Easing Morning Anxiety

Are you struggling with more fear these days? You are definitely not alone. I myself have times when I feel like I can ride the wave of the Coronavirus while other times I tumble head first into the turbulent surf. When this happens, I coach myself to get back up on the “surf board” and to keep my focus on where I want to go, which is away from fear and towards confidence and calm.

With all the negative content that is on the news and being rehashed amongst friends and neighbors, it’s more important than ever to manage our mental mindset. The vast majority of our fearful feelings are being created by our thoughts, and the things we think about either soothe us or frighten us.

Just waking up in the morning can be tough for many of us. It’s when morning anxiety kicks in. I struggled with this for many years and want to share a few tips that have helped me. But first, it’s important to understand a little bit about our brain and how it works, so rather than be a victim of it we can use it to our advantage.

During times of stress the brain is built to search for and detect potentially harmful situations in our environment in an effort to keep us safe and help us survive as a species. When it detects danger it sends a surge of chemicals through our body that create the fight, flight or freeze response, so we can take action to save ourselves from the danger. This is why when you’re under a lot of emotional or physical stress, you wake up in the morning feeling anxious. Your mind and body have been on hyper alert and as soon as you wake up the brain starts looking for danger. And here’s the kicker, our brain doesn’t just look for danger in our physical environment, it also searches for it within our internal environment. This means that once your brain determines that your physical environment is safe, it then does an internal scan of your thoughts and emotions to see if it can find potential dangers there.

Since I thankfully live in a very safe area, I notice that my brain tends to immediately turn within to scan for possible danger. As soon as I begin waking up my brain hunts within my mind for trouble. How are you feeling? If the answer is, “Good.” Then it jumps to, “What about yesterday? Weren’t you worrying about something yesterday? What was it? Maybe we need to look at that some more?” In other words, whatever I’ve been worrying about over the last day or two, my brain finds it and rehashes it, which causes a sick sensation in my stomach, an adrenalin rush, or it makes my heart beat faster. Hello morning anxiety. Such a crappy way to start the day.

My strategy for curbing morning anxiety is to have a list of things for my brain to think about when it wakes up. As I’m waking in the morning, instead of internally checking in to see how I feel, I say a quick prayer for the Divine to be in charge of everything I think, say and do. Then I slowly say words in my mind that for me have a positive association and create a positive feeling in my body. Words such as: Love, joy, peace, play, fun, giggles, winter berries, beauty, trees, flowers, laughter, contentment, serenity, and Sienna and Charlie (the names of my pets). I’m not necessarily trying to conjure up an experience of these words. I’m not trying to feel them. I’m just saying the words, and just saying them appears to be enough. This strategy has worked beautifully for me and I believe it’s because our brains have a hard time thinking about two things at once.

Also note that I’m not trying to resist the worry. I used to try to force worrisome thoughts away but that only made me more anxious. Instead I’m proactively choosing to think something different, which is simply a list of positive, feel-good words. Once I’ve thought my positive words, I might end with an intention for my day such as, “Today is going to be a fabulous day!”, then I get out of bed and go about my usual morning routine.

Knowing that the first hour upon waking is when cortisol is the highest, my morning routine typically also includes meditation and a walk. Both of these activities are known to help reduce cortisol levels. Other things like avoiding caffeine, getting plenty of sleep, and adding little pockets of pleasure (sitting in the sun, caressing a pet, chatting with a good friend, etc.) can also preemptively help regulate our cortisol levels and reduce stress.