivation is known to affect mood and emotional health, which can exacerbate the challenges posed by anxiety disorders.