How To De-Stress In The Evening

While stress is the body’s natural response to protecting itself1, chronic stress or anxiety can have many long-term effects, including poor sleep or even sleepless nights.

Stress invokes the “fight or flight” feeling2. This elevates the heart rate, quickens breathing, and increases stress hormones in the body. Anxiety is stress that continues after the stressor is gone, and it produces similar physiological effects.

During times of unwanted stress and anxiety, relaxation techniques can produce the body’s natural relaxation response3. This includes a slower heart rate and breathing pattern, a lower blood pressure, and an overall feeling of calm.

Best Tips for Relieving Nighttime Stress

There are numerous strategies for relieving nighttime stress and anxiety before bedtime. If you’re feeling too stressed to sleep, these approaches can help you relax. Some sleepers use only one or two of these relaxation strategies while others practice a combination of them. If stress and sleep are a chronic concern, your physician can help you determine what the best approach is for you.

Meditation

Meditation is a mind and body practice4 with a specific focus of attention and attitude that lets thoughts come and go without judgment. Meditation is a known strategy for treating insomnia. There are several types of meditation.

Mindfulness meditation is the process of observing feelings, thoughts, and emotions as they pass without judgment5. A big part of this is being able to be completely present in the moment, not allowing your focus to wander to other thoughts. If you are just beginning with meditation, this may seem difficult but it will get easier with practice. It has been shown to reduce sleep disturbances in adults.

Body scan meditation is a technique of slowly concentrating on parts of the body and noticing any sensations or pains. To practice this technique, you should focus on a specific part of your body, one at a time. This can either be a systematic scanning, from head to toe, or a more random scanning of the body parts making a connection with the floor. Let your attention be focused completely on your body.

Guided meditation is when one is verbally guided through a meditative experience and encouraged to visualize a calming location. These guided meditations can include music and nature sounds to assist with relaxing. You can find guided meditations on many popular apps, including Headspace and Calm.

Meditation can be done any time before bed, and it can also be done during the night if you find yourself unable to relax.

Deep Breathing

Deep breathing can be another component of meditation as well as a relaxation technique you can use any time6. The goal is to take slow, even, and deep breaths.

Though there are many structured practices for deep breathing, including the 4-7-8 method and lion’s breath, you can begin very simply. Start by placing your hand on your stomach and inhaling slowly. When you feel your stomach rise, hold your breath for a moment, then exhale slowly. Different practices may incorporate counting breaths and adjusting the time breath is held before exhaling.

Stress Relief During Your Nighttime Routine

While the above relaxation techniques can be incorporated into your nighttime routine, you can also take some other practices into consideration.

Make a good sleep environment. Consider evaluating your sleep environment for possible stressors. A good sleep environment is dark with little noise.

Limit alcohol and caffeine. Both can affect one’s ability to have undisturbed sleep. Excessive alcohol can also affect how the body handles stress12.

Take a warm shower or bath. Not only can this help you relax and de-stress, but it will also lower your body temperature13 which can help you fall asleep faster.

Avoid blue light exposure before bedtime. The light from electronics including phones, computers, and TVs can interfere with your circadian rhythm14. Experts recommend you set these aside in the hours before you want to go to sleep. Plus, this can help limit doom scrolling habits15, which are known to contribute to anxiety.

Practice good sleep hygiene.

Journal. Writing down your thoughts and worries can help you to get them out in the open so you can address them. Keep a journal by your bed so you can write down any anxiety that may come up in the moments before bed. Writing down a to-do list for the following day can also help you get to bed sooner.

Schedule worry time. A scheduled time to focus on worrying is a technique used in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). To do this, set aside a specific time of the day to worry about everything you have going on. The goal of this is to address the causes of that worry before it can get out of control.