Waking up with anxiety

[Sandpiper14]

I keep having stress dreams and then I keep waking up with my heart pounding and feeling really anxious. I’m not sure what to do about it.

[GlowingDarkly]

From a physical reaction side of waking up with anxiety, I found that sitting up from laying down and using slow, deep, deliberate breathing techniques help me get my heart rate down and under control. From the mental side, one could say “meditation” but really my main concern was to push ALL thoughts away from my mind. I’ve heard of folk talk about “emptying” one’s mind and so I’ve tried to do very much the same - Concentrate just on my breathing, pushing away ‘active thinking’ and just focusing on emptiness.

That has often helped me come down off that severe edge of morning panic attacks. Then I try to shift to writing down thoughts in my journal or even coming here and writing about what I believe is the source of my anxiety, no matter how silly it might sound - its obviously not silly to your mind.

Another strategy I’ve been working on as well and finding some success is self-reflective. I have spent a lot of time and energy searching myself and trying to work downwards to the most basic level - Why am I panicking/afraid? What is it about that fear that has me so freaked out? What can I do about it? Down, and down I try to explore.

I found for myself is that I felt a pervasive sense of helplessness, that I was trapped in my life with no way out. But as I began to peel back the layers, I started to realized how I was holding myself back and began to write out a list of things I’d like to improve about myself. I wasn’t trying to be cruel with myself, just honest. And then I would spend time on each thing and tried to work out a strategy for each one on how I might be able to improve in those areas. This is still an ongoing process for me and I also had to acknowledge and promise myself that it was okay to be wrong about something and make mistakes - so long as I would keep trying.

I also will note that I shared many of these thoughts with my Therapist too, and he is also working along side with me - giving perspective but also sharing his knowledge and experience in techniques to tackle some of the larger issues. So it feels good to have an ally in this fight.

If you ever want someone to just vent/express a lot of your own worries to but not publicly post them - my PMs are always open. I am happy to be an ear.

[Sandpiper14 in reply to GlowingDarkly]

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I think I will talk to my therapist about this too. I don’t want to be trapped thinking about the past /future! I want to ground myself to each day.

[GlowingDarkly in reply to Sandpiper14]

You can do it! Attack that panic from both sides, find techniques that work for you to manage the immediate physical reaction when you are experiencing it - finding confidence in finding something that can work will also help a bit on the mental front. And then work hard at getting to the root of the cause because that will also help lessen the severity. It is also remarkable just how much “feeling you’ve made progress” can go towards managing attacks. At least that is my experience with it.

[Sandpiper14]

I normally just wake up to start my day at that point, luckily I’m not waking up in the middle of the night just yet. How did you first therapy session go by the way? Pls DM if you do not wanna discuss publicly ❤️

[Sandpiper14]

Yeah pretty much same! Hopefully see some progress a few sessions in.