If you experience morning anxiety, you’re not alone.
Whether it’s stress hormones or stress anticipation, it’s a lot more common than you think; and I’ll be exploring what causes it as well as explaining how I overcome it so you can too.
At the moment I get it every morning, either I wake up slightly shaking, or dread gradually comes over me while I’m eating breakfast – leaving my stomach in knots.
It starts the day off in such a terrible way, so let’s understand it so we can begin to change it.
Why Morning Anxiety Happens
One of the main reasons is the spike in cortisol in the morning.
Now, cortisol is a steroid hormone that’s produced by the adrenal glands in our body, it’s often called, “the stress hormone”.
It’s function is to help the body respond to stress, regulate metabolism, boost alertness, and manage blood pressure.
In it’s natural cycle levels are lowest around midnight, begin to rise around 2-3am, and peak 30-45 minutes after waking to help you start the day.
For those of us who experience existing anxiety or chronic stress, the brain may misinterpret this necessary morning energy boost as a threat, which then triggers our “fight or flight” response.
Plus, those of us with a particularly sensitive or dysregulated nervous system due to current anxiety, depression or stress may experience this rise in cortisol causing morning anxiety as intense dread, palpitations and restlessness (explains why I sometimes wake up shaking).
If our cortisol levels are elevated due to chronic stress and we’re experiencing that just before we go to bed, the natural morning surge of this hormone can cause us to experience even higher levels of cortisol, hence making our anxiety feel much more severe when we wake up.
Increased cortisol contributes to anxiety symptoms, and anxiety itself can also cause increased cortisol.
Sounds like a lose-lose situation.
However cortisol isn’t the only reason we experience morning anxiety.
Stress anticipation can cripple us when we’ve woken up and begin worrying about the day ahead – this is the most unhelpful behaviour of which, the good news is, we can change that.
Instead of waking up shaking, then lying in bed either worrying about the day ahead or even allowing our minds to tell us how shit today’s going to be for whatever reason, we need to just get out of bed and get moving.
The trick is to stay in the present moment by feeling our bodies move, taking our attention away from our negative thinking processes of fortune telling the day ahead.
The amount of times I’ve read “you need to change your thoughts” when I’ve been at the height of feeling anxiety with a dysregulated nervous system with my mind racing, overthinking everything, I just lose hope.
Yes, the idea is to change our negative thoughts in the long run, but telling someone to do that when their stress levels are at their peak and they’re experiencing intense anxiety symptoms is simply ridiculous.
Why?
Because our brains are already full of noise – they’re out of control due to chronic overthinking and worry – how on earth are we expected to just stop all of that to make way for positive thoughts to suddenly appear out of nowhere?
If it was that easy then we wouldn’t have a problem.
Our first action before attempting to change our thoughts is to reconnect with our bodies.
Through reconnecting with our bodies, we ground ourselves back into the present moment, begin to calm our nervous system, and can think more clearly about the types of positive thoughts we want to welcome into our minds, which, in turn, helps to create positive action.
Which leads me nicely onto the important bit.
What Can Help Calm Morning Anxiety Instantly?
There are only 3 things that work for me, and I hope they work for you too;
- Journaling
- Movement
- Gratitude exercise
I see your eyes rolling, however these three things actually work – even if you’re not into the airy-fairy side of wellbeing and mindfulness, and you can’t sit still enough for 2 minutes to meditate.
Even for my active mind, these right here are my go to tools to help ease my morning anxiety.
I used to turn my nose up at journaling when I first came across it reading through blogs and self-help books.
I thought of it as a waste of time as I’m only writing down what my problems are, reminding me how shit my life is.
However, after persevering with it, I began to notice that the more I was writing without thinking about it, the more I learned about myself.
On the outside I can come across as cynical; (half) joking about how the world is a shit place, and I can sound like a grumpy old man, however, through journaling I’ve noticed I’m not grumpy and the world isn’t all shit.
I’m actually a warm, loving, kind, generous person and deep down I do love myself, plus there’s a lot in life that is beautiful and exciting.
When I journal, I don’t overthink it.
I write down everything and anything about how I’m feeling; and what I’m now noticing is, even if the day’s journal piece begins on a negative note, no matter how bad I’m feeling at the start of writing, my subconscious takes over and I end up writing down the best pep talk to myself – it’s effects are way better than any Ted Talk I’ve ever watched.
