Struggle With Morning Anxiety? This Can Help

Do you wake up with morning anxiety, panic, or a heavy sense of dread before the day even starts?

In this episode, I share why anxiety can feel stronger in the morning and what you can do to begin retraining your nervous system.

You’ll learn why cortisol is naturally higher after waking, how morning rumination can become a conditioned pattern, and why staying in bed can sometimes reinforce the anxiety loop.

You will learn simple, practical tools to help calm morning anxiety, including getting out of bed, using slow breathing to signal safety to your brain, moving your body, getting sunlight, and practicing acceptance instead of self-shame.

This episode is for you if you often wake up feeling anxious, panicked, overwhelmed, or afraid of the day ahead. There is nothing wrong with you. Your system may simply be repeating a pattern it has learned, and with practice, that pattern can begin to change.

In this video, you’ll learn:

• Why anxiety can spike in the morning
• How cortisol affects morning stress and panic
• Why your bed can become connected with worry and rumination
• A simple breathing exercise for morning anxiety
• How movement and sunlight help regulate your nervous system
• Why acceptance can reduce shame and help you feel less powerless

If you’re ready to build a healthier relationship with yourself and begin changing the patterns that keep you stuck, you can learn more about working together by scheduling a complimentary coaching strategy session at:

https://jerryhenderson.as.me/Personal... 

If this episode helped you, please subscribe and leave a comment, and share it with someone who needs encouragement on their own journey.

I am grateful you are here,
Jerry

I am grateful you are here,
Jerry

COMPLEMENTARY STRATEGY CALL:
Schedule Call

OVERCOMING SHAME COURSE:

ACESS COURSE HERE

Watch On Youtube

Website:
www.jerryhenderson.org

How is your relationship with yourself going?
Get your free-self assessment guide

Pick up your copy of my book:
Returning: Meditations and Reflections on Self-Love and Healing

Get Your Free Weekly Tips!

Instagram: @jerryahenderson

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jerryahenderson

Disclaimer

Transcript

Welcome And The Goal Here

Jerry Henderson 0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to Personal Mastery. I'm your host, Jerry Henderson. And if you're ready to create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside, you're in the right place. Let's get started. If you wake

Why Morning Anxiety Hits Hard

Jerry Henderson 0:16

up in the morning with a lot of anxiety and a feeling of panic and this sense of dread, I want to give you a few tips that I think can help you. Hi, I'm Jerry. I'm trained in the psychology of human behavior at Harvard University, and I help people have a healthy relationship with themselves so that they can create the life that they love. So what can you do to address that spike in anxiety or that morning fear that so many of us are familiar with? Well,

Cortisol And Conditioned Stress Loops

Jerry Henderson 0:38

the first thing is to understand what's going on. Cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone, are high in the morning. It's a part of what wakes us up. And cortisol levels remain high for about the first hour to 90 minutes after we wake up. So if you're in bed and you have a stressful thought first thing in the morning, or you wake up with a stressful thought first thing in the morning and that feeling of anxiety, it might be that your brain, your body, your system has gotten habituated to have that experience in the morning, right? We talk about in neuroscience what fires together, wires together. And so if we've got our bed, the morning, stressful thought, stressful chemical or stressful chemical, which provokes stressful thought, and we have that feeling in our body of anxiety, and we then spiral into more and more stressful thoughts, it's going to reinforce that pattern. And we've trained our body to have a morning experience where cortisol levels are high with stressful thoughts, which then spirals us into more and more sense of anxiety and panic. So it's important to understand that because we don't want shame to be there, right? That there's something wrong with you that you have that experience in the morning. It's a very natural outcome of high stress hormone and a training or conditioning that has those stressful thoughts in the morning. And so you've developed a pattern and a habit of it. And so let's talk about how you can break that.

Get Out Of Bed To Break It

Jerry Henderson 2:01

So to break the pattern, number one, understand what's happening. Number two is to get out of bed at that point. And I know it might be early, 5 a.m., 5 30, whatever the case is. But when we stay in bed and we keep flopping back and forth and we fall asleep for like 10 minutes and we wake back up with more of that stress, what we're doing is we're teaching our brain, once again, that the bed is a place that we stress, and this is a little routine that we have, and that falling back asleep and waking back up is prolonging the suffering versus getting up, breaking the pattern, letting that stress hormone work its way through our system so that we can teach ourselves to have a different experience. So instead of laying there, you can take the next step. Get up.

