Prevent Sleep Anxiety With the Best Sleep Hygiene Tips, According to Experts

glamour.com:

. You’re brewing a cup of chamomile tea. You’re slipping into . And then all of a sudden, there it is: that creeping fear that you will not in fact be able to drift off to dreamland, that anxiety will keep you up for hours, doomscrolling in a fit of .

The more you think about this bedtime possibility, the more anxious you get. The vicious sleep anxiety cycle has begun. Sleep anxiety is not an official sleep disorder, per se. “In the sleep universe, we don’t really diagnose somebody with sleep anxiety—we diagnose them with insomnia or insomnia secondary to a particular anxiety disorder, like generalized anxiety or OCD,” says clinical psychologist , a diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “There’s no real formal criteria or definition, so doctors have a tendency not to use it as a diagnosis.” That said, “every sleep doctor in the universe” knows the role anxiety can play in sleep issues, Dr.

Breus confirms. “Most of the people who don’t sleep, 75% of it is due to anxiety. The other 25% is a mixture of environmental factors, medications, some type of medical condition, or in some cases, some form of depression.” But just because sleep anxiety isn’t a formally defined condition, doesn’t mean anxiety at night isn’t impacting your health. “Mood, anxiety, and depression have a bi-directional relationship to sleep,” says , an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and sleep expert to smart-ring maker Oura.

Stress and anxiety, in other words, disrupt our sleep. And when we’re sleep deprived, we’re more likely to experience “negative mood states” like anxiety and depression, Dr.