Waking Up With Anxiety

To Sleep, Perchance to Wake Up Calm
Courtesy of Vzor495

Waking up with anxiety sucks. It starts the day off with an unwanted bang and makes lazy mornings feel like torture. One of my several mental health care professionals assures me that anxiety is always worse in the morning. She's right, of course, but it being typical doesn't make it any more comfortable.

For me, there are two ways to wake up with anxiety. The first is with an anxiety attack. This can happen any time of night or morning. If you've ever woken with a full-blown panic attack, I'm sorry. I truly feel your pain. You know it's fine. You know it's just a panic attack, but you also just want to freaking sleep, not fumble around the house looking for your medication or cling to your sleeping spouse like he's a life raft on stormy seas. The second way to wake up with anxiety is what I've been living with lately, which is a slowly boiling anxiety that begins with the realization that I have to start another day and live through it.

When it comes to the slowly boiling morning anxiety, I usually have two choices. The first is to stay in bed trying desperately to get a relaxation technique to work long enough that I fall back asleep. The second is to get out of bed and begin a marathon of distractions to get me through the morning and into the typically calmer afternoon. I tend to choose this latter option, which makes my days a little tumultuous. I flit from one activity or chore to the next, switching whenever I feel anxiety, hoping with each new activity that I will have hit the sweet spot of relief for the day.

I don't know about you fellow daily sufferers, but I would give a lot to be able to wake up, stretch my limbs out to find the cool spots on my sheets, smile at the morning sun, yawn and contentedly snuggle back up in bed without any urgent, unwanted feeling compelling me to "GET UP NOW AND DO ALL THE STUFF!" Maybe one day soon I'll have that again. I hope you do too.