Going to Sleep and Panic Attacks at Night

As most doctors will tell you, there are two things that disturb sleep: physical pain and worry.

It’s therefore understandable that many people with anxiety report frequent sleep disturbance as a major problem.

Not being able to sleep can actually be quite traumatic for many people.

The first thing you need to understand about sleep is this: it’s not the amount of sleep you get that’s important, but rather the quality of the sleep.

Quality over quantity.

I am going to give you some quick tips to help tackle any problems you are having with sleep. Firstly, to break the insomnia cycle, begin by not presuming you will sleep! That seems like the wrong attitude, but if you approach each night as just a possible opportunity to sleep, this helps remove the pressure you are placing yourself under.

In a way, some people have performance anxiety when they think about sleeping:

“Will I be able to make myself sleep tonight?”

The answer is maybe yes, maybe no. If you’re going through a period of sleeplessness, a good night’s sleep isn’t guaranteed, for whatever reason, so you have to accept that for the moment. 

If you get one or two hours’ sleep, that’s well and good, and if you get nothing, then accept it and move on. Each night, as you retire, say to yourself:

“I’m preparing for bed, but I won’t try to force sleep. If it comes, it comes. If not, I won’t beat myself up over it. This is a period I’m going through, but I’ll soon return to normal sleep patterns.”

Every person goes through periods of sleeplessness from time to time. It’s very natural. You may not be aware of why you experience sleeplessness, but at the very least, you can accept it.

Let me emphasize the importance of surrendering to your inability to sleep. Surrender to whatever may or may not happen during the course of a night, and you’ll put your mind under less pressure. After a certain point, it’s really the anger and frustration that keep you awake most of the night.

Naturally the best way to get a good night’s sleep is a good physical workout each evening in the outdoors. This is very effective because the mind may try to keep you awake, but the sheer physical exhaustion brings on sleep quicker. Couple that with a willingness to accept sleeplessness, and you’ll find yourself sleeping much easier.

Remember that alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine should be avoided several hours before sleep. You may be the type who finds it initially hard to get to sleep as your mind races with anxious thoughts. Should you find your mind racing and you simply can’t achieve sleep, keep a journal beside your bed. Sit upright and start to write down how you feel:

“I’m feeling quite restless. I keep turning over and over, trying to sleep, but I have worries on my mind.” Now write down all of your worries, for example:

“Tomorrow I have to do X, and I’m afraid I won’t be well rested, etc.”

Continue to write down your worries until the exercise actually becomes quite boring. Then your body and mind will slowly want to return to sleep. Writing like this is a simple tool for preparing your mind in a linear way to wind down and return to sleep (an advanced form of counting sheep).

Don’t be afraid of writing pages and pages of nothing in particular. What you’re doing is helping the conscious mind release whatever is keeping it awake so it can stop obsessing and return to sleep.

You see, one of the reasons we can’t fall asleep is that our mind feels these worries (whatever they are) are important to analyze over and over; they need urgent attention and therefore should be thought about all night long.

The more worked up you get by the worries, the more your body gets stimulated and the harder sleep is to achieve. Writing down all your worries on paper has the effect of saying to your mind:

“Okay, mind, you think these are important. I’ve written them all down in detail. They won’t be forgotten, I promise. I can come back to them tomorrow and deal with them then-but RIGHT NOW, let’s sleep.”

The mind can be like a small child who just needs reassurance that things will be dealt with and looked after. That’s all it needs to let go of these mental worries. You then discover, in the morning, that almost all of the worries or concerns aren’t big issues. Many of our worries are the workings or an overactive imagination.

Dr. Dennis Gersten of San Diego suggests an approach that is effective for particularly restless nights. You may want to experiment with it the next time you are very restless in bed.

Try the following:

-As you lie there in bed, start by remembering a time in your life when you absolutely had to stay awake! Maybe it was an important exam you were studying for and you had to keep cramming through the night.

Maybe it was staying up all night nursing your baby to sleep. Maybe it was when you were traveling through the night on a bus and needed to stay awake in case you missed your stop.

