All of us have experienced a couple of sleepless nights in the past, but some of us have more frequent problems with sleep than others.

There are many reasons why someone would experience sleeping problems, but one of the leading causes of sleeping disorders is stress. When you add anxiety to the mix, the sleeplessness is made even worse. The biggest problem with anxiety and sleeping disorder is that one fuels the other.

What does a lack of sleep do?

Why is it that everyone around you can see that you have not had enough sleep? In short, the physical signs speak volumes. The other factor is more behavioral and emotional in nature. When you don’t sleep enough, you are much more agitated with a very short fuse.

What would usually not bother you would send you into fits of rage when you don’t sleep enough. What’s more is that you can actually become depressed or experience anxiety. This is where the vicious cycle begins.

How to reduce anxiety

When you know that you have anxiety and that it is affecting your sleep, you should first try and reduce your anxiety. There are many things that you can do and the best part is that you can start doing them when you are still in the tired phase.

To begin with, start to meditate and focus on your breathing. Focusing on your breathing and forcing your mind to think on things that calm you down is the perfect start to recovery. To enhance the effect, play some soothing music.

Once you feel a bit calmer, start a to-do list and make work of crossing the things off that are stressing you out. Finally, try and do something fun and distracting. Taking your mind off the things that stress you out can provide you with some clarity and a break from your anxiety.

How does anxiety affect your sleep?

Depending on your anxiety, the effects thereof can be quite severer. Your focus goes out of the window and this leads to poor performance in all areas of your life. Now that you become aware of your poor performance, you become stressed about how that will affect you.

Ultimately, you are constantly worried about everything and the problem is, is that most of that worry is irrational. Paying bills, a not-so-good job, a recent breakup, divorce proceedings, business not working, etc… The problems are countless.

Rather than having sleepless nights and visiting shrinks, start planning to get out of the problem you are in. It’s in your hands. Finding a better job, knowing how to borrow a payday loan the right way, saying sorry to your spouse, handling finances correctly, it’s very much in your hands. Take good sleep and put aside the worries for a later time.

Seeing that you experience anxiousness and constantly worry about everything, you struggle to sleep. Your thoughts are constantly fueled by irrational worry and your mind cannot shut down.

The result is a restless and sleepless night. And so the vicious cycle is fueled. You don’t sleep because of your anxiety and your anxiety is increased because of your lack of sleep.

How to get a better night’s sleep

This is easier said than done, but you have to decide to sleep better. It starts by actually setting out enough time to sleep. When you have your time set out, then you need to begin to develop a relaxing bedtime routine. This includes switching off or at least refraining from looking at a screen.

Make sure your environment is conducive to sleep. It should be quiet, dark and comfortable. Getting the temperature right is often neglected and one wakes up because it’s too cold or too hot.

If you happen to wake up during the night, don’t look at the time. This can fuel your anxiety as you become worried about not having enough sleep. Turn your clock away from you and decide to sleep until your alarm goes.

Doing these practical things can break the cycle and you could end up getting enough sleep and reduce your anxiety in one go.