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My anxiety is not letting me sleep.

I am quite vocal about the fact that I absolutely ±ô´Ç±¹±ðÌýsleep. The prospect of getting to go to bed each night, snuggled in my quilt, will never not be exciting. But no! Even the prospect of sleeping ²¹²Ô²â·É³ó±ð°ù±ðÌýis exciting for me; I have known to be able to fall asleep whenever and wherever. So how come I have not been able to fall asleep lately?

For the last few weeks, I have struggled to fall asleep any earlier than 1am. Perhaps for some, this is quite a normal lifestyle. But since most mornings I will have to wake up 5 or 6 hours later, it is a challenge to get out of bed and rush for the bus. The struggle does not stop when I am ready for my day. I find that I will crash in the afternoon. I have turned to coffee recently, as a non-coffee drinker, just for something to keep me awake.

It is a vicious cycle though, because after a long day of work or study or rehearsing or socialising, you would think that I am so knocked out from the bad sleep that I would be ready to hit the hay. But alas! The pattern repeats itself, and I find myself trying to watch YouTube videos to fall asleep.

Anxiety is clearly the cause for me. This has been the case for me: I lay awake, overthinking my day, my actions, my words. My head is filled with the intrusion of does anyone even like me? or what are the tasks that I have to get done tomorrow? I would assume that now my degrees are finished, there would be less stress in my head, but this has not been the case. I find that knowing that I am still awake and have to get up early makes my anxiety worse, instead of telling my brain that I need to fall asleep.

So how can I improve my sleep? I am still trying to work this out. Since I have started seeing a mental health professional, I know that this is something that I can talk about with them. One particularly bad night, I found messaging one of my night owl friends, and getting him to validate my thoughts (including lots of 'don't stress, these people like you!) was a big help. And of course, I know this can't last forever. I have had periods of bad sleep before in my life, and I always end up falling back into my sleep lover patterns.