FIGHTING ANXIETY AT NIGHT

Any time of day is a tough time for anxiety, but it can be especially hard when you need sleep. Now a writer on Nylon explains how she fought anxiety before she had to get to bed. 

As Ashley Laderer explains, “Nighttime used to be the absolute scariest time for me. As soon as the sky began to darken, I knew my crippling anxiety was approaching.” Laderer feared the night so much, “I would start to feel short of breath as soon as my head hit the pillow.”

Laderer put is very well when she said that panic attacks “aren’t, on their own, fatal, they feel that way. But that’s just all the more reason why it’s important to learn how to cope with them…” So how did Laderer become “equipped and ready to handle [anxiety].”

Laderer partakes in online therapy, and she likes to do it in the middle of the night “because I can get all of my negative thoughts outright as their happening. In-person therapy is obviously great too, but I find substantial benefit in being able to record a voice memo or leave a text message for my therapist explaining what I’m feeling in the heat of the moment.”

Laderer also uses a technique called grounding, “which is used to help you stay present and in the moment when you feel like you’re spiraling out.” As Living Well reports, there are many ways to exercise grounding, such as taking a series of slow breaths, drinking a cold drink of water, even just getting up and talking a little walk around all help put you in the now.

Coming up with a mantra that will calm you down helps a lot as well. For Laderer it was, “Nighttime is not a time for panic!,” but you can, of course, custom make your own to help you through a bad, panicky time.