Sleep Anxiety | 3 Key Techniques To Stop The Noise

For as long as I can remember, sleep anxiety has always plagued my mind. It starts with one negative thought which quickly spirals out of control... before you know it you're over analysing every possible outcome and solution to your problem. For me, it's usually centred around work but I know for many people the root of anxiety might stem from relationships, family, kids, money, friends and sometimes the most silly interaction. What's important to know is that everyone experiences this to a degree. You're not alone. The overthinking just tends to happen late at night when there are no distractions. It's just you and your internal dialogue.

As I was on this journey to overcome my own issues with sleep anxiety, I experimented A LOT and spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours researching. I tried exercising, waiting until I was tired, medication - and while all of those things did help, it definitely didn't stop the issue. I tried heaps of methods to reverse engineer the problem. I landed on three key solutions that seemed to do the trick.

1. Sound | Can you hear that?

The first thing I tried was to just listen. I'd sit there all night and just try to hear all of the noises that my home was making. This was my first breakthrough. It sounds so strange but it actually worked! When you listen externally, it's almost as if your internal dialogue completely disappears. For the first time in my life I was actually able to overcome the voices that would tick over in my head. From there I started listening to a podcast through my phone. This was even better. I'd listen to my favourite speakers and slowly drift off. Shortly thereafter I thought... wouldn't it be great to have a product that encompasses sleep and sound and that was how I launched the mussage sleep mask.

Slowly though, I made heaps of other changes that then supplemented this.

2. Sweet Dreams Tea | Slow it down

Listening, whilst important wasn't the only piece of the puzzle. One thing that I found didn't go away with the noise was my fast heart rate. I was speaking to a friend at work who recommended Sweet Dreams Sleepy Time Tea to me. Honestly, I was very sceptical. Personally I'm a coffee, not a tea person (yes I get that's probably the reason for the fast heart rate) and the last thing I wanted was to drink murky water before bed. This product completely changed my life. Whilst I wouldn't say it helped me to sleep, it definitely helped me reduce my heart rate. This took the edge off on days where anxiety and stress were a little higher.

3. Diet | The boring part

I know, I know... everyone talks about diet and exercise to solve literally any problem. It's something that I didn't want to bring up but changing my diet changed everything for me. This has been a huge part of (hopefully) my final chapter to curing my sleep anxiety. I was always eating really dense foods, burgers, chips sweets and I was eating a lot of it. For someone who struggles with sleep it's quite common to indulge as your body requires more calories to stay awake and alert throughout the day. The biggest change happened when I switched to a diet that is almost purely lean meat, vegetables and potatoes. Outside of this I made sure to stick to foods that were largely unprocessed. Honestly there are heaps of ways you can create a healthy diet but my recommendation would be to experiment with what foods work well for your sleep regime. Track the days that you got excellent sleep and then try and remember what you ate that day. You'd be surprised at the correlation.

To conclude

It's important to note that these techniques are not a solution to anxiety. We must deal with this separately and seek council if it becomes overwhelming. Outside of dealing with the core issue, these were the techniques that worked best for me. I tried to keep the list to my top 3 as these had by far the biggest impact. I hope this helps and would love to speak to see what you found has worked best: mussageaustralia@gmail.com.