Lately, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night with my “heart racing.” (Oh, that famous symptom of everything. A symptom for all seasons).
It’s happened throughout my life, but usually only after nightmares. But recently, it’s come in the absence of dreams.
Of course, my anxiety immediately thought HEART ATTACK! or even something more benign like sleep apnea, which can provoke similar experiences.
But for me, and possibly you, Occam’s Razor always leads me back to anxiety.
So I wondered: Can anxiety do this?
And since anxiety is a bit like Shohei Ohtani, why yes of course it can.
If you’re going through a particularly anxious time, it’s quite normal to wake up, breathless and panicking, in the absence of frightening dreams.
Medical News Today has a helpful write-up on nighttime anxiety:
Nighttime anxiety is not a special class of anxiety. People become anxious at night for the same reasons they do during the day. However, the following factors may make anxiety more noticeable at night:
- Fewer distractions at night mean a person is more likely to think about the things that make them anxious.
- Consuming caffeine during the day can make a person jittery and anxious and less able to sleep during the night.
- Nightmares.
- Fear about the coming day.
- Anxiety about insomnia, particularly if a person worries about the effects of their sleep deprivation the next day.
- Health anxiety, since people might notice aches and pains more when they are falling asleep.
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Now….if you’re waking up, gasping for air, check with your doctor because Healthline notes that there could be explanations other than anxiety: postnasal drip, hypnagogic jerk, obstructive sleep apnea, pulmonary edema, acid reflux, heart failure, and anxiety.
The good thing is that anxiety is the least physically destructive (in the short term) of those conditions.
The bad news is that your anxiety will probably make you worry about heart failure or edema when you wake up, gasping.
So definitely get it checked out with a doctor.
But waking up breathless from anxiety is definitely a thing.
And of course, for many of us, our anxiety escalates at night.
If only because it reminds us of the coming day, or the day that has just left. Or all the things the day obscured and that we can no longer ignore.
Some of us pray and it helps. Some of us read our favorite verses and it helps. Some of us pop a sleeping pill and it helps. I’ve done all three.
Suffering at night is its unique kind of hell.
King David frequently wrote of wasting away on his bed, at night.
Jesus endured Gethsemane at night.
When you’re a teenager or in college, staying up into the wee hours is often a sign of a good time.
But when you’re a little older, it’s a restless unease, or else an 8 hour rumination on how trapped you feel in life: “How did I go through what I just did yesterday, and how can I handle what I’m supposed to do, tomorrow?”
The way forward is holistic.
Talk to your doctor about something for anxiety or sleep, talk to a therapist, talk to Jesus, and somewhere in all that talking, I hope the voices at night will quiet, and you can sleep again.
[Painting: Winter Night in the Mountains, Sohlberg (1914)]
