Morning Anxiety: Why You Wake Up Feeling Overwhelmed
For many people, those few hours before sleep are the calmest time of the day. That’s the time when you can lie in bed and finally take a deep breath: the worst is over, it’s another day done, and I can finally have some moments of respite.
But there’s always that niggling thought in the back of your mind; the recognition that all is not over, and you’ll soon be waking up to go through it all again. It doesn’t help, either, that the hours after you wake up are the worst of it all.
Indeed, for many people, anxiety is at its peak during the first few hours of the morning, with the cycle typically involving: waking up with your mind racing, that anxiety gradually depleting as the day nears its end, and then being at its lowest in the evening.
But why is this the case? Why do you have to go to sleep with that niggling dread that it’s all just going to start up again in a few hours’ time? It might feel completely irrational, but actually, there’s some pretty solid science behind it.
The Science Behind Morning Anxiety
One of the biggest culprits of morning anxiety is a hormone called cortisol. Often referred to as the body’s ‘stress hormone’, cortisol isn’t inherently bad – in fact, it helps regulate blood sugar, blood pressure, metabolism, and pretty much keeps us alive. But it follows a predictable daily rhythm.
Under normal circumstances, cortisol levels are at their lowest late in the evening, allowing you to wind down and fall asleep, and at their highest in the morning, when your body begins producing more in preparation for the day ahead.
Indeed, shortly after waking up, cortisol levels can increase by as much as 50%, and this can be a problem if you’re prone to anxiety, because it essentially amplifies the body’s physical sensations of stress. A slightly faster heartbeat, shallower breathing, muscle tension, heightened alertness: these are all perfectly normal effects of cortisol, but an anxious brain is more likely to interpret these sensations as evidence that something is wrong, creating the feeling of waking up already overwhelmed.
This is then compounded by the fact you’re alone – or, at least, you’re alone mentally. Along with exercise, CBD flower, and other techniques like meditation and breathwork, one of the big things that can potentially ease anxiety and improve your mood is socialising.
Have you ever noticed that when you’re out with friends, or surrounded by colleagues in the office, your anxiety appears to ease away a bit? That’s because you’re mentally engaged with the people and world around you, with your brain not being given enough space to think about what’s bothering you and attempt to make it right in your head.
When you wake up, however, none of those distractions are there, and even if you have a partner who wakes up at the same time as you, that brief bit of chit-chat isn’t enough to occupy your mind for long. On the contrary, you’re often alone with your thoughts, with no task to focus on, no conversations to have, and no activities demanding your attention – and that quiet mental space can allow worries to rush in unchecked.
Another way this can be compounded is through sleep itself. While you might feel more relaxed when the lights go down and you’ve got through the stresses of the day, your brain hasn’t completely decompressed.
Indeed, throughout the night, it will continue processing emotional experiences, sorting memories and concerns, making it common to wake up with the same unresolved worries waiting for you, and if your sleep is poor – which, of course, it would be if you’re suffering from chronic anxiety – your emotional regulation is only going to be worse.
Coupled with fatigue, this creates the perfect conditions for anxiety to snowball, making it easy to catastrophise and believe that there isn’t an end in sight.
The Route To Calmer Mornings
What you need is a shift in mindset, because you’ve essentially fallen into a pattern. Right now, you wake up believing you’re going to feel anxious, and that means you’re most anxious about feeling anxious, and this can be a damaging cycle to leave unchecked.
Psychologists often refer to it as the ‘fear of fear’ – the cycle that makes you worried about the physical sensations of worrying, which can be even more detrimental to the mindset, since there’s no clear resolution. The key, however, is to remember that those anxious sensations aren’t necessarily a sign that anything is wrong.
More often than not, they’re simply your body’s normal waking processes interacting with an anxious mind, so instead of asking yourself, ‘Why do I feel so anxious?’, try asking, ‘What is my body trying to prepare me for?’. It sounds like a small change, but it shifts you from seeing anxiety as an enemy to recognising it as an overprotective alarm system that’s become a little too sensitive.
It’s also worth resisting the urge to judge the day by its opening few minutes. Many people with morning anxiety make the mistake of assuming that because they feel dreadful at 7 am, they’re going to feel dreadful at 12 pm too. But as we’ve already noted, anxiety often follows a predictable daily rhythm. The way you feel immediately after waking isn’t necessarily how you’ll feel by lunchtime, let alone by the evening, and so it’s important to view your anxiety in a vacuum.
Lastly, it’s a good idea to adopt a coping strategy to deal with the crux of the problem itself. You have an anxious mind – even if you resolve the things that are bothering you now, that doesn’t mean new ones won’t appear, or these ones won’t come back.
What you need then, is a way to cope with anxiety and break the cycle before it takes hold. For some people, this might be CBD, with the science behind CBD flowers suggesting they may help reduce feelings of anxiety and promote relaxation. For other people, this might be meditation, which can potentially reduce anxious thought patterns and improve emotional regulation.
Whatever it is, getting a coping tool can be a powerful shield against future bouts of anxiety, often because it changes your mind from a state of acceptance to a state of retaliation. You’re not just letting anxiety or future anxieties wash over you, you’ve got a plan set up to fight back and try to keep your life on track, and that is a crucial mindset shift for long-term recovery.