Insomnia Coping and Support
Insomnia can cause you to be mentally slow and more irritable; these two factors can increase your stress experiences. Listed below are some of the ways you can try to deal with stress-related insomnia.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
One cause of sleeping difficulty is too much muscle tension in your body. When a person is stressed out, he may not be aware of the tightened muscles in his body caused by his stress. Progressive muscle relaxation is one sure way of relaxing the muscle tension in his body.
Journaling
Another effective way to help you get a good night’s sleep if you frequently wake up at night due to constant worrying is journaling. Journaling means jotting down whatever you wish, especially a pleasant experience that you remember or fantasizing about a new idea that makes you happy. Journaling is a therapeutic way to remove your mind of worries and negative thoughts and to keep thinking positive things that night and tomorrow when you wake up. You can also reflect on the day that ended, about the things that happened during the day and then letting them go. Journaling offers you a great way to let go of your stress and clear your mind so that you may be able to sleep well.
Work through Your Stress
A person who cannot sleep due to anxiety can be able to relax and fall asleep with a change of perspective. Anxiety is usually a natural reaction that entails some sort of action needed to be done to address the cause of the anxiety. Anxiety is about worrying and when you worry at night it keeps you awake. If you look at your situation as a challenge to you rather viewing it as a threat, you can more or less tackle this situation in a more proactive and decisive way instead of continuing in a passive and anxious frame of mind. If you can look at your situation in a different perspective, you may be able to see opportunities you may have initially overlooked.
Take the Pressure off Sleep
The problem when you begin to keep having frequent sleeping problems, bedtime itself can then become a not too pleasant experience as well. To prevent you from going into this kind of situation you can perform certain things to help take out the pressure caused by insomnia. One thing you can do is to arise from your bed (if you feel that you’re far from getting sleepy). This will help you avoid the pressure of monitoring the clock for several hours. You can then occupy yourself with an activity. This way you may feel that you’re managing your time well unlike being in bed and looking at the clock for hours which can cause stress. Another thing to do is to make your bedroom first and foremost your sleeping area. This means you should only associate your bedroom and bed with sleep rather than stress. Doing other not-too stimulating activities like reading a book or watching a rather unexciting movie can bring sleep into your mind and body. Try also not to take in caffeine during the afternoon and at night.
Seek Help
Unfortunately a lot of insomnia sufferers are unaware that joining a support group for their problem is a very effective way to help them deal with insomnia. A support group not only can assist you in getting sleep, it can also provide you with lots of information about your problem that can enable you to better handle and treat this condition.
Nawei Jiang is a licensed acupuncturist and the founder of Nawei’s Acupuncture Clinic in Colorado Springs, CO.