Stress and sleep

30 day sleep challenge day 24: write down your worries

#8anight

Scientists have found there to be a direct link between anxiety and your rhythm of sleep. When a person has worried and anxious thoughts, their heart rate rises and the mind starts racing. So, far from being in a calm and relaxed state of mind before sleep, the brain is stimulated, which in turn can activate other thoughts and creates a rather vicious cycle making sleep even harder to achieve.

One of the ways in overcoming this is to write down your thoughts and worries and how you are going to solve them. This helps to create both a sense of relief and control which further aids in reducing feelings of anxiety and worry.

Try and avoid writing your list before bedtime as you want there to be a period of time between you thinking about worries and going to sleep.

Keeping a pen and paper by your bedside table could help you with those middle of the night niggles. If you do wake with a worry or idea that could potentially keep your head spinning until the morning, write it down and know that you can deal with it from a calm and rested perspective the following morning.