It’s another sleepless night, already 4 am, and you have to get up in two hours. You have yet to sleep. Your mind will not shut off long enough to let sleep come. You keep thinking and thinking, worrying at times. This is insomnia and it’s one of the sleep issues that can arise from anxiety and anxiety-based disorders.

Anxiety and anxiety-based disorders, like generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), have a strong correlation with sleep disorders. It may be difficult to determine which came first, the anxiety or the sleep anxiety disorder.  What is known is that the two are linked together, causing more and more stress to those who suffer from just one or the other alone.

Causes of Sleep Anxiety Disorder:

For those who suffer from anxiety, are more likely to experience insomnia, the inability to sleep, or suffer from constant waking, not able to enter a deep sleep cycle necessary for good physical and mental health. Rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep is often prevented when anxiety is present, which can be responsible for depression, increased anxiety, hallucinations, difficulty in thinking, and increased risk of cardiac events. People who suffer from anxiety may also have difficulty getting to sleep, and have a longer sleep onset length, than people without anxiety disorders. For the average person, it takes 15 minutes to get to sleep, while someone with an anxiety disorder may take an hour. Sleep is vital to living things, and when a person fails to get that, they begin to break down.

Any anxiety disorder may bring on sleep problems, such as insomnia. It is the anxiety, the energy of fear or nervousness, that keeps the mind and body going. The fight/flight/or freeze response is activated, and the body is alert and ready to go, ready to act, as there is some threat somewhere, whether real or imagined, the body does not know, it just reacts to the threat the mind sees. Other mental illnesses can have anxiety associated with them, some types of depression have anxiety as a feature, or the fear and poor understanding of reality can come with thought disorders. No matter the cause, anxiety is a real feature and disrupts the life of the person who experiences it.

Sleep Anxiety Disorders are unfortunately too common with some estimating that 40 million people in the country suffer from them, with anxiety playing a significant role for many of them. This does not have to be and should be addressed immediately with your healthcare professional. With a combination of education, medication, and talk therapy to help calm the mind and re-evaluate stressful situations, a person can begin to find relief and get a stress-free night’s sleep again.

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this post and any associated articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of eTherapyPro. These posts and articles are shared for your enjoyment and consideration. Read them or not at your sole discretion and liability. They are not intended to replace counseling services rendered by licensed professionals. Consult with your counselor before implementing any content from these articles into your life.

According to a recent study, individuals who are exposed to sunlight or bright indoor light early in the morning experience less stress, feel less depressed, and sleep better at night than those who are not. Exposure to sunlight during the day and less light at night supports the body’s healthy sleep patterns by appropriately calibrating the body’s circadian clock, the biological system that helps regulate sleep.

The study published in “Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation” found that people who were exposed to bright light between 8:00 am and noon fell asleep more quickly at night and experienced fewer sleep disturbances than those not exposed to bright light early in the day. Additionally, office workers who were exposed to bright light between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm reported lower levels of depression than individuals not exposed to bright light all day.

Although exposure to bright, natural sunlight is best, even office workers benefit from exposure to short-wave “blue” light. In recent years, many businesses have reduced lighting to be more energy efficient, but this trend may be changing as many offices are moving towards brighter lighting because happier, well-rested employees are more productive employees.

For years, we have known that sleep quality affects several mental, emotional, and physical problems, including mood disturbance and difficulty with metabolism and the immune system. One way to improve our quality of sleep is to pay attention to how much light exposure we receive especially early in the day. More light in the morning equals better sleep at night.

If you are struggling to find quality sleep because of anxiety, depression, or other emotional difficulties, you may also want to consider talking to a therapist online.

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this post and any associated articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of eTherapyPro. These posts and articles are shared for your enjoyment and consideration. Read them or not at your sole discretion and liability. They are not intended to replace counseling services rendered by licensed professionals. Consult with your counselor before implementing any content from these articles into your life.