I am sure there have been many different occasions in your life where you had to force yourself to stay awake.

-Remember the weariness and the effort just to keep your eyes open. Remember how your eyelids felt like lead weights and you wished you could close them, even just for a minute. At that time, you could not give in to your urge to fall asleep; you had to fight hard to stay awake. Relive those memories and really try and remember exactly what that felt like.

-Now think about right now, and how good it feels to actually be in bed with no pressing need to stay awake. Think how much you would have given to be where you are now, lying in your bed with your head resting on the pillow and the complete freedom you have to fall asleep. It feels really good to actually have full permission to fall asleep right now.

There are no demands on you to stay awake. With your eyes closed spend a few more minutes remembering that time.

-End of exercise.

Night Panic Attacks

People with anxiety disorders can sometimes be awakened at night by panic attacks. We know that most nighttime panic attacks aren’t caused by dreams. Records of sleep polysomnographia show that most panic attacks take place during the early sleep phase (phase II), not during the REM phase associated with dreams. This is different from nightmares. Nightmares happen during the second half of the night, so we’re often able to remember the content of these dreams.

It’s important not to go to bed fearing you might have a panic attack. Go to bed confident that if one should arise, you’ll successfully deal with it. That way, you don’t put yourself under pressure to NOT have a panic attack. Many panic attacks are experienced at the very moment of falling asleep.

Here’s a description a woman recently gave of her experience:

“Getting to sleep is a real problem. Just as I’m about to drop off to sleep, my body seems to jolt awake, like an electric shock, which then frightens me and keeps me awake for hours.”

This jolt is called a hypnic jerk, or hypnagogic massive jerk. A hypnic jerk usually occurs just as the person enters sleep. People often describe it as a falling sensation or an electric shock, and it’s a completely normal experience. It’s most common when we’re sleeping uncomfortably or overtired.

There’s been little research on the subject, but there are some theories as to why hypnic jerks occur. When we drift off into sleep, the body undergoes changes in temperature, breathing, and muscle relaxation. The hypnic jerk may be a result of the muscles relaxing. The brain misinterprets this as a sign of falling, and it signals our limbs to wake up, hence the jerking legs or arms.

People turn hypnic jerks into panic attacks because they already feel nervous about their condition and the jolt scares them into thinking something bad is happening. Again, it’s a fearful reaction to a sensation.

Usually when these people wake up, they gasp for air, and this can also turn into a fear of a breathing problem while sleeping. If you jolt awake with panic, then simply understanding the nature of a hypnic jerk can strip away the anxiety from the experience.

Reassure yourself that you’re safe and that the jerk isn’t something to worry about. It doesn’t disrupt your bodily functions, and it doesn’t put you in any danger.

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Courage and Panic Attacks

 

People who have never experienced a panic attack often judge the anxious person harshly.

The outsider has no real comprehension of what is happening to the person experiencing a panic attack and wonders why they fear to do the simplest things.

I know myself that I could not understand how overnight I went from being a confident young man to someone who became anxious of common everyday situations.

Going places took on a whole new dimension as I constantly evaluated if being there might trigger a panic attack.

I had to force myself to do very simple things like go to the cinema or drive in traffic. As a man that type of anxiety really erodes self confidence, as so much of male self esteem comes from being perceived as strong and brave.

…but here I was afraid to queue at the bank!

Today I know better. Through my own journey and all those I have worked with, I know now that anxiety disorders have nothing to do with a persons level of bravery.

I know this to be true because I have worked with many people from the ‘bravest’ professions around. Firemen, policemen, soldiers. All of them admired by others for their bravery.

Some of these individuals would actually prefer to run into a burning building than stay awake at night with a panic attack.

That sounds strange but it isn’t really. In a burning building they knew what to do and how to handle the situation. During a panic attack they felt powerless and out of control.

What you have to remember is that panic attacks and general anxiety have no relationship to the level of courage an individual has. In fact it has nothing to do with the world out there, -it is a problem born out of an internal crisis.

