Morning Anxiety

[[Buddie]]

I know some people experience their anxiety the worst during the night, before going to sleep, but for me it’s worse in the morning and gradually gets better throughout the day. I wake up with severe anxiety, a racing heart (checked a million times with a cardiologist in the beginning) and just racing thoughts of all the what if’s (I have health anxiety). Does anyone deal with worse anxiety in the morning? I feel like most people I talk to experience it at night, and what do you do to help with it

[[Buddie]]

I get morning anxiety as I started taking 30 mg of restoril in the morning last August and 30 mg to go to sleep.  Thus, I keep running out of pills.  I try to take 15 mg in the morning and 15 mg to go to sleep, but I still get extreme fear in the morning and wake up in the middle of night with anxiety.

[[Buddie]]

I get morning anxiety as I started taking 30 mg of restoril in the morning last August and 30 mg to go to sleep.  Thus, I keep running out of pills.  I try to take 15 mg in the morning and 15 mg to go to sleep, but I still get extreme fear in the morning and wake up in the middle of night with anxiety.

I thought purpose of this forum was to get off benzos 😂

[[Buddie]]

Anxiety in the morning is very common and has been attributed to cortisol elevations which fluctuate throughout the day.  Cortisol starts rising at 3am, reaches its peak at 8am, and then gradually declines and reaches a low at midnight.  I find my symptoms follow this very trend.  The am symptoms can be attributed to what they call the "cortisol awakening response".

But then my pain symptoms are all over the place and usually reach a high at night after a long tiring day.

[[Buddie]]

Is there anything to be done about the cortisol issue?  I've been waking up at 4 pretty consistently again for the last few weeks after several months of good sleep and I don't know why.  The chest tightness and anxiety persists until morning, about that 8 am time that you describe.

[[Buddie]]

One thing I did was I bought a grounding mat and use it to sleep and throughout the day when I'm resting.  Grounding to the earth is supposed to normalize cortisol and increase circulation.

https://www.earthing.com/

Cortisol is a normal and necessary hormone.  The price of healing.  It definitely will lessen and go away.  The thing to do is not take anything that makes it worse as we are so sensitive and many things like food preservatives, vitamins, etc are stimulating.  Mine has become very mild now, very tolerable and it always passes by mid morning if I feel it at all.

[[Buddie]]

Hello,
I can relate. For me it's about going to work, there are times where I don't feel like going to work and times where if there are a list of things I have to do that day, with work or outside of work. Basically being force to do something brings on my anxiety. Pre anticipation that gets my mind racing. I've never been like this before but if we subject our selves to this daily it catches up too us. That saying goes "What we resists will persists". Any kind of resistance in our actions or thoughts is I guess not healthy. I'm still dealing with this tho. 😒

[[Buddie]]

My morning anxiety has hit a peak and I am going to slow my taper because of it. I really wish I was one of those people that could take Xanax for life and have no issues but I hit tolerance at 4mg a day and it quit working for me. Now, I am down to .12mg a day and I have extreme morning anxiety. It does get better as the day goes on, but I am still anxious all day.

I wish I could afford to get massages all the time. They help tremendously with anxiety but I am dirt poor so that isn't an option.

I wish this anxiety would calm down. I am going to ask my Dr. for some Vistaril and see if that helps.

[...]

[[Buddie]]

Yup, my anxiety is worse in the morning, gets better, then stays with me in one form or another throughout the day. Fortunately, it hasn’t affected my sleep too much (except I’ve been consistently waking up at 3 or 3:30 in the morning.)

Sometimes it gets bad in the eve, but I seem more affected by morning anxiety.

[[Buddie]]

Is there anything to be done about the cortisol issue?  I've been waking up at 4 pretty consistently again for the last few weeks after several months of good sleep and I don't know why.  The chest tightness and anxiety persists until morning, about that 8 am time that you describe.

I’ve been searching for an answer to this these past 9 months.  I get this every day and it is pretty severe.  The ONLY thing that has worked for me to delay the surge for an hour is a weighted blanket AND going to bed at 8pm.  For some reason the weighted blanket helps me sleep an hour longer.  So instead of waking up at 2-3am I can sleep to 3-4am.  Other than that I have not found anything that helps.