When worry, stress, racing thoughts, and fatigue are the first things you notice when you wake up, it can be a difficult experience.
Throughout my university years, I experienced frequent and intense morning anxiety. As my anxiety persisted in stressful situations, I began to implement various coping strategies to help me get through my mornings.
This blog post focuses on morning anxiety coping strategies to help you relax your mind and body.
The coping strategies listed below are not in any particular order; some days you will need to implement one strategy or a combination of strategies.
Let’s take a look at them.
Table of Contents
Meditation
Meditation is an effective method for coping with morning anxiety. Meditation allows you to become aware of your thoughts and the sensations in your body.
Morning anxiety symptoms may include racing thoughts, racing heartbeats, fatigue, irritability, tense muscles, and excessive worrying/nervousness.
Meditation can be an effective tool for relieving these symptoms and re-centering yourself by allowing you to take deep breaths, observe your thoughts, take note of how your body is feeling, become present, and accept what you are experiencing.
You can check out Mindfulness Meditation Exercises here.
Drinking Cold Water
When you have morning anxiety, drinking cold water is an effective way to hydrate your body.
While fatigue is a common symptom of my morning anxiety, drinking cold water wakes up my body and reduces my anxiety level.
When I notice my anxiety levels rising, I almost always reach for ice with my water.
You can also relieve your anxiety by immersing yourself in cold water. Check out clinical psychologist Ali Mattu’s video on How to immediately calm down in 30 seconds.
Mattu explains the diving reflex in this video, which is a dialectical behavior therapy distress tolerance TIP (Temperature, Intense Exercise, Paced Breathing, and Progressive Relaxation) skill in which you submerge yourself in cold water to help you calm down.
Drinking Tea
In addition to drinking iced water in the morning, you can mix in your favorite tea.
Providing something you enjoy and giving yourself a small act of pleasure in the morning may be a way to relieve your anxiety and take a few minutes to relax.
You can also drink teas with soothing and relaxing properties to help you relax. Chamomile, lavender, matcha, mint tea, and other herbal teas are examples.
To add sweetness to your tea, feel free to add honey.
Aroma Therapy
Your favorite scents may help you relax your body and put your senses and symptoms at ease.
Use essential oils, a diffuser, a candle, or incense.
Exercise
Exercise is an important activity that can help alleviate your morning anxiety symptoms.
When I was in university, my health psychology class discussed exercise and the reduction of anxiety symptoms.
Rereading my notes, I learned that physical activity helps to reduce anxiety symptoms. Exercise, in particular, can act as a stress buffer.
More information on how exercise can reduce stress can be found in this video on Exercise, Stress and the Brain, provided by my health psychology professor.
Yoga, walking, running, and weight training are a few examples you can try.