It is easy to feel brave and fearless in the world when your internal world feels safe but when you feel those internal walls have been breached by fear, then your confidence is rocked. The danger you fear becomes internal. Your psychic foundations feel vulnerable.

That is where the crisis originates. The doubting of your ability to handle the sensations shakes your inner confidence and that is what the fear feeds off.

It is a crisis of confidence in your body and mind’s ability to handle the stress. This crisis however does not stop the bravery.

People with anxiety actually do the bravest of things.

They get up each day and get on with life. Picking themselves up after each and every setback. It does not make headline news but it counts because it is real bravery, true courage.

To the untrained eye it does not seem like such a big deal to simply drive out of state, attend church, or go shopping. However for the person with anxiety, that experience can be a massive accomplishment, especially if they have tried and failed many times before.

The good news is:

This bravery does not go unrewarded.

Once the person has triumphed over their anxiety problem, they develop an inner strength that the average person never gets to develop.

You see, no matter how many brave things you do in the world, if you have not been challenged on an inner level, then you miss out on the opportunity to develop real inner strength.

That is the hidden opportunity anxiety presents to you. To become a bigger person than you already are. That is what you take from the challenge of anxiety.

It does not matter if you have not reached that point yet. The journey is unique to everyone so do not judge your progress against others.

The only thing that matters is that you persist.

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Do you fear a panic attack could strike at any moment?

Sometimes people have the impression that their experience of anxiety is like being hooked up to an electroshock machine and that it just takes a flick of the anxiety switch to cause a flood leading to a full blown panic attack.

People in this situation often feel that are lucky to make it through the day without that switch been flicked but in the back of their mind they fear that it could happen at any moment day or night. They remain on high alert anticipating it. Anticipating the big one!

In fact most people who experience panic attacks fear it in this manner. It is natural for people to think this way as often the panic attacks come forcefully out of the blue.

The truth of the situation is however different. A panic attack does not lurk in the background waiting to pounce, it can feel that way in your mind if you are anxious but that is not how it really works.

Panic attacks are actually something we decide to initiate when we feel out of control. It begins possibly with a skipped heart beat or tightness around the chest, it is then that your mind fires off a thought warning that these sensations are very unusual and signal a dangerous event that needs urgent medical attention or else…

The thought that triggers almost all panic attacks is :

“This is too much , I cannot handle this,” Then the adrenaline starts to really pump.

“Ah I was right look my body is going into a fit…

“I am terrified by what is about to happen…HELP,- PANIC… !”

The severity of the panic attack is directly related to how you are feeling at that time.

If you are exhausted physically, mentally or emotionally then you are more vulnerable to feeling anxious.

After the panic attack has run its course, it is followed by a prolonged period of general anxiety. 

During this time the person fears that the panic switch might go off again at any moment sending them into another tailspin of high anxiety.

When you feel this way it is very difficult to force a relaxed state of mind through will power (as some other methods would have you do).

So what can you do to stop the mind overreacting to these situations and not initiate the panic attack? Well most of this is about your mind reacting to false signals, so the trick is to train yourself to recognize these false signals for what they and thus shatter the illusion that there is a danger.

There is something very powerful in human psychology and that is the power of giving yourself totally to something. By that I mean, when we make a resolute decision to go for something results are immediate.

In this case you are going for the goal of an anxiety free life. You reach a point where you are completely fed up with this condition and that mindset can produce a real breakthrough. 

Remember anxiety holds us prisoner because we give it authority. We give it control because it threatens us with terror/death if we do not obey.

Turn this situation on its head. Really chase after the anxiety. It is the anticipation of having a panic attack that keeps you in a general state of anxiety, -so end the anticipation.

There is an element of throwing all caution to the wind to make this fully effective. You abandon yourself to the fear of a panic attack. Sometimes the best way is to get really mad at the terror and say:

“OK come on do your worst- and it better be very strong because I will not have this ruining the rest of my life”

“My life and the people in it are more important than this false fear could ever be, so do your worst because I have had enough.”

The minute you really throw yourself at a panic attack it disappears. It disappears because what was keeping it alive was your fear of having one.

Now you are not afraid in fact you are actually demanding to have a really Big Bad One NOW

DO that right now!

