anxiety in the morning
 

Anyone ever wake up to feeling panicky and anxious?
For the past few weeks this has been a problem for me. It makes it seriously hard to get out of bed even though it is torturous.
Anyone have suggestions on how to deal with strong anxiety when you first wake up?

Hi cat, how long have you been sober, as I found that as well in the early stages. I still have anxiety but I no longer automatically wake up with it. Unless I have something going on that day that causes it.

I am there completely. I dont sleep. I wake up with panic attacks. I just take deep breaths, sometimes it works.
Dub

I had mornings like that for about a month. I was going through new changes to my routine and I guess PAWS on top of that made everything seem like the end of the world. But I can honestly say that it has not happened in at least two months. I am seven months sober.

catmilk,

I very often wake up in a state of panic and anxiety. I have found that jumping out of bed and right into the shower helps. There was one point in my life where I could throw up in the shower every morning due to the anxiety. The morning anxiety I endured heavily for that time period was correlated with issues I had not addressed yet. Repressing your needs by not verbalizing them or developing healthy boundaries can lead to anxiety in the morning. If you get a chance, find some CBT worksheets online and try to work through those. Hope it helps.

Try going for long, long jogs. Not only will it rid you from your anxiety and improve your health, it will also give you that sweet, sweet runner's high.

Look up endorphins on Wikipedia.

I know it sounds cliche but deep breathing exercise.

You'll automatically breathe deep after some good exercise. Sitting in your room trying to breathe is a waste of time.

that happens to me a lot, I have found reassuring self talk helps, saying to myself what I might say to a child who has woken from a bad dream, like "I'm OOK, everything will be alright, God's got me, this too shall pass..." focusing on your breathing, blocking out other thoughts works too. If your anxiety is spilling over the top tho, I'd way talk to your doctor, sometimes we need some extra outside help, its possible a low dose anti anxiety medication would be helpful.

I think I know exactly what you mean. I feel better now but for a long time, every day when I woke up, I had that feeling, that anxiety...for no reason! Nevertheless, I had to prepare myself to go to work and it was hell. So what I did was getting up earlier to give myself some time to calm down. I watched some TV or listened to the radio, something to distract me...and slowly, that feeling faded away. This is only a short time solution, though. As some people have said here, you need to find out why you feel like that. Are you coming off some drug (even if it was like, a long time ago in your eyes) or has something new happened in your life? If you think you can't handle it by yourself, go see a doctor and he might give you some anti anxiety pills or something. That's what I did. I remember aisking the doctor "will I have to take these pills forever?" and he explained me that it's just for a while, until your brain "fixes" itself.
Some are against any sort of medication but in my case, it helped! Also, as I had to drive myself to work every day, I had no choice if I wanted to get there, ready to work...or get there at all!