When You Wake Up Anxious
A set of tools from Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help with morning anxiety.
Normalize morning anxiety
It can be helpful to consider how the anxiety is trying to help you, even if you don’t like how it feels.
Morning anxiety has a biological basis. Cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone,” naturally rises within 30 to 45 minutes after waking up. This cortisol awakening response is part of our daily cortisol rhythm and is likely triggered by the sleep-wake transition. The cortisol awakening response may associated with the hippocampus preparing the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPS) to help you meet the needs of your day.
Below, I’ve outlined ways to metabolize anxiety, complete the stress response, and build nervous system capacity.
Orient to present moment safety and support
If possible, I recommend slowly orienting to the morning by connecting to present moment cues that indicate safety and support. Notice the drive to rush into morning tasks and instead invite yourself to feel the support of the bed beneath your body, taking note of where and how your body feels held. Is it possible to let yourself sink into the support more deeply?
Next, allow your eyes to orient to your space. Let your eyes go where they want to go, perhaps landing on something neutral, pleasant, or safe in your space. As you allow your system to start to take in what is ok enough or good right now, what starts to shift inside?
If it feels ok, try cupping a gentle hand over your heart or your belly. It can also feel supportive to slowly rub your arms or hands. You can try saying to yourself, “Good morning, [your name]. I love you.” If that feels like too much, you can also try cupping your hands over your mouth and saying your name with the spirit of warmth or delight. You can also try asking yourself, “I wonder what magical thing will happen today?” With anxiety, our brains are making up a story. Why not make up a better one?
If your mind feels especially active, try resting one hand on the back of head (where your neck and brain meet) and placing the other hand on your forehand. This is known as the brain contain hold. Here, we are working with the intention of the supporting the brain, offering containment and warmth especially to the prefrontal cortex, occiput, and brain stem. Notice any subtle shifts that are happening inside.
Come back to the felt sense of support and grounding. See if you can hold on to the sense of support as you gently transition into a seated position, allowing your feet to rest on the ground. Offer yourself the invitation to ground more deeply into what supports you, including the Earth. Connect again to the orienting response, looking around your space and letting your eyes follow the way they want to, as if you were watching a butterfly flitting about a garden.
My favorite cue of safety in the morning is birdsong. I once heard that birdsong can send a subconscious signal to the brain that the world is safe because no predators are present. Listening to birdsong, especially when coupled with morning light exposure, can be a sweet way to start your day.
Try to come back to a regular set of cues of safety in the morning, such as a gentle awakening, a cup of tea, soft clothes, deep pressure on your body, or time spent with your pets, kids, or something/someone else you love.
Invite ways for anxiety to metabolize and complete
Sometimes anxiety can feel too sharp, jangly, or overwhelming to start with the above steps.
I learned about the basic eye exercise from Stanley Rosenberg’s book The Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve. This exercise is one of the quickest ways I know to shift anxiety and is detailed in the below video. Keep in mind, as with all things, that some tools will work for you and others might not. Keep trying until you have 2-3 tools you can reliably use to help with anxiety.
Another option is to try out the “voo” sound from Somatic Experiencing, explained in the video below.
Adopt a stance of willingness, active surrender, and committed action
With chronic anxiety, it can be tempting to see your day through the lens of managing anxiety. For example, people often preemptively make decisions based on safety appraisals and engage in avoidance and safety behaviors, deepening the anxiety trap. Part of recovering from anxiety involves finding the sweet spot between too much avoidance (which teaches you that you can’t handle yourself or do the things you love) and too much exposure (which teaches you that the feared situations are awful and overwhelming).
To break out of the anxiety trap, I invite you to consider your values for the day or your heart’s deepest desire. For example, you may want to show up as present, joyful, and compassionate towards yourself and others. Try to identify 1-2 values that resonate most deeply with you. Throughout the day, watch for the tendency to make decisions based on anxiety. Instead, acknowledge the anxiety, ask if it would be willing to step back, and focus on making choices that bring you towards the life you want to live and the person you want to be. If the anxiety feels too visceral to work in this way, you can try the orienting response, the basic exercise, or the voo sound from above.
Wrap yourself in kindness and compassion
A huge part of anxiety resolution comes from sending your nervous system real time signals of safety. You don’t need more practice being judgmental or unkind towards yourself. Instead, taking small steps towards the life you long for as you wrap yourself in kindness and self-compassion. For more information on practicing self-compassion, see this blog post.
Invitation towards the sacred
Another way of repatterning anxiety can involve being held by something larger than yourself. Above, I discussed how focusing on your values and anchoring into a felt sense of connection and support can allow anxiety to metabolize.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a number of gathas to help infuse the day with mindfulness and presence. The invitation for the gatha below is to breathe in as you silently recite the first line, breathe out with the second line, and breathe in with the third line.
“Waking up this morning I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”
Reciting or invoking poems in the mornings can be a beautiful practice to deepen into presence. Here’s a poetry fragment for the mornings:
“In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.”
Morning anxiety can feel awful. Keep in mind that anxiety is meant to feel terrible so that we actually pay attention to it and effectively mobilize to take necessary action. When we can settle the nervous system through a felt sense of safety, it’s easier to discern what needs to happen and tether yourself an emergent capacity of competence or choice. As you engage in these practices, take note of any action in the real world you truly need to complete today. Let the anxiety know that you’ve received the message and continue to take steps towards the life you want to live and the person you wish to be.
