Nocturnal Emotional Discomfort: Why do I feel anxious at night?

The night can seem very dark at certain times in life. In this article, we'll look at why and what we can do to make our nightly routine easier or better.

The night becomes dreaded when we go through a phase of nocturnal emotional discomfort. The need for rest and to reach the famous 8 hours of sleep hammers us when we can't fall asleep. Other times, although we manage to sleep, sleep is not restorative, which adds to the emotional turmoil of everyday life.

It can happen that, in the midst of our despair, anguish and hopelessness appear. This causes our nocturnal emotional metabolism to be altered. So fatigue adds to the problems we are experiencing.

There are times of the day when we are most vulnerable and, without a doubt, the night is one of the most common for several reasons. Let's see why and what effects this has on our health.

Why do emotional distress and anxiety intensify at night?

The truth is that the night has a number of distinguishing features that can promote different psychological states depending on a person's predisposition. The decrease in external stimuli at all sensory and social levels can lead us to focus on various bodily sensations. This is why pain, muscle tension, tachycardia and thoughts are interpreted more dysfunctionally at night.

Due to the lack of external stimulation, for example, people with ringing in their ears experience it more in the quiet of the night. To alleviate this effect, it is generally recommended that the person live listening to relaxing music at low volume, as this will decrease the intensity of tinnitus and help to fall asleep and overcome the discomfort it causes.

On the other hand, we must also point out the importance of our interpretation of nocturnal emotional distress. As the night is the social and biological space reserved for rest, not being able to rest leads us to anticipate enormous discomfort.

Likewise, the silence of the night and the lack of activity can cause us to get inside our minds and rethink what concerns us. As a period of time in which we cannot apply a solution, if we find it in our rumination, thought will undoubtedly lead us down a path full of uncertainties.

In this way, taking too many mental turns on something traps us in a spiral of suffering. We end up overanalyzing mental reality and creating scenarios that may have little to do with what happens.

Sleep disturbance as a cause and consequence of anxiety at night.

Often our sleep is constantly interrupted by waves of discomfort, anxiety or frequent awakenings. This trend is extremely harmful. In fact, studies like the one carried out at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore show that interrupted sleep is very dangerous for our mood, as the sleep phases are also altered.

Slow brain waves have been shown to decrease sleep disturbances. This has been associated in the scientific literature with mood disorders.

Let's not forget that, for an adequate mental and physical recycling to occur, our regulatory system must complete a series of sleep cycles, passing through the REM and non-REM phases on several occasions, in a kind of loop. We don't sleep well because we feel bad and we feel emotionally drained because we don't sleep well.

What is behind the emotional malaise at night?

Typically, when we look at why a person feels anxiety at night, we find emotional discomfort that has not been managed. Dreams are, precisely, mental elaborations that are generated with the aim of digesting or recycling what our psyche experienced during the day.

Sometimes dreams are coated with memories, events or fears, but what is clear is that they are our mind's attempt to reposition, while we sleep, what we do not consciously organize during the day.

If what we have to filter, digest or elaborate is emotionally charged, this nocturnal mental task will be much heavier and more indigestible. Therefore, our rest will be altered. We will sleep later or wake up earlier, have constantly interrupted sleep, have nightmares, night terrors or repeated dreams, etc.

This has a devastating effect on our psychological state, complicating the management of daily challenges and the fear of what will happen tonight. This fear induces the appearance of thoughts, from which we construct catastrophic realities filled with negative physical and mental sensations.

It should be kept in mind that in some cases it will be important to seek psychological help from a mental health professional to help us develop and manage what we are experiencing.

Tips to reduce nighttime emotional discomfort.

To break this bond, it is essential to know that reconciling with the night and sleeping is a process that forces us to assess the factors that affect us. In addition, other considerations to be made are the following:

• Letting go of worries and working out what's possible during the day is crucial to speeding up emotional digestion at night and preventing the onset of nighttime anxiety.

• Regulate the hours dedicated to physical activity. Too much or too little activity can affect sleep.

• Periods of physical activity should be kept away from bedtime so we don't have to deal with physiological overexcitement. Likewise, we must keep in mind that the use of technological devices during the night interferes with sleep.

• Maintain adequate temperature, hygiene and ventilation in our rest environment, which should only be used for sleeping or having sex.

• Identify which stimuli alter it the most and try to reduce its effect.

• Keep regular meal and rest times.

• Do compensatory activities that allow you to reduce the physiological activation of the emotion, such as progressive muscle relaxation, yoga, or mindfulness.

• Finally and most importantly, keep in mind that sleep will come and that there are many tools you can apply to regulate it. Based on that, it's about exploring what can be improved.

Sleep and rest are mechanisms in the body that allow us to regulate our physical and mental systems. Let's say it's a reboot that helps everything work correctly. For this reason, daytime emotional material that we haven't reviewed can appear in the form of nighttime torment.

Let's not forget that taking problems to bed has devastating effects, so it's essential to manage them psychologically.