How Do Anxiety Disorders Affect Sleep?

Sleep is important for your physical and emotional health, and for your mood and energy levels, too. But if you have an anxiety disorder, getting the sleep you need isn’t easy. Here’s how your anxiety can make it hard to catch those Zs.

Data show roughly 20% of American adults suffer from anxiety disorders every year, along with millions of kids and teens. Anxiety disorders aren’t just about feeling nervous every now and then. These disorders cause pervasive feelings of worry and fear that can affect every aspect of your life, including your sleep.

At Revival Infusion Madison, Sarah Wilczewski, CRNA, APNP, offers ketamine therapy to help men and women overcome anxiety disorders, tailoring treatment for every person’s unique needs. Here, learn how anxiety can interfere with restful sleep and how ketamine therapy can help.

The importance of sleep

After a busy or physically strenuous day, nothing feels better than catching some well-deserved Zs. But sleep isn’t just about relaxing at the day’s end — it helps you stay healthy, too.

In fact, when you don’t get enough restful, restorative sleep, your risks of chronic health problems increase. That includes common but serious issues, like obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Getting good sleep on a consistent basis helps your body restore itself for better physical health, more alertness during the day, and improved overall emotional wellness. The problem: If you suffer from an anxiety disorder, quality sleep can be hard to come by.

How anxiety affects sleep

Most of us have had an occasional sleepless night thanks to worrying over life events. Stresses at work, in our relationships, over finances, or for other reasons can make it difficult to drift off.

If you have an anxiety disorder, however, that difficulty can become chronic, resulting in chronic sleep deprivation and — ironically — worsening anxiety symptoms, too. Anxiety affects sleep in several ways.

Problems falling asleep

When you have an anxiety disorder, it’s common to have a racing mind filled with thoughts that can be hard to “turn off” when bedtime comes. The quiet, non-active time just before sleep gives your mind plenty of opportunity to obsess over even tiny details, leaving you to watch the clock tick forward without any relief.

Many people with anxiety experience a state of “hyperarousal” that makes it physically difficult to relax. That means your mind and your body are always on “high alert” — which can lead to sleepless nights on a regular basis.

Waking during sleep

In addition to making it harder to fall asleep, anxiety disorders can cause nighttime wakefulness, making it more difficult to stay in deep, restorative sleep. Many people with anxiety wind up with bad dreams or nightmares, night sweats, and general alertness that take a direct hit on your body’s ability to remain in a deep sleep state.

As a result, anxiety often leads to daytime sleepiness, low energy, problems with focusing and memory, and even more anxiety.

Poor quality sleep

Sleep happens in cycles, and each cycle offers specific benefits for our health and wellness. Anxiety can leave your sleep fragmented, disrupting this important cycle and leaving you in a near-constant state of light sleep that doesn’t support healing and restoration.

Over time, poor quality sleep leads to increased risks of health problems, along with more agitation, moodiness, and depression.

Difficulty establishing sleep patterns

Setting and sticking to an established sleep pattern is one of the best ways to support healthy sleep night after night. But because anxiety interferes with your ability to relax, it frequently disrupts regular sleep patterns, leading to problems like insomnia or even sleeping too much, conditions that can have negative effects on both physical and emotional health.

Uncomfortable physical symptoms

In addition to the effects anxiety has on your thoughts and your ability to mentally relax, the constant state of arousal and alertness frequently leads to physical symptoms.

Many people with anxiety disorders experience symptoms like muscle tension and pain, headaches, digestive symptoms, and a racing heartbeat, each of which makes it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep through the night.

Managing hard-to-treat anxiety

When it comes to treating anxiety, most providers recommend medication or psychotherapy, and frequently both, to help reduce or manage symptoms. The problem is, while these approaches may work for some people, in many cases, they’re ineffective in providing long-term, meaningful relief.

Fortunately, ketamine therapy can help by helping your brain establish new neural pathways, “short circuiting” established pathways that lead to persistently anxious thought patterns. Ketamine therapy can also be adjusted based on your symptoms and your response to therapy, providing rapid relief that can last for months.

If you’re suffering from an anxiety disorder and traditional therapy hasn’t helped, ketamine therapy could be the solution you’ve been looking for. To find out more, book an appointment online or over the phone with the team at Revival Infusion Madison in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, today.