Waking up with morning anxiety? Here's how to deal with it

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Even after sleeping for hours at night, do you wake up feeling restless in the morning even before slipping out of bed? Experiencing mild stress or anxiety is a normal part of everyday life. Everyone may feel it at some point. However, if you excessively overthink situations that other people might see as non-threatening, it could be a sign of anxiety. And what you feel early in the day may be morning anxiety, which needs attention and care.

What is morning anxiety?

Although it is not a medical term, morning anxiety means waking up with feelings of stress and worry. It is common to experience that if you are going through stressful phases, dealing with drastic changes in your life, or going through distress.

It is better to get in touch with a healthcare professional if anxiety, stress, or worry in the morning has become an everyday thing. If you get diagnosed with anxiety disorder, you could benefit from the available treatments.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a feeling of excessive and uncontrolled worry that becomes a part of everyday life and occurs frequently for a minimum of 6 months. People living with anxiety disorder tend to sometimes worry about even the simplest of everyday activities which can include worry about work, education, money, relationships, family and health.

Common symptoms of morning anxiety

Anxiety does not just keep your mind disturbed but can affect your overall health as well. If you are experiencing morning anxiety, some of its common symptoms include:

• Feeling of restlessness

• Grumpiness

• Fatigue

• Signs of anxiety attack like increased heart rate, tense muscles, right chest

• Difficulty focusing and experiencing brain fog

• Nervousness and issues managing your anxiety

• Unable to fall or stay asleep

• Digestive issues like indigestion, diarrhoea

• Headaches

Why do you suffer from morning anxiety?

The reasons for morning anxiety could be the same ones that lead to an anxiety disorder. Morning anxiety is usually an outcome of staying under stress for a long. Some of the common causes of morning anxiety symptoms include:

• Anticipating and worrying about the day to come or a future event

• Stressing about something that has happened in the past

• A spike in the stress hormone, cortisol, which naturally increases within the first hour of the morning, as per the International Journal of Molecular Sciences

• Intake of caffeine or sugar (as per the Nutrients Journal) in the morning, both of which aggravate anxiety

If you have been pondering something all through the night, chances are that you will wake up feeling anxious in the morning as well.

How to stop morning anxiety?

If morning anxiety is an everyday thing for you, here are some self-care strategies you can implement to deal with it. Some of those include:

1. Keep your body active

Keeping yourself physically active can help curb anxiety symptoms to a large extent, recommends the American Association of Anxiety and Depression. In addition to boosting your mental and physical health, physical activity can:

• Be a mood booster

• Curb anxiety symptoms

• Improve your body’s resilience to handle stress

• Help you unwind

• Lessen tension

• Improve sleep

Aim to indulge in regular workouts at least 5 days a week for 30-35 minutes each session. You could indulge in brisk walking, yoga, swimming, dancing, jogging, bicycling or by going to the gym to sweat it out.

2. Mindfulness and meditation

The goal of meditation is self-realization which helps you become aware of the objective nature of your thoughts, and you learn to observe them without identifying with them in the present moment. Whereas, mindfulness means re-directing all your thoughts to the moment in hand, and you only hone this art with practice. Some of the health benefits of these include:

• Reduced stress

• Better sleep

• Lowered blood pressure

• Reduced fatigue

3. Challenging your negative thoughts

Understand how your anxiety tries to trick you into believing imagined scenarios that are not real. Anxiety takes you far into the future and displays situations that might not even happen. So, when you wake up thinking about the worst-case scenarios of the day (often called catastrophizing), challenge that thought and regain your control. It is just a thought, and you can learn to dismiss the bad ones that are triggering your anxiety.

You may even start a morning journal and do a brain dump every day or maybe maintain a gratitude journal. It will shift your perspective towards things you are grateful for and can look forward to during the day.

4. Deep breathing exercises

Practising deep breathing exercises first thing in the morning helps calm down your nervous system by shifting your focus to your breath and the energy of your body. You may practice alternate nostril breathing and holding each breath for 6 seconds. Pranayama can help curb the body’s anxiety response.

5. Psychotherapy

Often known as talk therapy, psychotherapy can help you understand the functioning of your mind and regain control over it. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a type of therapy that can help people manage issues like anxiety and depression. A trained professional in this field can recognize and reframe your harmful thought patterns. A professional can also help you teach newer ways of thinking, acting, and reacting to situations that trigger anxiety. Depending on the severity of your anxiety, multiple sessions might be needed.