A quality night’s sleep is a necessity for good overall health.
In today’s demanding lifestyle, it has become crucial to one’s well-being. Knowing how to relieve your stress before bedtime can help maintain sleep quality.
Most underestimate the importance of sleep. It provides complete rest to your body processes.
As well as it refreshes your mind and relaxes your body for the next day. However, stress can affect your sleep cycle, it may even trigger insomnia.
Insomnia and stress anxiety is the most common condition in young adults, adults, and older folks nowadays.
The unhealthy lifestyle heightened social expectations, and the demanding work life escalates stress. This leads to anxiety affecting your brain function resulting in poor quality sleep.
Hitting the bed with stress can directly affect your resting period. Thus, knowing how to relax before bed when stressed is important.
This blog addresses every important point on how to relieve your stress before bedtime. First, let’s understand the link between stress and insomnia.
Anxiety and Insomnia: What’s The Link?
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More stress means less quality sleep.
How can one explain the common phenomenon? Consistent stress triggers your bodily responses, it struggles to return to its baseline.
Indeed, there is a strong relationship between stress and sleepless nights.
If you are in a situation resulting in pain, worry, and anxiety, it is difficult to manage it. The human body responds to the event by releasing more stress hormones, which can interfere with your sleep cycle.
On top of stress, poor quality sleep can further aggravate the problem. The stress hormone tends not to break down, they continue to remain in your system causing much trouble.
How Does Stress Reduce Your Sleep?
Your body gives a distress signal to the brain causing the secretion of cortisol, the stress hormone.
This results in a greater heart rate, higher blood pressure, intense oxygen flow to the muscle, and excessive alertness. This is a natural response of the human body to fight against danger.
During hunter-gatherer days, it protects and prepared against the possible animalistic threat. However, in modern days, the lions and wild boars of the jungle have turned into stress.
The human body responds to exams, appointments, meetings, deadlines, monthly goals, personal life problems, emotional distress, etc., in a similar fashion. Of course, an active body would find it tough to get to sleep. So, this sleep-stress cycle continues for a long.
Sleep and Anxiety: Studies and Facts
Various organizations and researchers are trying to establish the link between stress and anxiety.
There are many shocking facts and studies in this respect.
According to American Psychological Association, adults with low-stress levels slept more hours compared to adults with higher stress levels. The study even found that sleeplessness in the younger generation due to stress is occurring at a higher level.
A systematic review of diverse psychosocial stressors on polysomnographic measures of sleep comes up with shocking facts. The researchers found the impact of stressors on REM sleep, low-wave sleeps, awakenings, and sleep efficiency (SE). PTSD patients have decreased SE and more awakenings.
Indeed, the study found the impact of stressors affecting different elements of sleep including REM sleep, slow wave sleeps, awakenings, and sleep efficiency (SE).
However, reports suggest that PTSD Patients suffered the worst fate of the stress of sleep.
To get things right and ensure quality sleep, ways to relieve your stress before bedtime can help.
Top 20 Ways to Relieve Your Stress Before Bedtime
A simple change in your lifestyle may aid your sleep cycle irrespective of stress.
These tips help manage or regulate stress in one way or another. Eventually, they can restore your sleep cycle and aid with quality sleep patterns.
Here’s how to relax before bed anxiety.
#1: Journaling
Scribbling always helps to manage stress. Writing down what affects your mental space, worries, and thoughts is helpful. This also helps deal with the situation.
Keep the journal beside your bed, and keep noting down the anxiety occurring before bed.
#2: To-Do List Tomorrow
Sometimes the stress near bedtime occurs with the fear of the upcoming day. How to relieve stress quickly?
In such a case, a to-do list can help. Write down, what you have to do the next day. Scheduling your task always helps manage the stress related to it.
#3: Exercise, BUT Not Before Sleep Time
Working out can help de-stress and promote workouts. Surprisingly, exercises during day hours promote sleep and improve the quality of your sleep.
However, working out right before bed can affect your sleep. Ensure to work out 30 hours daily during the day. Also, mental exercises for sleep are great.
#4: Schedule Worry Time
Stress is real, but managing it is possible. Have a separate time to emphasize worrying.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) involves this approach. The focus lies in acknowledging the cause of worry before it increases its influence.
