You must have ever had situations like this: You have something important to do tomorrow. And now you are in bed thinking about it. You are restless. You have doubts. You feel insecure. You can’t sleep. As a result you worry about not being able to sleep and feeling tired tomorrow. And so on. You end up awake half of the night, thinking that if you do not sleep NOW, you are not going to wake up in time. Or you might just fall into a peaceful sleep after the alarm has belled and you turned it off.
I have this quite often. And actually, I find that most of the days after I am not as tired as expected. Probably, I’m just living on the adrenaline that my body produced throughout the night. Anyway, I found some interesting facts and some tips to stop worrying and go to sleep.
- Women worry twice as much as men, and perfectionists are even more receptive to it. (Imagine me…)
- Worrying is not as innocent as it seems. Burn-out, depression, low self esteem are all related to too much worrying.
- Worrywarts live with the illusion that thinking helps. If they think hard enough, they will figure it out. But this is wrong judgment.
- Worrying is not productive and it does not give us a good feeling either.
- Worrying in itself is a much greater factor in finding (or better said; not finding) happiness, than the subject you worry about.
When you worry, your body produces adrenaline to help you cope with the situation. Subsequently, the adrenal gland will make cortisol to control the adrenaline production. Excess cortisol in your blood is highly toxic. When cortisol levels are high for long periods very often, it is responsible for over 80% of illnesses and degenerative diseases, it impairs mental function, increases blood pressure, increases blood sugar levels, and accelerates the aging process.
Charlie Brown
A first technique to stop a worry is to have a realistic look on the facts. To give an example; I might worry that my husband does not love me anymore (I don’t worry about that, just to give you an example that you might be familiar with…). I have come to that conclusion, because he only complains and does not want to change annoying behavior for me, even though I have told him what is annoying me. Now, to think back to the worry, and trying to be realistic: My husband probably does not know that he does what he does and he surely does not mean anything with his behavior, besides trying to let me know what he thinks about things. It does not have anything to do with loving or not loving me.
It is just so easy to believe your own worries to be true. The more you think about it, the more valid it seems. But once you have the theory of the reality, you will need to give yourself some time to get used to and accept the truth. Do not believe in your own worries, but find out the reality!
A second problem that worriers live with, is that they often think: Why me? This thought usually comes along with: “I can’t help it”, “I can’t do it”, and “this is how I am!” It means that you are reactive (instead of proactive) and always wait for others to decide, for others to make you happy or sad, but also that you see yourself as a victim. You do not feel responsible for your own life or your own feelings and wait for others to come with a solution and be happy, so you can be happy too. Learn to be more proactive (perhaps a good topic for another post…)
Plato
Besides having a more realistic look on problems and learning how to deal with them rather than just sit and think about them, there is also a physical side to worrying. Worrying influences your body, like we saw that it produces adrenaline and cortisol. But it also works the other way around. We can learn to tell our body to feel better and push the worry aside. By thinking strongly about something positive and breathing deeply ‘from the stomach’, you can control your heartbeat and make it regular and coherent. Meditation and yoga are focused on this.
While you concentrate on breathing, you can visualize a river or current in autumn. Red and yellow leaves all around. You can pick up one of those leaves and put your worry on it. Now put it on the water and let the stream take it away. Or come up with your own theme to visualize saying goodbye to the worry.
Other (more) practical tips to stop worrying are:
- Empty your head by running, cycling, or others ways of moving. Just like with being bored, it is hard to be worried when you are moving, simply because it is hard to concentrate.
- Improve your self esteem by writing down three things that did go well every day. Even if you had a really bad day, you can find little things that went well, were lucky, or that you did very well.
- Learn to meditate and do breathing exercises.
- If you can’t sleep, do not worry. Just read a book or listen to the radio for a while.
