Waking at night with anxiety

I'm really glad you've slept through for a few nights @L12!

Yeah, it's the same with me. I find my sleep-hygiene doesn't play much of a role in the waking up. But now that I think about it, my night-time waking up is usually a sign that my general mental health is not doing so great. I guess it's a bit of a warning sign for me.

Can you relate to that at all?

@Former-Member yeah, mine has not been good for awhile. And the waking with anxiety kept happening. It reached a point where I couldn’t keep going in that direction, so I went and saw my GP

Hi @L12 , def agree with working with breath and breathing, I have used 'Box Breathing'- basically breathing in for 4-6 count, holding for 4-6, breathing out for 4-6, repeat. It is pretty good for me and you can find it on apps I think. I do meditation and sometimes I need to do box breathing during the normal breathing of meditation if anxiety is high. I gotta say meditation has changed my life in a big way...but it is not for everybody. The other big one that has helped me is some form of vigorous exercise that gets me a little bit puffed for 20 minutes. Anything to burn up the adrenaline which drives that awful feeling. Not drinking coffee after 12pm (I had limited success with this but it helped when I did it). When it comes at night like that and I wake with my heart pounding I will often find something to listen to on Youtube or elsewhere. My listening ranges from hypnosis, ASMR, stories, spiritual teachings, lectures on interesting subjects, music, sometimes I listen to someone speaking another language I don't understand (like french) etc but all at a very low volume. It just depends, but anything that pulls my focus from the feelings/thoughts of anxiety. Yeah it can be difficult to shift and I am training myself to stay with the bodily feeling rather than get caught up in the anxious thoughts that come up. Yeah mindfulness I guess. Yeah I can say that I find it can be really tough and take time to shift. It does move though, yeah, hang in there.

@Kali-Tara some really good strategies. Thank you for sharing.

You are most welcome! Hope you find something that is helpful soon 🙂

Yes i do wake up at night with my heart racing. Mostly in the mornings though

Hi @Pascale ,

Welcome to the forums.

I hope you will find the support you are looking for on the forums. If you want to tag anyone so they receive a notification of your post, you can type "@" in front of their names.

See you around!

tyme

Can I ask what medication you are taking?

Good Evening @Lola2000 ,

Welcome back to the forums tonight. I've just read your post above asking the name of medication. Just for your reference, as part of our forum guidelines, members are not to name medications.

Here is an excerpt from our guidelines which you can read more of here: https://saneforums.org/t5/help/faqpage/title/safety

The reason this guideline exists is because these forums are community run where members provide peer support to one another. Most members do not have the clinical expertise to discuss medications from a medical perspective.

Rather, on the forums, members CAN talk about medications in general terms e.g. painkillers, antidepressants, mood stabilisers etc.

I hope this helps you understand where we are coming from @Lola2000 .

Please don't be discouraged by this. Members are welcome to share their wealth of expertise through their own lived experience - including yours 🙂

Take care,

tyme

@L12Hello I noticed your post on anxiety and waking at night. I suffer this too. I have an SCI and this has started happening to me recently again after not happening for a long time. I finally realize after linking it to time and incident that it's when I have thought about the time in the hospital or when my sci happened and someone has talked to me about it alot or that specific time. Mine is medical trauma but not a traumatic sci.

So now I sort of realize why, on to the what i do.

It most often happens in the middle of the night but sometimes literally an hour after I get off to sleep. I had a Gp once who said it sounds weird but do something you like even if its the middle of the night so I will often quietly get up and do my nails!!! or I will make a cup of strong tea which also seems weird as tea and coffee are supposed to keep you away but the gp swore it helps him. If he cant sleep he really liked tea and had it good and strong like me.