AD (gifted) – in return for writing this post I have been offered a 3 month membership to The Anti Burn-Out Club. All thoughts and experiences are my own.
Anyone who has experienced night time anxiety will tell you what a big impact it has on them. Not only does it effect your evenings and your sleep but it often carries over into the next day. Today is World Mental Health Day so I thought now would be a good time to share my experience of night-time anxiety as well as the ways I’ve been dealing with it.
I haven’t really spoken about my mental health openly when it comes to night-time anxiety. Dealing with this and accepting I need help is relatively new to me but I’m on a continuing journey. I feel like writing down where I’m at right now along with some of things I’ve been doing to help myself might be useful to others.
Where my night time anxiety started
For as long as I can remember I’ve never been a good sleeper. I find it very hard to switch my brain off and drift off to sleep and I’m often quite a light sleeper too. Vivid nightmares, sleep talking, sleep walking, sleep paralysis and much more have been features of my night times for many years now. It’s almost guaranteed that on a Sunday night that thoughts of another working week take over and I don’t sleep well. When I was at university if I had an exam coming up I’d spend all the the night before wide awake. I’d just come to except that my poor sleeping habits teamed with low levels of anxiety on occasions meant that a good nights sleep was a very rare thing for me.
Then a few months ago my sleeping got worse. I found myself waking up in the early hours every morning with my heart and mind racing, shaking, sweating, a million thoughts running through my mind and finding it difficult to calm myself. One day it would be money worries the next day it would be that I hadn’t tidied out a cupboard that I’d told myself I’d do. Very quickly these highly anxious episodes would spill over into the next day. I’d wake up in a morning feeling tired, teary and worried. It’s really hard to explain, but some days when those anxious episodes stretched beyond the 4am wake up calls it would feel like there was just a dark cloud hanging over me all day.
This went on a few weeks until one particularly low morning my husband turned to me and said “I think you need to ring the doctors.” I knew he was right but still a massive part of me didn’t want to accept that I needed help and I certainly didn’t want any medication. I’m honestly not sure why I (and many other people for that matter) was so reluctant to admit that my mental health just wasn’t right. If I’ve got a cold I take medication, if I have a headache I take paracetamol, when I broke my toe I had no issues taking pain medication but the thought that I might need medication for my mental health just felt different.
Save for later!
Getting help
The same day my husband suggested I phone the doctors I had a great phone call with my doctor. I told him everything that was going on and he asked lots of questions and offered lots of advice. He thought the best course of action was to take Amitriptyline. Basically Amitriptyline is one of those drugs that was developed for one thing but over the years has come to have lots of uses. It was originally developed to treat anxiety and depression but can now be used as pain relief and because it has a mild sedative effect and can be used to treat sleeping issues such as insomnia.
Given that I had issues sleeping and night time anxiety it was decided that Amitriptyline could help break the cycle of waking up at 4am every day full of anxiety and panic. I was told to start taking one tablet and increase it to three. Strangely once I’d spoken to m doctor and got the prescription, the thought of taking meds to help my mental health didn’t seem as bad to me anymore.
My experience taking Amitriptyline
I thought it was important to include a section on this but it’s also important to understand that everyone is different and meds that work for me might not work for others and vice versa. My dosage was one tablet before bed to be increased to three. I never actually got up to taking three tablets as I found one did the trick just fine. For a short while I did increase my dosage to two tablets a night but I really didn’t like how that made me feel.
My sleep improved and the 4am anxiety was gone from the moment I started taking Amitriptyline. As I’ve mentioned, Amitriptyline does have a sedative effect which I was a little worried about but my experience of taking them has been pretty positive. It’s definitely not a case of taking a tablet and falling straight to sleep and sometimes I still have difficulty drifting off but I sleep better, wake up less and the anxiety has pretty much gone. There’s certainly being no early morning panic attacks and teary mornings filled with dread. I’m actually due to finish the course of Amitriptyline very soon so we’ll see what happens after. However I have no worries about taking medication to help my anxiety now. If I need to go back on something, whether it be now or in the future, I know that’s ok.
Side effects of Amitriptyline
So as for the side effects of Amitriptyline I didn’t really suffer too badly. I heard a lot of stories about the tablets absolutely knocking you out but that hasn’t been the case for me. There’s been the odd day here or there where I’ve felt a bit rubbish in terms of sluggishness but for the most part just taking one tablet has been fine. When I upped it to two I didn’t like how I felt and when I spent a whole day feeling like a zombie, slurring my words and sleeping I knew I’d be better taking it back down to one. The only other side effect I’ve had is dry mouth. It was so bad when I first started on the tablets but it has improved. The positives have far outweighed any negative side effects.
How to help night time anxiety
While I understand that without medication I probably wouldn’t have been able to ease my anxiety I was also open to other things I could do alongside taking tablets. Honestly, my number one piece of advice if you’re suffering like I was would be to make a doctors appointment. I’m definitely not one of those people who is going to sit here and tell you that you don’t need medication for your mental health because a good diet and exercise will cure all your problems. The things I’ve been doing to deal with night time anxiety have run alongside taking medication. They’re not a replacement for it. So here’s a few things I’ve tried to get into the habit of:
Don’t be regimented with your nightly routines
Having a routine to unwind and relax is important. However don’t commit to this routine at the same time every night otherwise you’ll fall into the trap of having a set bedtime. You then associate this time with negative thoughts about how you’re going to sleep and if your anxiety will cause issues. Try not to go to bed at the same time each night. I’ve always been a big fan of reading before bed. I honestly do find that reading helps with my overloaded brain as I can escape into another world for a bit and switch off from reality.
