Quality sleep is the key to physical and mental health. Lack of sleep fundamentally affects the quality of our life.
Insomnia, which we technically call anxiety insomnia, can manifest itself in many different ways. Some people sleep too lightly and wake up multiple times during the night. Others cannot sleep, wake up too early, and get tired during the day. The cause of these conditions can also have organic origin. However, the most common sleep disorder is psychological, or rather psychophysiological origin and its manifestation - inability to fall asleep on time. Anxious insomnia.
Most of us have experienced this before. We lie in bed, turn over, the hours go by, but sleep does not come. We work hard to sleep, we imagine how tired we will be the next day, and sometimes we fall into helplessness or anger. Not surprisingly, the effects of sleep deprivation are manifested not only in physical fatigue or headaches, but also in bad mood and loss of interest in life. If this is not an isolated situation and similar conditions do not bother us more often, we talk about anxiety or sometimes insomnia.
What is actually preventing us from falling asleep? At first glance, the answer is simple. These are certain types of our thought streams. Sometimes we tend to think in certain patterns that cause anxiety and, at worst, fear. This is especially true in situations where we think about the near or far future and create chains of automatic negative thoughts that lead to a catastrophic scenario.
It doesn't have to be a disaster in the full sense of the word. All we have to do before bed is to deal with everything we have to do tomorrow, what shouldn't go wrong, and what we shouldn't forget. Sometimes we also remember injustices or conflicts we experienced during the day and enter into internal dialogue with people who have upset or hurt us. Such thoughts trigger a physiological stress response. Breathing and heart rate increase, blood pressure rises and adrenaline is released.
Our body prepares to fight or flee because it cannot discern whether a threatening stimulus is real or just our imagination. Thus, stress activates us in every way, and sleep is the last thing our body can allow at this moment for a purely protective reason. The vicious circle of insomnia.
If we are going through a few sleepless nights, it is natural that in the evening we will start to worry that this unpleasant situation will happen again. Then, chains of disturbing thoughts cover all possible problems that arise if our body and brain do not receive the much-needed energy. We think about how ineffective, annoying or unfocused we will be and what possible negative consequences this condition will bring. Our body perceives a state of danger and, from a physiological point of view, reactivates a natural defense reaction, that is, a state of stress. We suffer from the so-called anxiety of expectation, and then the fear of not sleeping, unfortunately, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What helps induce early sleep and proper sleep?
Working with ideas. First of all, we need to understand what our thoughts really are and start paying more attention to them. We probably won't save anything with our evening worries or fears, so we should focus on the calming content of our mind.
For example, we can be helped with this.
-various relaxation recordings or audiobooks, listen to audiobook online for free here.
-compliance with sleep hygiene.
We should only stay in bed during sleep, the room should be well ventilated, and the time to fall asleep and wake up should not change much. Late in the evening, we no longer have to work at the computer or go to the Internet.
Blue light prevents the formation of melatonin, and rapidly changing virtual stimuli are very stimulating as well. We also should not eat heavy food, drink coffee, alcohol or smoke.
Physical activity, on the contrary, promotes the metabolism of stress and promotes healthy sleep, it is necessary to play sports not only before bedtime. Natural Sleep Aids There are a number of natural products that do not harm our body, have a relaxing effect and help induce healthy sleep. These are mainly various herbal pills and teas that we can buy without a prescription.