It’s proof to myself that I do believe in myself, I am enough, and even though I experience anxiety at various times, I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of and I’m going to be okay – life will get better – and healing isn’t linear; it’s a rollercoaster of ups and downs, but it’s about working even harder on your mindset when you’re experiencing those downs, and maintaining the effort when things feel okay.
When morning anxiety strikes, instead of putting on the TV to watch the news, try journaling with a cuppa – be consistent with it – and begin to learn more about your true self instead of focusing on the anxiety monster.
Remember: You are not your anxiety.
Next, we’re moving onto movement.
This is a big one because it brings us back to our body in the present moment.
I’m a qualified personal trainer, and when I park up at the gym some mornings, even I get a surge of anxiety.
It feels like it comes out of nowhere, but I’m learning it happens when I’m subconsciously being particularly judgy on the way I’m looking that day.
Sounds shallow, but it’s true.
For me, a lot of anxiety when I go out is about how I’m judging myself physically, and therefore worry that others will be judging me the same.
The more I analyse this, the more it sounds ridiculous, because why should others’ (potential) thoughts about you affect you?
Plus, they’re probably not even looking at or thinking about you anyway as they’re probably worrying about their own things.
But that’s a whole other blog post.
Anyway, as soon as I open the car door and walk into the gym, I’m generally okay because my focus then is the workout I’m going to be doing, and I focus on how it makes my body feel instead of how my body looks.
I’m not saying first thing in the morning you must go to the gym, because for many, that’s impossible.
However, when the kettle’s boiling, do some star jumps.
When you’re waiting for your straighteners to heat up, do some jump squats.
Put on your favourite music and have a dance while making breakfast.
You will feel silly to begin with, but embrace it.
Getting the body moving, temperature rising, heart pumping a little is good for managing anxiety.
Give it a go and let me know if it works for you (click on the TikTok symbol at the bottom of the page to connect with me).
As soon as your focus shifts from your mind to moving your body, anxiety will fade away.
The trick is to really physically feel your body, anchor yourself in this present moment with your body, this slight change in morning routine will help you to manage anxious stress.
The third on the list is “gratitude exercise”.
Now, stick with me here…
“Gratitude exercise” sounds like something people do on retreats in the mountains where they do yoga, meditate all day and eat salad; it’s not for people in the real world, is it?
Well, yes it is.
This exercise includes some visualisation; give it a go and let me know how you feel afterwards.
I tried this one morning after I’d woken up shaking, dreading the same shit happening as it does every day; I was feeling crippling morning anxiety alongside sadness and judgement that my life is just one big sorry existence.
Sounds extreme to write that, however that’s exactly how I was feeling; I wanted to just go back to bed and sleep until my life was going to feel better again.
Something incredible happened;
Whilst guiding myself through the exercise, all of that negativity melted away.
It lasted for a few minutes before I began to feel anxious again, but those few minutes became a moment of hope, of peace, and I knew I was beginning to train my mind and body to feel positive feelings instead of just crippling anxiety.
Here’s exactly what you need to do as soon as you feel that morning anxiety rising;
- Sit for a moment in silence – no distractions
- Take a deep breath and begin slowly listing things out loud (anything, big or small) you’re grateful for and focus on truly feeling grateful for them being a part of your life
- After listing 3 or 4 things out loud, close your eyes and carry on listing what you’re grateful for but this time don’t say them out loud – only think them and feel the feeling of gratitude growing
- However long it takes, once you begin to feel gratitude, really understand how it makes you feel; warm, loved, safe, happy…
- Visualise yourself rising up and breaking through a grey cloud (symbolising your anxiety), to then reach blue skies and a huge, warm sun
- This is a reminder to you that even on your darkest days, the sun still shines above those clouds – symbolising that experiencing anxiety is only temporary, and your true self (the sun) is always there even if you can see it or not.
The more you practise these three things in a morning, over time, your morning anxiety will lessen, and you’ll begin to regulate your nervous system.
The goal is to be consistent so then one day, you don’t wake up shaking, you wake up feeling ready for whatever the day has to bring (and not overthink it).
Anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of, everyone experiences it.
There are just those of us who feel it more intensely and frequently, and that’s okay.
As long as you begin to believe there’s hope in a better life – you’re well on your way to achieving it.
