When you want to cure panic attacks, one of the best things you can do is improve the quality of sleep you’re getting, and here are 3 good ways to achieve that.
Okay, method number 1 is simply to eliminate negative thoughts that you experience in your bedroom.
You experience much 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 relaxed.
You’ll probably find that this problem is at its worst at 3 specific times: when you’re lying awake immediately after you go to bed, in the middle of the night after you’ve woken up, and maybe in the morning too, when you’ve woken up but you haven’t got out of bed yet.
To stop these situations, you need to prevent as much of your “worrying in bed” time as you can. The simplest one to solve is the one where you’re lying in bed in the morning after you’ve awoken. All you need to do is get up as soon as you wake up!
This is a very simple idea, but it’s amazing how much anxiety this will remove from the start of your day. Getting up before your mind has a chance to remember all the things it could be anxious about will give you a better start to the day than you’ve had in a long time.
Finding a solution for the occasions when you worry during the night after you’ve woken up is slightly harder, but there are still good options. To begin with, always get up out of bed if you’re lying awake for more than ten minutes. If you stay there in bed, in the dark and the silence, it’s only going to make your anxiety get 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.
So instead of lying awake for hours you get up for a bit, and then finally when you return to bed you treat it as if you’re going to bed for the first time. This is much more natural for your body to accept than it is to lie there for hours when you can’t sleep. It’s far more likely that you’ll get back to sleep doing this than simply lying there.
Okay, now time for the second way to get the kind of sleep that cures panic attacks, and this one is about creating and sticking to a consistent routine.
By sticking to the same routines and times, you’re sleeping will improve, whatever the cause of your sleeping problems.
Your own inner clock will almost immediately reset itself to the natural and healthy default if you just start going to bed and getting up at similar times each day. This will also normalise things like hormone secretion, which often depends on your sleeping cycles.
I bet you know that feeling that you’re totally burnt out, right? Well, that is frequently a result of your adrenal glands being out of whack. One of the few ways to correct a problem like that is to get some good sleeping habits sorted out.
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.
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 caml you.
Consciously begin to ease back on everything for the last hour before you go to bed. Stroll around like you’re on vacation. If you like to have a bedtime drink of some kind then sip it outside if it’s a nice night and enjoy the fresh air. If it’s too cold outside, curl up on the couch and relax for 20 minutes while you enjoy your drink.
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.