To make this really work you have to throw yourself at the anxiety 100%

-No coming back

Don’t worry about having an off the scale ‘gigantic’ panic attack. I bet you have already had the very worst panic attack you will ever experience again. That is because the worst panic attacks are generally always the first few as you have no idea at all what is happening to you.

Ignorance in those moments is not bliss.

What I am trying to say is that there is no ‘ultimate’ panic attack waiting in the background that will finally push you over the edge.

Trust and believe that you will always be able to handle the anxious sensations each and every time. You will.

What you get by following my advice is confidence that you can in fact easily handle the anxious sensations.

Confidence is so crucial to tackling this problem. Anxiety can be likened to a fog that we must travel through in order to move beyond the fear of what may be on the other side. When we fail to move through it, the fear will linger and limit us from achieving all the things we would like to accomplish with our lives.

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Setbacks Happen On The Road To Recovery from Anxiety

Have you ever wondered why people often experience setbacks when they begin to tackle their anxiety? Setbacks happen because, as you face your anxiety and the situations that make you feel uncomfortable, the avoidant/protective side of your personality becomes active.

When you decide to tackle your anxiety issue head on, the protective side of your personality would rather that you left well enough alone. Your protective side doesn’t like taking risks and feels better when you don’t put yourself in situations that make you feel anxious.

It’s the part of you that says:

“Let’s stay in our comfort zone today. At least we’re safe here.”

This part of your personality has your interests at heart, but you know deep down that a life cocooned from all adversity doesn’t lead to happiness. When you begin on your healing journey, it’s all new and it can feel like you’re moving into unknown territory. You quickly master areas of your life that were causing you problems.

Your protective side takes a back seat and watches with suspicion as you make this progress. Then, after a while, your protective side becomes more active for fear that, with all this progress, a great fall must be just around the corner.

As you move upward and onward, your protective side gets scared and tries to put on the brakes. This creates a conflict and fuels feelings of anxiety. The feelings can be very intense and might be similar to what you’ve experienced before-such as panic and general unease-or there may be new sensations never experienced before.

You might have been doing really well for a week, but then your protective side pops its head up and says something like this:

“Okay, well done. We’re not worried about dizzy spells anymore -fine. But what’s that ringing in your ear?”

“That sounds like trouble to me . . . LET’S GET WORRIED.

“No panic attacks in a week-great. But don’t be fooled. That means a really BIG one is about to pounce!”

These thoughts undermine your confidence. Suddenly you’re feeling vulnerable again, and the anxiety can return as your confidence dips and you obsess again about the way you feel. This kind of response is natural in recovery, and if you’ve experienced a setback recently, I want to show you how to best deal with it.

The first thing to remember is that setbacks happen. Try to never let a setback convince you that you’re not making progress. It doesn’t mean that all your progress has been undone. In general, setbacks are inevitable, and you need to have an accepting attitude toward them.

Secondly, setbacks form part of your healing. To move beyond the anxiety, you need to work with the protective side of your personality and teach it that there really is nothing to fear. When setbacks occur, it’s an indication that you now need to take your new understanding and work with your protective side, which is resisting the change.

You might want to think of that protective side as a small child who doesn’t want you (the parent) to take risks or do anything out of your comfort zone. Talk to this part yourself. Reassure it that all will be well and that it’s necessary for you to work through the anxiety in order to experience more freedom and happiness.

Setbacks can feel like a big step backward, but they’re generally followed by rapid progress on many levels if you engage fully with this protective side of yourself.

There’s an opportunity here for you to create a new working relationship with your protective self, and this will really seal your recovery. When you educate your protective self that you’re really safe and encourage it to take the steps with you, you become fully empowered to end your anxiety problem. All of your internal energies go in the same direction, and there’s no conflict.

Persistence will carry you through all setbacks and ensure your success.

Keep your confidence intact. Build it on the past, on each time you’ve succeeded.

Play those previous successes like a film in your head, again and again, each night as you go to sleep. All the panic attacks you’ve dealt with, all the sensations of anxiety you’ve felt and yet you still got on with it.

