Is My Anxiety Causing Insomnia?

Need help sleeping with anxiety? You're far from alone. An estimated 40 million adults in the United States have an anxiety disorder. It's one of the most common illnesses in the country.

Anxiety appears in many forms, but each can have devastating effects on your well-being. It causes a fight-or-flight response around triggers, manifesting physically and causing severe mental distress. But does anxiety affect your ability to sleep?

Anxiety and Insomnia

Unfortunately, anxiety can lead to sleep issues. It's known to cause insomnia, which is a condition that can prevent you from falling asleep, staying asleep, and getting enough hours of sleep.

The biggest issue with anxiety is that it often causes your mind to race. The same goes for other mental illnesses like depression. But anxiety can cause a physical response. When you worry about stressors, your heart rate can increase, you can experience extreme sweat, and you may even feel jittery.

As you can imagine, those physical effects don't make it easy to fall asleep. Pair that with the general fear you feel, and you could be up all night!

But it gets worse.

Anxiety and insomnia can feed into each other. It's a phenomenon known as bidirectional comorbidity. That pressure can cause insomnia and vice versa.

You already know how anxiety keeps you up, but how does insomnia create tension? If you've ever worried about not getting enough sleep, you're all too familiar with the feeling.

The effects of sleep deprivation are no joke. They can seriously impact your performance at work and school, make you an irritable mess to others, and limit your ability to function during the day. Watching the clock tick on as you lay awake in your bed creates another source of anxiety to deal with.

It's a never-ending feedback loop that only gets worse with time.

Getting Help Sleeping with Anxiety

Don't ignore your anxiety and insomnia issues. Seek out professional help from a sleep expert. They can create custom plans that cater to your unique needs, providing techniques to manage your sleep cycle more efficiently.

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