When Worry Impairs Your Sleep

Do your worries impair your sleep?

It seems like there’s plenty to worry about these days. But is there really that much more to worry about now than people had in times past?

Certainly, our standard of living is better than ever. Our homes are spacious and climate controlled. Modern conveniences allow us to spend less time on monotonous and tiring tasks.

We live longer than ever and are generally much safer physically than our ancestors. Most of us won’t die of an infected wound or a childhood disease, be threatened by a wild animal, or starve to death in our developed society.

It’s true, there are threats to our own and our families’ safety and well-being that simply didn’t exist just a few generations ago. Times change, and so do the dangers and risks we face. But it’s not clear that we have more to stew about than our grandparents and great-grandparents did.

What Makes Us Worry So Much?

Have you ever wondered why you can’t just put whatever it is that’s bothering you out of your mind and get on with things?

Perhaps one reason is that we ‘know’ too much about all the real and perceived dangers surrounding us. We constantly hear and read scary stuff in the news, on social media, and in everyday conversations with neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family. People seem to love to spread bad news and their own anxieties to others.

World events, politics, the economy, new diseases, neighborhood crime – it’s all worry-worthy, right??

If we take it all to heart though, we may give them more attention and importance in our minds than they warrant.

This incessant anxiety is damaging in many ways and interferes with our daily lives:

By focusing on negatives, we often can’t see all the positive things we can be grateful for.
Relationships are damaged when worries take our attention away from really listening and relating to others.
We can become unpleasant to be around when all we can talk about is how everything is wrong and threatening.
Being distracted from important things needing our attention can cause us to make mistakes at work, driving, caring for our children, and doing other important tasks.
Chronic anxiety and stress can result in depression and substance abuse to avoid those bad feelings.
Physical responses to anxiety can include headaches, stomach upset, muscle tension and pain, and raised blood pressure. Stress hormones like cortisol coursing through our bodies all the time have very real health ramifications.

And then there’s the effect worry has on our sleep.

Worry, Stress, Anxiety – and Sleep Loss

We all know first-hand that when our sleep is disrupted, we’re not at our best. And when our sleep is disrupted, so many other things seem to spiral out of control as well.

Worry is often the culprit.

We’ve all been there – lying in bed, trying to relax our body, realizing our muscles are all tensed up and maybe we’re even frowning. “Okay,” you tell yourself, “relax again. Concentrate!” The pressure to get to sleep is real and that only adds to the underlying anxiety.

But relaxing the body is only one piece of the puzzle. We need to calm our mind too. Easier said than done.

Busy-brain, mental chatter, monkey-mind. Whatever you call it, it surely does hinder our ability to get to sleep and stay there all night. This phenomenon is a maladaptation that makes us feel worse and worse over time and makes our inability to lie down and drift off quickly without our brain devolving into every stressful thing in our lives a real threat to our well-being.

Anxiety is similar to pain in that they both make sleeping difficult, and the lack of good sleep exacerbates both anxiety and pain. It’s a vicious circle that can be tough to break out of.

How to Side-Step Worry and Go to Sleep

Tough to break out of, yes, but not impossible. There are things you can try to help reduce your bedtime agitation.

Move Your Body

One possible reason many of us can’t fall asleep quickly enough to avoid the bedtime worry session is that we aren’t physically tired enough. This isn’t true of everyone, but in our society, many of us are sitting at desks all day long. We come home from work mentally and emotionally exhausted, and while we may feel physically spent, our bodies haven’t been worked and aren’t really tired.

Try getting some physical activity during the day. Just like you might try to wear your kids or your pets out so they easily fall asleep, you may be able to use that extra little bit of fatigue to help knock you out at night. Just avoid doing this right before bedtime in case it revs you up.

Tune It Out

Another reason many of us are constantly anxious is information overload, and specifically negative news overload. News outlets and social media have an inherent interest in keeping their viewers and readers hooked and coming back for more. They often make events seem more serious, more threatening, and more dramatic to keep our eyeballs on them and their advertisers.

Try to put your perceived risks into perspective. Evaluate the likelihood and seriousness of each worry. Be honest about how things affect your life directly, and whether you can actively do anything to change it.

There are certainly very serious matters going on in the world, and being informed is an important part of life. But if we can’t directly affect them in any way, we feel helpless, powerless, and anxious.

It may feel strange to drastically reduce your consumption of news or social media, but if you can identify that they make you tense and cause you to feel uneasy, then you can do something about it. Be selective about how much and what information you consume. Avoid the kinds of news, social media and negative people that trigger your anxieties, especially near bedtime. It could mean the difference between falling asleep fast or lying awake for hours – worrying.

Remember that good sleep is important to every facet of your life and health, so try not to cheat yourself out of its wonderful rejuvenation.

Only you can make the changes that help you reduce your stress and worry at bedtime.