#5: Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a great way to de-stress. This approach helps to relax your mind and body. They even reduce blood pressure and respiration speed to lessen stress.
It is a great way to make your brain relax by blocking an unnecessary fleet of thoughts. Indeed, mindfulness practices are one of the best ways to relieve stress including breathing exercises, yoga, and meditation.
Doing these practices for a few minutes daily only can make significant changes in your cognitive function that helps you to improve mental clarity, boost your mood as well reduce the chances of brain fog.
#6: Dim the lights
Lights can affect your sleep cycle to a great extent. White lights tend to keep you awake, whereas warm light promotes sleep.
Our body naturally decimates hormone secretion after the evening, but artificial lighting can hinder the natural process. So, reduce the lights in the room after evening.
#7: Reduce Screen Time Before Bed
The above explanation is applicable to different electronic devices. Exposure to blue lights from tablets, TVs, smartphones, pc, and laptops again interferes with the production of melatonin.
It generates a sensation of staying awake. Eventually, it would be difficult to sleep, you would google ‘mind racing can’t sleep anxiety.’
#8: Cut Down on Alcohol
A glass of beer or wine after a long day is a great way to chill. However, the same isn’t applicable even with a small quantity of alcohol.
It does shorten the time taken to fall asleep but leads to deeper initial sleep phases. It can prevent crucial sleep phases leading to low-quality sleep. You would get intense dreams and wake up exhausted.
#9: Reduce Caffeine Consumption
Caffeine is a major contributor to sleep deprivation. It can elevate alertness while increasing your cortisol and adrenaline levels affecting your normal sleep pattern.
In general, don’t take caffeinated drinks, beverages, and snacks after 3 to prevent poor quality sleep. Instead of that, include some natural foods that relieve stress in your regular diet.
#10: Bath before Bed
Bathing before bed relaxes your body to promote sleep. Whether a normal bath or a warm shower, it is your call.
It releases muscle tension while promoting circulation. The shower drops your body temperature resulting in sleepiness.
#11: Bedtime Routine
It is easy to sleep when it is in your routine. In general, this rule goes for babies, children, and even teens, but adults seem to miss out.
Sleeping at a specific time daily helps sleep effectively. Try to hit the sack at a particular time daily to get it into your habit.
#12: Bedroom: A Space to Relax
Your bedroom should be a perfect place to relax and chill. It should be a place containing no sleep-disturbing elements.
It shouldn’t have a TV, mobile, and other electronic devices. Instead, focus on making it dark, quiet, and cooler as much as possible.
#13: Switch to “Do Not Disturb”
There are two ways, you can either hide your phone or ignore the calls. Or, shift to do not disturb mode on the phone. It should shut off the messages after a particular time to prevent disturbance.
Moreover, keep an activating time for the do not disturb mode.
#14: Clean Up
Organizing things in your room and preparing it in the right way has a relaxing effect. Particularly, doing the mentioned thing before your bed promotes sleep.
Put on pillows, fold your blankets, remove dishes, and organize your phones, key, or wallet. Once things are complete, you can hit the bed with more relaxation.
#15: Guided Meditation
Sitting down and meditating is a tough job. Still, practicing the technique can release excess stress while promoting sleep.
A guided meditation app can help. Most experts recommend meditation during the day, but night-time meditation can further help.
The deep breathing technique helps revive the balance of your body while calming your nerves.
#16: Concentrate On Positive Things
A Stressful moment of a day can replay consistently affecting your entire day. Thus, focusing on the positive point of the day helps manage anxiety.
Loudly say three positive affirmations about yourself. Try to obtain a positive outlook on life while cutting down the negativity. It is one of the best relaxation techniques for sleep.
#17: Book before Bed
Reading a light-hearted book before hitting the sack can provide promising effects. Most prefer to grip the TV remote while watching something serious.
However, reading a light book before bed provides a positive impact. It relaxes your brain while promoting sleep. Indeed, a great way how to relieve your stress before bedtime.
#18: Try Relaxing Tea
Though caffeine can lead to sleeplessness, relaxing tea can provide a completely different effect.
Try some chamomile tea, its calming effects relax your body and mind to promote sleep.
Prepare a cup of chamomile tea, sit down, and slowly sip it to observe its stunning efficacy.