A Simple Breath Pattern For Safety

Jerry Henderson 2:42

And it might just be getting up and sitting on the side of your bed. And an exercise you can do in that moment that can help is a breathing exercise because what we need to do is we need to send a signal to our brain that we're safe, we're okay. And one of the best ways that we can do that in the morning is through breathing. So a little exercise you can do is breathe in four to five seconds through your nose, and then breathe out for seven to eight seconds, a slow breath. Because what's happening is you're sending a signal to your brain that you can relax because when we're panicked and we're stressed, our breath gets shallow or it gets rapid. And what that type of breathing does is it sends a signal to our system that we're in stress mode and to release more stress chemicals. So what we want to do is counteract that with some breathing. It gives us a couple of things to do. One, you can start to focus in on your breath versus the thought. Two, you're using the body to send a signal to the brain to relax instead of trying to outthink the brain in the morning, right? By telling yourself it's okay, don't worry about it. That doesn't always work. We're fighting anxious energy with more anxious energy often. So just taking two to three minutes of sitting there with that breathing pattern, sending that signal to our system.

Move Your Body To Release Energy

Jerry Henderson 3:56

Now, the next thing that you can do is to get moving because that movement is actually going to use some of that energy that feels trapped while you're laying in bed and walking around or just doing some type of quick physical activity can help that energy begin to get used and send a signal once again that we're okay and dissipate some of that anxious energy.

Use Sunlight To Balance Stress

Jerry Henderson 4:18

Now, another thing you can do that'll help is get some sunlight. Now, if you're in an area where you don't get a lot of sunlight, use a sunlamp. Now, getting sunlight's gonna help us in a couple of ways. One, it's gonna release things like dopamine, serotonin, and all of those are gonna help us regulate and help counteract the cortisol. It's gonna take away all the cortisol, but it's gonna help us counteract it and help balance us out. And from that place, we accept the fact, we practice acceptance that in the morning right now, it's gonna be a little difficult for us. Stress is gonna show up really high because it's supposed to, because of the cortisol, because of the training that we've associated that moment with rumination and worry, that we're gonna need to have a regulation exercise that we can do. We're gonna need to get moving, get some sunshine. And what we're doing in all of that routine is we're retraining our nervous system to have a different experience in the morning.

Acceptance And The Retraining Timeline

Jerry Henderson 5:12

Now, this doesn't happen overnight. For some people I've worked with, it's been three months before the morning started to feel less stressful. And it was six months before they really felt like the morning was no longer the place where they woke up with the panic and the anxiety. And yes, sometimes it might still come back. But when you understand what's happening and you accept the fact that this is what's happening right now, and cortisol should show up and there should be all of that. So if you can accept what's happening and you can allow yourself to see that 60 to 90 minutes in the morning as a retraining process versus there must be something wrong with me. I'll never be able to overcome this. I shouldn't be worrying. And letting go of all of that, letting go of it actually will reduce the stress and the anxiety in the morning and it'll start to move you to a place of not feeling so powerless with what's going on, and then knowing that you have some tools that are going to help reduce that morning angst over time. Now, if you'd

Coaching Invite And Podcast Support

Jerry Henderson 6:05

like to learn more about how to have a healthy relationship with yourself, I want to encourage you to reach out to me and learn more about the personal mastery coaching program that I do, where you'll learn more about how to have a healthy mindset, build resilience, practice presence and stop feeling like you're missing out on your life. Learn how to live a life that feels like it's in alignment with what you want and what you're experiencing. Learn how to have healthy connections and a sense of belonging in relationships, and then how to live out your purpose and really live the life that you want to live. So if that sounds like something you're interested in, you can simply see the description section. You'll find a link there to set up a complimentary strategy call where we can connect, learn more about each other, and see if working together is the right fit. And I'm looking forward to getting to know you and learn more about the goals that you have. Now, if you've not yet had a chance to subscribe to this podcast, I want to encourage you to take a moment to do that because I don't want you to miss out on a single episode. And also, if this episode was helpful for you, I want to encourage you to share it with somebody. Because if it made a difference in your life, it'll make a difference in their life as well. Now, also, if you've not had a moment to rate or review this podcast, I want to encourage you to do that. I'll do a couple of things. Number one, it's going to help it get out in front of other people who need to hear this type of content. And number two, it's going to help me understand the type of content that you want to hear so I can create more content like that. So if you'd take a moment to do that, it would mean a lot to me.

Final Reminder About Self Relationship

Jerry Henderson 7:29

Well, thank you for being here with me today. And I just want to remind you that the most important relationship that you have in your life is the one that you have with yourself. Because when that relationship is healthy, everything else in your life gets better. And from that place, you can truly create a life that you love.