Waking up each morning with stress cup overflowing vastly and disoriented

[Sideways]

I've got a bunch of stuff I can't cancel to tomorrow and that I need to be in reasonable shape for.

Can you ease the pressure off yourself at all?

Lining up a night of “I must sleep well tonight, because shit falls apart if I don’t” is one of the things in the ‘Makes good sleep harder’ column.

One of the strategies that’s used to treat insomnia (doesn’t work for everyone, because causes of insomnia are varied) is to let go of struggling for the good nights sleep. Instead, try and go with “I’m gonna get some quality rest, which will hopefully include some sleep”.

When our sleep quality goes down, a very common result is a substantial increase in worry about sleep. Not about the shit sleep we had last night, but the shit sleep we might have tonight. That anxiety gets bigger the closer we get to the evening, and can make sleep much harder to achieve. Each night, we put progressively more pressure on ourselves to get a good nights sleep, and that very often translates to lying there stressing about “I’m still not asleep! I need to be asleep!”

Again, can’t guarantee it will work for you, but I’ve had some really good results with this strategy. Doing what I can to improve my sleep quality during the day, then letting go of whether I actually sleep when I go to bed.

A gentle evening mindfulness walk, a hot shower before bed, no caffeine or alcohol, then I’m gonna go to bed and rest, and any sleep is bonus.

Sometimes, when things get harder, we start to put more and more pressure on ourselves to go straight back to “normal function” pronto. It’s okay to be struggling. It’s okay to show up at your appointments tomorrow with your best effort, rather than perfection. And you’re allowed to be proud of yourself for achieving your best effort, even if, in an ideal world, you’d do even better.