That damn morning anxiety.

[LiveAboveIt]

Why is it that you can feel half decent when you are heading off to bed at night, feeling very hopeful and optimistic, only to wake the next morning with intense anxiety for seemingly no reason? This drives me crazy.

[PanchoGoz]

A few reasons. Firstly, your defences are low as it's first thing. You're low on sugar and you probably had a bad night's sleep as well. Also, we can experience intense anxiety in our dreams. Occasionally I wake up early in unreasonable anxiety and depressing feelings, in which case I think "No way, I'm going back to sleep for a bit". Then I go back to sleep, and wake up later feeling much happier. There's a sort of low period we go through in the night, my mother agrees too! Also you may find you have a couple of seconds before you remember you have anxiety then all the catastrophic thoughts set in - oh lord I have a whole day to get through I'll never cope, I'm going to spend the whole day feeling like this.
The solution is, if you've woken at a reasonable time, get up straight away, stick the on and have some brekky. You will soon feel a lot more reasonable. If you get really comfortable at accepting the feelings and thoughts, you can just lie there and let them do their thing - a good opportunity to practise [I]not caring[I] about the anxiety and letting it die down of its own course. But if it's too overwhelming to do that right now, get up with a smile straight away.

[rcs]

Yes i seem to suffer from bad anxiety in the morning and can take about an hour to subside. I dread morning time and i try and be active straight away and eat some breakfast and avoid coffee instead of sitting around feeling depressed but it definitely is worse when i am going through a bad patch with anxiety.
I wake up early and i can feel it coming on even if i nod off back to sleep and have strange anxious dreams.
It is just a bad way to start the day off and you feel it is an extra hurdle you do not need as my evenings i feel quite good. :)

[MyNameIsTerry]

There is a link with cortisol too. This is highest when waking and reduces throughout the day naturally. However, this doesn't explain the people who say they feel worst later. But it makes sense that higher than normal levels of cortisol could be in play for some of us.

Possibly anxiety may decrease later too because we are winding down and are under less pressure. Some people are the opposite of this if they struggle with panic about going to sleep.

My anxiety pattern was always the same.

Also, I remember reading a science article about sleep and how we sleep in several blocks throughout the night. We enter these blocks and exit them again. But if we wake during one, we can feel quite rough. If we sleep longer and again wake during the wrong stage inside these blocks, we will feel rough. It recommended daylight to ease this as it will cause a change in chemicals to bring you back out of that state.

I agree with getting going, it can be hard though. Getting some food & drink inside you helps and also getting some exercise too.

[NoPoet]

Personally, I've always felt that one of the main factors is our dreaming. While we're asleep we can experience things (events whether real or imagined, emotions) that might not occur to us while awake, and certainly wouldn't make it through our conscious defences.

It can help to see this as a "venting" of emotions, and as a chance for our imaginations to explore possibilities. These possibilities can't hurt us, even if they are unpleasant.

The result is, sometimes people wake up feeling anxious, or distressed, or otherwise screwed up, all because of some random thoughts.

[silver blaze]

I hate mornings I always wake early and then I think of the long lonely day ahead, I'm sure someone has made the 24 hour day into 2 weeks, I do keep busy but it's still the same