A great and overlooked way to cure panic attacks is to concentrate on your sleep and to improve the quantity and quality of the sleep you’re getting. Try these 3 tips to do exactly that:
The first method to have better sleep is to stop all negative thoughts while you’re in bed.
You experience much more worrying and anxious thoughts when you’re awake in bed than you do in any other situation. That’s a weird situation to be in when you think that your bedroom should be the place where you are most calm.
I’d feel confident guessing that worrying in bed bothers 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.
So what’s most important 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 answer? Get up imediately, as soon as you open your eyes.
This may sound like a very simplistic idea}, but it really does work and will beginning to your day.
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.
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.
By getting up when you’re awake, and going back to bed in this way after you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s much more like you’re going to bed for the first time. This is much more natural for your body, and you’re going to be able to get back to sleep much quicker than if you’d just remained in bed the entire time.
The second sleeping mistake to stop 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 go back to normal and your sleeping can’t fail to improve. You’ll also correct any problems with things like irregular hormone release, which can be affected by bad sleep habits.
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 undo all your hard work by sleeping in late on the weekends and losing your hard-earned new routine!
***Method #3. No More Stimulants Before Bedtime***
In my own case, a lot of the problems I had with my sleep were due to what I was exposing myself to in the time leading up to bedtime. I admit that I often watched fast-paced TV, listened to loud music, and played action-packed video games right up until I turned my lights out. Clearly this is a terrible idea.
What I did, and what I suggest you begin 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 relax you.
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’re a bath-taker, then whenever you can take one right before you get into bed. Make it warm, but never too hot. A warm bath has been proven in many studies to put the body in just the right state for great quality sleep. So make this slow winding-down hour a new part of your pre-bed routine. It can work unbelievably well when you’re not sleeping.
stop panic attacks