Does Anxiety Keep You Up At Night? The Connection Between Sleep and Anxiety

Oct 5

Mental health disorders can make even the easiest tasks seem difficult. Tasks that you were once able to do before can feel exhausting as you try over and over again to accomplish them with no luck.

Sleep is one of these things. If you have anxiety and you struggle to fall asleep, stay asleep, or simply feel well-rested, you’re not alone.

There’s a close connection between anxiety and sleep. Think of it as a toxic cycle: your anxious thoughts may be making it harder to sleep well, yet at the same time your poor sleep may be contributing to your anxiety.

Anxiety, worry, and stress can all damage your mental health, leading you down a winding road of sleeping difficulties. On the flip side, anxiety treatments have been shown to improve sleep and decrease the amount of time you lie awake at night.

Let’s take a closer look at the connection between sleep and mental health, and how anxiety treatment can lead to a better night’s rest.

What Is Anxiety?

In order to understand how anxiety and sleep influence one another, it’s important to get a firm grasp on what anxiety is.

There are a variety of anxiety disorders out there, however generalized anxiety disorder is the most common and broad category.

Anxiety is a physical and emotional feeling of unease, worry, stress, and nervousness. There may be specific triggers that make your anxiety worse but someone with generalized anxiety disorder can often feel anxious for seemingly no reason at all.

If you’re suffering from anxiety you may feel:

Irritable
On edge
Angry
Restless
Afraid

In addition, you may experience:

Rapid heart rate
Tight chest
Muscle contraction
Stomach pains
Headaches
Sweating
Trembling
Insomnia
Lack of concentration

Everyone can feel anxious at times. Whether they’re about to speak in front of a crowd, or they’re getting ready for a first date, feelings of nervousness and jitters are common.

However, with anxiety disorders, the brain is constantly on high alert, day in and day out. This can make it incredibly difficult to rest and relax during waking hours, and nearly impossible to sleep at night.

How Anxiety Can Cause Poor Sleep:

Insomnia and other problems with sleep are commonly known symptoms of anxiety. Excess stress and worry can make it impossible to quiet your brain down long enough to fall asleep at night.

Someone with anxiety may tend to think about their problems frequently during the day but may find their anxious thoughts inescapable in the still of the night. They may lie in bed and ruminate on their worries and fears, keeping their brain in a heightened state of arousal.

Hyperarousal is a well-known root cause of insomnia, not just for those suffering from anxiety but in individuals with depression, PTSD, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. As you lie awake, unable to fall asleep, you may begin to rehearse future scenarios, past regrets, and current problems over and over again until it becomes unbearable.

Unfortunately, it’s not just this state of hyperarousal that can cause sleeping difficulties.

If falling or staying asleep has long been an issue for you, you may even feel a rise in your anxiety around bedtime. You may start to feel worried and nervous about another night of tossing and turning. This increase in sleep anxiety can reinforce the idea that “sleeping is difficult” - in turn making the problem even worse.

How Poor Sleep Can Cause Anxiety:

Anxiety, mental health, and sleep are all interconnected. Through this idea, we can safely assume that not only does anxiety cause poor sleep, but poor sleep can cause anxiety.

Our brains need sleep to reset at night. They need time to relax and store away all the important information we learned during the day. Just as our bodies begin to shut down without rest, the same goes for our brains.

If sleep is frequently disturbed, deprived, or non-existent, our brains quickly begin to malfunction. One of these malfunctions is an increase in anxiety.

A lack of proper sleep increases cortisol, our brain's “stress” hormone. It’s the warning signal our brains give our bodies to let us know something is wrong. When cortisol is left unattended, anxiety disorders can develop.

For those already struggling with anxiety, research has shown a heightened sensitivity to sleep deprivation. This means an individual already experiencing restlessness, worry, and fear may feel the effects of poor sleep at a greater intensity than a neurotypical person.

How Anxiety Treatment Can Lead To a Good Night's Sleep:

Due to the incredibly close connection between mental health and sleep, anxiety treatment is a wonderful option for those struggling to feel well-rested.

While treating anxiety isn’t always easy, it’s proven to help decrease the time you lay awake in bed while quieting those intrusive thoughts keeping you awake at night.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a form of anxiety treatment used to help empower clients to identify their own negative thoughts that are playing a role in their sleeping troubles.

Once these problematic thoughts and behaviors are addressed, a plan is created to help the client redirect these thoughts when they arise. In addition, clients are encouraged to make changes in their environment or lifestyle that may be contributing to their anxiety and insomnia.

CBT is used around the world for many various mental health concerns and has shown significant success in helping clients sleep better at night and fall asleep quicker. When the intrusive thoughts causing late-night restlessness are targeted, the brain is finally able to relax and fall into a state of drowsiness.

Sleep is a non-negotiable for a more positive, healthy state of mind. If you suffer from, or suspect you have an anxiety disorder that is disrupting your ability to sleep at night, talk to your doctor or mental health professional.

Not only can anxiety treatment such as CBT help you achieve optimal sleep, your therapist can help teach you relaxation techniques and educate you on sleep hygiene - an essential part of managing sleep anxiety.

Want to Start Therapy for Anxiety in Arlington, VA?

At VDC Counseling we want to help you start living a full, happy, and healthy life with therapy for anxiety. Call for therapy near me. In order to get started follow these steps.