Journal your positives
I’m naturally a pessimistic person but something I’ve always found useful for my mental health is focusing on small positives each day. Taking time to write down 3-5 small positives at the end of each day can help you focus on the good rather than the bad. It’s why I’m such a big fan of writing my monthly Happy Lists and why they’re the longest running feature of my blog (I believe my first Happy List was all the way back in April 2011!)
Toxic positivity has been discussed on this blog before but I think when it comes to positivity and negativity a healthy balance has to be struck. If you’re like me and you naturally lean towards being more negative then taking 5 minutes at the end of the day to feel grateful for a few small things can be really helpful in balancing you out.
Try out apps and websites
At the height of my anxiety I downloaded Headspace. I’m lucky enough to be able to use this for free via my job. There’s an abundance of useful things on there and the workshops on anxiety are definitely going to be something I explore further as I come off the Amitriptyline.
I’ve also been lucky enough to be offered a 3 month free trial to the Anti Burn-Out Club. It has a huge focus on well-being, mental health and slower pace to life. This is perfect for someone like me as I struggle to accept help, acknowledge that I’m doing too much at once and I’m a bit of a perfectionist all of which leads me to getting burnt out pretty quick. The Anti Burn-Out Club offers access to:
- Curated monthly wellbeing calendar of challenges and lessons
- 150+ on-demand wellness courses and videos
- A positive, supportive, and uplifting community
- New resources released each month to keep you motivated and encouraged
- 20% off all the Goodies in The Anti-Burnout Shop
- Monthly Random Acts of Kindness
Membership to the ABC is £9.99 a month, however if you signup today with this link https://lps.theantiburnoutclub.com/wmhd21 you’ll get a 21 day free trial. This offer is only available for 24 hours so if it’s something you’re curious about, it’s well worth checking out the platform totally free for the next 21 days. I’ve been making use of the material on there for anxiety and overwhelm. I’m definitely going to be checking out their content for self love and confidence too.
So that’s my journey with night time anxiety so far. As I’ve mentioned, I’m about to come off the medication so I’ll be entering the next chapter of this journey very soon. I’ve no idea what’s next, whether it’ll be manageable, whether I’ll need medication again straight away or whether I’ll need it in the future. But I do know that mental health problems are something we should be normalising. Something we shouldn’t feel shame or guilt over and something that’s totally ok to get help for.
I hope my story helps at least one person and makes night time anxiety a little less of a lonely experience.
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We’re so fortunate to live in an age where not only do we have professionals but like you mentioned, we have so many useful apps and websites. Getting help indeed is so important, we really don’t have to do this on our own. Thank you for sharing such important information 😉 I’ve seen lots of posts about anxiety, fewer about anxiety specifically at night (which in my case was the worst)
Yes there definitely seems to be a lot more information around anxiety but not a lot for night time anxiety.
Thanks for sharing this experience. I use the Calm app to help me sleep, especially as stress builds up at night.
Thanks for reading. I know a lot of people like the Calm app for stress and anxiety.
Anxiety at night could turn into a big problem as we can understand from the experience you shared. I also suffer from insomnia during the stressful periods of my life and I try to control it with more exercise during the day and meditation before going to bed. Thankfully to me it works but I can understand that for some people these might not be enough. Thank you for sharing your story!
Thank you for reading. Everyone’s different and it’s great that things like meditation and exercise help a lot of people but sometimes other people just need a little extra help and that’s ok too! I definitely think things like exercise and meditation should be practiced alongside taking medication too (rather than just relying on meds) on days where people feel mentally strong enough to do so.
Good information sharing. I also have night time anxiety sometimes. I always get too excited about what I’m going to do tomorrow. And it cause me lack of zzzzzz. So I try to calm myself at night by reading and drinking camomile tea.
I wish it was just excitement I had to deal with! Having an over stimulated mind can cause lack of sleep though so it’s always good to try and calm down.
interesting article! I liked that you mentioned not setting a routine for bedtime because that in itself can create more anxiety. I hadn’t considered that it’s a very good point!
Thanks! Having an evening routine is something that gets talked about a lot but I don’t think that a lot of people realise that rigidly sticking to that routine can make things worse.
This is some really great advice! I love your point about taking the time to write out the positives before bed, that sounds like such a simple thing to do which can make a world of difference. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with Amitriptyline and some great tips x
Thank you for reading. It’s such a simple tip but it really does help me.
Thank you for sharing your story and I’m glad you reached out and got the help you needed.
There is still a stigma about taking medication, but it helped me.
Thanks for reading. There really is sadly and it shouldn’t be that way when it helps so many people.
Anxiety and sleep are connected. We do not spend enough time addressing these issues
We definitely don’t.
thank you for sharing your truth about dealing with nightly anxiety. i could relate to this some as i used to suffer from insomnia. i totally understand the annoying feeling of your brain not shutting off and always overthinking. i tend to listen to calming sounds or asmr to go to sleep.
Calming sounds can be a great option to help you switch off.
I haven’t used medication to help with my anxiety; which gets really bad at night, but it’s good to have some options (if I were to get health insurance, etc). It was really interesting to read your experiences (thank you so much for sharing) and it has encouraged me to realize I’m not alone.
Thank you. I’m glad it’s helped you feel a little less alone.