#19: Hydrate Yourself
Hydration is important, this doesn’t mean you should drink 10 glasses of water before bed.
Of course, the tendency to pee will wake you up in the middle of the night. Drink water but cut it off an hour before bed to doze off.
#20: What Makes You Happy?
Is there something that makes you happy?
Doing that before bed helps relieve stress. It can be music, bath, talking to a friend, reading books, or anything. If it releases the burden of the day, it can help manage stress and anxiety.
The top technique and lifestyle changes to relieve stress are over above. Of course, it would take a whole lot of effort to imbibe them into the routine.
However, adding them to your routine can offer an impressive change in a short time. In this guide on how to relieve stress before bedtime, let’s explore some mental exercises for sleep…
Best Mental Exercises for Sleep and Lessening Stress
Stress, anxiety, and worrying can affect your sleep cycle and productivity levels. Performing some mental exercises can help sleep while reducing clutters of stress.
Some of the best mental exercises for stress-relieving activities are:
#1: Visualization
Counting doesn’t work always. Instead of calming your mind, it may end up stimulating brain activity making it worse.
In contrast, trying visualization therapies are more effective. People can engage in imagery distraction to reduce stress while falling asleep easily.
- Imagine a calming scene. It can be a calm sea, clouds over mountains, or any serene location that is relaxing.
- Picture your body relaxing. Visualize like your entire body is relaxing. Begin from your toes and move upward until your head.
- Picture yourself into sleep. Imagine your entire body is relaxing and you are into a deeply warm and complete sleep.
Visualization is a great way to distract yourself from stress-causing moments. Also, it initiates your body to entire sleep mode making you fall asleep rather quickly.
When utilizes appropriately, it can work as one of the best stress relievers for adults.
#2: Controlled breathing
The workout involves controlling your breath, which can help slow down your heart and relax your body. It doesn’t only treat issues related to sleep but even lessens anxiety and stress.
People finding it hard to sleep can utilize this approach to fight off anxiety and stress before bedtime. However, people with respiratory conditions should avoid stress-relieving activities.
The most popular breath-controlling method is the 4-7-8 method. It requires controlling your inhaling and exhaling by counting to slow down your breath and heart to stimulate sleep.
Here’s how to do it.
- First, inhale through the nose and count up to 4.
- Hold your breath counting to 7.
- Release your breathe slowly while counting to 8
Remember to count slowly as if each number should last a second. Try other breath-controlling methods to relieve stress. Indeed, it is one of the quick ways to relieve stress for adults.
#3: Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)
Muscle tension is thought to affect your sleep. In contrast, tensing your muscle and releasing it can actually aid sleep. Particularly, the approach focuses on relaxing 16 different muscle groups.
It would require some practice to appropriately imbibe it into your routine. Nidra yoga is another muscle-relaxing technique. A common meditative practice it aids in relaxing between waking and sleeping.
#4: Self-Hypnosis
Self-hypnosis is a kind of meditative practice. It can help you slip into a relaxed phase where you can enter sleep. This helps calm your find and stop racing your thought.
- Pick your phrase, to begin with, the hypnotic process. It can be “relax,” “let go,” or “sleep”.
- Lay on the bed comfortably.
- Do PMR or any other approach to relax your body.
- Once your body relaxes repeat the suggestive phrase you chose.
Though it sounds weird, self-hypnosis can actually help promote your sleep. Also, it can cut down the impact of a stressful day on your sleep.
You were searching for ways to sleep better (even if you’re stressed).
The above-mentioned exercises for stress and sleep can help. They cut down the impact of a stressful day while making you fall asleep.
With this, our complete guide on how to relieve your stress before bedtime ends. In the end, let’s discuss some important points.
The Final Words
Today’s lifestyle and the race to become more productive can leave you burned out.
In some cases, it can trigger stress, anxiety, and the constant habit of worry. At night, it can worsen even preventing you from sleeping while affecting your sleep cycle.
Of course, some ways to cope with stress can help restore your sleep cycle.
Major lifestyle changes, sleep hygiene, and habit-building can help regulate stress. Moreover, involving the approach in your life can minimize sleeplessness occurring due to anxiety.
If it is too much for you, it is best to consult with your doctor or therapist, they have the expertise to handle the situation.