General anxiety disorder and, especially, panic attacks are probably the most frightening experiences a person can go through. In most cases, you feel like you’ve had a brush with death itself. That’s no small feat to deal with while on your lunch break!

Be proud of your experiences. You’re not a cowardly victim, but a survivor of a terrifying experience-and what’s more, you probably stayed at work or collected the kids from school. You continued living. Sure, there may be a few hairy anxiety memories in the past that you’d prefer to forget, but the underlying emotion to build upon is that you survived and you’re here now, alive and living a new day.

Build a wealth of memories, and they’ll be your resource from which to draw strength. Write them down, because that solidifies them and makes them more real in your mind. Read them to yourself regularly.

Be sure to keep a diary as written proof of the progress you’re making-the trips you take that weren’t possible before, the special days when you completely forgot you ever had an anxiety problem. You need to keep a record of these achievements because it’s easy for your protective side to negate the great strides you’ve made.

Confidence, just like fear, is contagious. Soon you’ll find it spreading to all areas of your life, giving you a quality of life even beyond your pre-anxiety days.

Always try to focus on the success you’ve achieved, and it will grow and expand in your life.

Persist with it. Turn a setback into an opportunity to solidify your real confidence. Regardless of what happens, you can handle it. Regardless of how your body feels, you’ll move through the anxiety and come out the other side smiling.

If you remain persistent, setbacks can be quickly turned to your advantage, and you’ll be strengthened by the experience.

Setbacks are delicate periods to move through, so you also need to be kind to yourself. Understand that they’re the result of YOU just trying to protect YOU. Be your own best friend. When you take your protective self by the hand and teach it that there’s nothing to fear, you’ll quickly march toward a greater experience of freedom.

Recovery is not a straight linear process. It will help if you try not to measure success on a day-to-day basis. Some days will be better than others-that’s just the way it is, so don’t get upset if you complete something successfully one day but fail the next.

Keep your eyes on the end goal, and persistence will carry you there.

What If My Anxiety Comes Back?

After a person has successfully moved out of their anxiety it is only natural, to at some stage, fear its reoccurrence. I call this the anxiety shadow. It is a worry in the back of your mind that the anxiety could return with full force and disrupt your life all over again.

Anxiety leaves such a strong imprint on people’s lives that it is normal to have such concerns. Fearing a return of anxiety is common when your life becomes stressful again and you worry that the extra stress will tip you back into a state of general anxiety. If you find yourself worrying in such a manner have faith that all will be well.

This worry is just a shadow of what has gone, it is based on the past not the future. Generally the anxiety shadow passes quickly after a day or two and you forget about it again. Remind yourself of the new tools and education you have. Take solace in the fact that your new understanding will lift the anxiety quickly again were it to return.

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Try The 20 Second Countdown

Why everywhere you look are top psychologists and doctors still teaching outdated methods for treating general anxiety and panic attacks?

It seems every time I do a search online there is yet another anxiety “expert” rehashing the same old ideas. Brown Paper bags, think happy thoughts, do your breathing etc. I am sure you have come across them a million times before already.

How are people supposed to solve their anxiety issue if they are continuously exposed to these techniques and methods that only teach people to cope with anxiety. Just coping is not good enough. Real solutions are needed.

I want to share with you something that does work. It is a very simple way to help end the fear of a PANIC ATTACK. (In later emails I will address feelings of general anxiety)

This is a very good exercise for people who want something practical to focus their attention on when they feel the pressure of a panic attack building.

Its very simple and easy to remember. Here goes…

The 20 Second Countdown

When you feel the sensations of a panic attack building do the following:

Tell the panic that it has 20 seconds to initiate the full panic attack. 20 seconds and no more. 

After the 20 seconds are complete it must stop making empty threats.

You are allowing 20 seconds for it to fully manifest but not a second more.

Whatever the bodily sensation is that you fear, it must happen within that 20 second time frame.

-If you heart is going to explode then it has 20 seconds to do so.

-If you are going to lose control, then your mind has 20 seconds to do so.

