Anxiety Insomnia - What is it and why does it happen?
Despite what most people think, insomnia is actually a symptom that is usually the result of something else. In fact, anxiety is one of the leading causes of insomnia. Anxiety insomnia can sneak up on you and catch you off guard, and sometimes it's quite a while before you realize that it's the anxiety that is causing your insomnia in the first place.
Most people face a certain amount of anxiety on a daily basis. Indeed, some anxiety and stress are good because it can get your heart racing and circulate blood. However, when anxiety starts to affect the overall quality of your life, including you sleep, then it's no longer healthy.
A lot of times, people mistake insomnia for not being able to sleep at all. In actuality, insomnia can also mean that you aren't getting enough sleep at night. Perhaps you don't have trouble falling asleep, but you do have trouble staying asleep. You might wake up several times during the night or you might not ever enter REM sleep, which will make you feel tired the next morning.
The way that anxiety insomnia works is that the anxiety that you are feeling is basically keeping you from getting adequate sleep. It could be that you are lying in bed, thinking about things that make you feel stressed or anxious and this is causing you to stay awake. On the other hand, you might not consciously be thinking about these things at all, but once you fall asleep your brain subconsciously replays stimulants in your mind that make you feel anxious. Either way, the anxiety is affecting your overall quality of sleep.
You can even have panic attacks at night in your sleep. You might mistake them for nightmares. Unfortunately, panic attacks at night can wake you up and make you have difficulty falling back asleep. Sometimes, as ironic as it sounds, if this happens several nights in a row you might even find that you are actually too tired to sleep.
In addition, if you know that your anxiety is keeping you awake at night, and you know that sleep is important, you might end up placing so much importance on your sleep that you are unable to fall asleep because you're worrying too much about it.
Getting adequate sleep is very important. In addition to helping your immune system stay strong and healthy, adequate sleep also keeps you alter mentally. If you feel anxious during the day and think that it might be affecting your sleep at night, then you might want to consider seeking assistance so that you can start getting good sleep again.