Anxiety about being anxious when I wake up. Rest of the day I'm fine. How can I get rid of this waking up anxiety.

[mrmanpgh]

So i've been going up and down with anxiety from pull panic to hardly none at all over the last 8 months. Currently i'm in my second week of almost no anxiety after a 4 week spell of pretty pad. It just suddenly went away like it does every time. However it leaves a side effect.

When i wake up, (I don't mean when I get out of bed, I literally mean when I wake up), I can feel my stomach tighten, and I feel anxiety about being anxious again. Usually i'll start thinking about what's going to happen when I go back to work (i'm on break). Or something else. I have no reason to worry, I did fine all last week at work.

I've been doing need CBT worksheets. Every day I write down the thoughts that are troubling me, and then break it down into the automatic thoughts behind it, and what the distortions are, and then correct the thoughts. I've been doing that for only 5 days now. I like it. I exercise when I get up. I do my meditations, and if like today it left particularly specific anxiety about something, I'll do my CBT worksheets.

But when is this waking up with anxiety right away going to go away? I can't go back to sleep. So if I happen to wake up 2 hrs before I'm supposed to wake up, i'm stuck lying in bed worrying.

I have been prescribed vitriol to take when I'm feeling anxious. Maybe I should just take it when I wake up? First time I took it made me feel sleepy and calm. Now I just took one and I felt hardly anything. I've only take 3 of them so far.

What can I do to stop this waking up feeling anxious? My day would be perfectly fine if I didn't feel anxiety the second I wake up. And again the funny thing is, once I'm up and do my exercise and meditation.. and get into the day. I feel fine. I don't feel anxiety. I only feel a slight worry about the fact that I'm going to feel anxious again when I wake up. If only this cycle could stop.

[robynnicholson]

I keep coming back to your post every hour to see if anyone answers :)... as my anxiety is at its worst upon awaking. The only thing I have read that makes sense to me is cortisol levels may be too high at this time of day. I also wake up 3 am..unable to fall back asleep, then up at 5:30 ..feeling like crap for a few hours(kinda like an anxious zombie lol) Hopefully some one has answers for us...take care

[mrmanpgh in reply to robynnicholson]

I read to about Cortisol levels. So it's a chemical in the body can't something be done about it? Make less?

[robynnicholson in reply to mrmanpgh]

I have a pharmacy here that sells natural medicine and they have a product that is supposed to help level out cortisol so its not highly elevated in the morning. it is called cortisol manager,,I know it sounds silly, but I have a fear of medicine...even vitamins,,so I have purchased this about a week ago, and it sits in my medicine cabinet until I get the courage to try it.

[Cares179]

I have this too. I wake up between 5 and 6 am every morning no matter what time I go to bed. I will wake with heart palpitations, anxiety, and jitters. I too have read it's cortisol as your levels are highest in the am. It does get better as the day goes on. I would love to just sleep in one day again.

[Vbee]

I recently stumbled across an article about early morning waking. It appears that it is a protective mechanism in your body from over stressing your glial cells in the brain. Due to excessive rumination during the day we dream to excess during the REM phase of our sleep pattern and this dreaming is as if we are awake so we use up glucose and create stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) so early morning waking is the body stopping us dreaming. Vicious cycle because we need to decrease time spent in REM sleep and increase deep sleep. Best way to do this is to stop the daily worrying and rumination and this can be achieved by daily 20 minute meditations. It really does help.