-If you are going to faint – 20 seconds! But absolutely no more time than that.

You get the picture.

By setting a specific time frame you establish boundaries of control. You turn it into a game where you call fear’s bluff. If it were a poker game, you are asking anxiety to show its hand.

This works because it establishes a sense of control within your mind and body.

You think to yourself “I am not prepared to spend my time worrying about this. I’ve had enough. I am going to be generous and give it 20 seconds but after 20 seconds and nothing has happened then the opportunity has officially passed and I am going to go back to what I was doing.”

Then start counting -but nice and slowly, don’t rattle it off as fast as you can. Really tease it out like you did when you were a child and you never wanted to reach zero. Teasing it out is the key because it allows you to feel generous and that you are giving anxiety every chance possible.

Deep down you know there is really nothing to fear.

To really help tease it out, break the last few numbers into fractions.

5…………………………..
4…………………………..
3……………………………
2…and three quarters…
2…and half………………
2…………………………..
1…and three quarters… (last chance anxiety)
1…and half……………… (I really cant wait any longer)
1…………………………..
0.
Sorry too late we’ve reached the end.

By not rushing through the countdown you will feel your confidence soar because you are demonstrating real control and authority over your anxious thoughts and bodily sensations. You are saying “look, I am really trying to give you all the time I can to unleash X,Y, and Z, I am being very generous here with this countdown.

Count your way to freedom. Count your way to confidence.

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Do you fear the arrival of another panic attack?

People who have experienced panic attacks often go around with a grave sense of unease that at any moment, they will experience a major panic attack.

It’s a fear of the ultimate panic attack that would finally push them over the edge.

This leads people to make changes to their behavior in order not to do anything that might trigger a panic episode.

When people feel this way, simple daily tasks can become big challenges. Some people start to fear driving their car intraffic. Others fear leaving their safe zone or simply any situation where they have responsibilities to perform.

This state of apprehension keeps a person’s anxiety level high, leading to feelings of general anxiety.

If you are such a person I hope to put your mind at rest. Panic attacks as well as general anxiety (even when not accompanied by panic disorder) can be eliminated in simple steps regardless of how long the anxiety has been a problem.

Here is an important observation:

The key difference between someone who is cured of panic attacks and those who are not is really very simple. The one who is cured is not afraid of panic attacks. 

What if I told you the trick to ending panic attacks is to want to have one?

That sounds strange but let me explain.

A simple trick to ending panic attacks is wanting to have one because the wanting causes an immediate diffusion of the anticipatory fear.

Can you have a panic attack in this very second?

No !

You know the saying “what you resist persists.” Well that saying applies perfectly to fear. If you resist a situation out of fear, the fear around that issue will persist.

How do you stop resisting?

You move directly into the path of the anxiety; by doing so it cannot persist because you process the fear out through your emotions.

Try in this very moment to have a panic attack and I will bet you cannot… Yes, I know the idea of calling on a panic attack is scary at first but play with the concept and watch what happens.

You may not realize it but you have always decided to panic. You make the choice by thinking:

“This is beyond my control.”

“These scary sensations are beyond my bodies control.”

It may help if you imagine that having a panic attack is like standing on a cliff edge.

The anxiety, it seems, is pushing you closer to falling over the edge. Each time you fight back using poor coping strategies the more desperate you feel.

To be rid of the fear you must metaphorically jump. You must jump off the cliff edge and into the anxiety and fear and all the things that you fear most. How do you jump?

You jump by wanting to have a panic attack. You go about your day asking for a panic attack to appear. Your real safety is the fact that a panic attack will never harm you. That is medical fact.

You are safe, -Yes, the sensations are wild and uncomfortable, but no harm will come to you.

Your body is in a heightened state but no harm will come to you.

The jump becomes nothing more than a two inch drop! You are safe.

You always were.

Think of all the panic attacks you have had to date and come out the other end. Was there any lasting physical damage to you, other than the mounting feeling of panic?

Now you are going to approach this problem differently. You actively seek out the attack like an adventure seeker. Take the opposite approach.

YOU bring it on!!!

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