5 Reasons Why You Wake up Feeling Stressed in the Morning

And some handy recovery pills too

If you woke up today feeling anxious or stressed, chances are good that you are still carrying the vibes of your low opening. Yes, you can salvage any day from the claws of a slump, but with an uninspiring beginning, you are not making it easy for yourself.

Well begun is indeed half done.

Does it often happen to you that you don’t feel good about the day to follow as soon as you wake up? Is there a little voice operating inside you, feeding negative signals about your immediate future? Do you feel drained of energy early in the morning, and you have no idea why?

Here are the possible reasons you need to check out, assuming you don’t have an underlying medical condition that’s causing trouble

#1. How Was the Nap?

You lack the season of all natures, sleep — William Shakespeare

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way.

A troubled, nightmarish, unsound sleep can make you feel dizzy in the morning. Your body and mind would have longed for a proper period of rest. Still, if any reason, from the temperature in the room to mosquitoes in the air, had denied you the pleasure of a proper nap, your body and mind are bound to feel the stress. It could even be a mental agony that kept you awake through the better part of the night.

Further, exposure to blue light coming out of your digital screens can upset your brain’s natural sleep cycle- the circadian rhythm. It also inhibits melatonin production, which is basically the hormone that tells your brain to go to sleep.

When you wake up from a troubled sleep, you can feel the loss of energy creeping into your system from the morning itself.

Checklist to avoid improper nap problem

1. Avoid exposing your eyes to blue light in the hours before you sleep. A few dollars on an alarm clock is an excellent investment if you are using the phone’s clock-capabilities as an excuse to keep it close. Let’s keep the digital devices far from your bed.
2. Make sure that the variables you can control are taken care of. They include the room temperature, the neatness of the bed and surroundings, proper ventilation, etc.
3. See if your body posture is proper while you are sleeping. Certain positions can hamper the flow of blood to different body parts and cause discomfort.
4. Do not engage yourself in rigorous exercises, strenuous activities, or mentally draining chores before you sleep. Let yourself ease into the arms of Morpheus.

#2 I Gotta Rush

Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well- H Jackson Brown, JR

Some people are blessed with the ability to be in bed at 8: 00 AM and be on the way to work at 8 10 AM! Such quick progression has its compromises. If you got to be somewhere at a specific time, and if you had not allowed the luxury of a few more handy hours to get ready, you are starting your day on a stressful note.

While waking up before the sun rises is not everyone’s cup of tea, waking up at a time early enough to accommodate your chores should be everyone’s cup of tea. And if you prefer to rise early and settle into a productive routine, here is an article I wrote about the same, inspired by Robin Sharma’s 5 AM Club.

Rising late would warrant that you rush through your activities. You are fiddling through your chores at lightspeed now because you have a time-gun to your head. Can you not be stressed when a gun is pointed at your brain?

Checklist to wake at a comfortable time

1, Give yourself a damn good reason to wake up. It has to be something irresistible. For instance, if you hate going to the gym, but the first thing you plan to do on waking up is to go there anyway, you would have negative connotations about waking up. Because for you, waking up=gym=something you hate. Place an irresistible action at the early part of the day so that you feel more rewarded to wake early.

2. Give yourself a lesson on why it’s beneficial to wake early. Yes, there is always a question on what time in the morning really is ‘early.’ I would say it totally depends on your other responsibilities. But gaining insights from successful early birds would perhaps inspire you to take it up as a habit.

3. Do not keep your alarm close to you. If it’s anywhere within your radar so that you can reach for it and snooze it in your half-awake state, there is a good chance that you would fall for the coziness of the bed.

4. Plan your morning in advance. For instance, If you plan to run, have the accessories, like your shoes, tracksuits, and maybe a health band near your bed. You can wake up and spend no time assembling your essentials to hit the first task in the morning. Often, the hassle of finding your things in the morning can be off-putting and discourage you from waking on time.

#3. I Don’t Wanna Go There!

If you hate your job, don’t worry, you won’t have it for long — George Allen.

Luckiest people are those who wake up every day and get to perform the job that inspires them. Different reasons would have prompted a person to take up a work that doesn’t quite fit into their comfort zone.

It could be anything from financial restrictions to family obligations. Still, for such people, every day is a daunting mountain to climb. The very thought of going to the office is enough to break their spirits early in the day itself.

It is not easy to break this jinx. At some point, you must have weighed your current position and the eternal passion for favoring the former. If you did, it means you have strong, solid reasons to do a job that’s not making you feel good. The reasons are real.

Your urge to choose your dream couldn’t overpower the pricking reality of ‘why you should stay put’ on a job that’s not very rewarding(both mentally and financially)

Checklist to get over ‘I don’t wanna go there.’

1. Find a good companion at your workplace. Often a good company can take a load off your shoulders and will dramatically improve your spirits.
2. Make a detailed plan about how you can escape the tyranny of a job you hate. Although the plan may not really be something that can immediately take off, having it would convince your subconscious mind that there is a way out of this.
3. If the reason why you hate your job is centered around a few people, like a short-tempered boss or your girlfriend’s ex, try armor plating your mind to deal with any type of people. There are books that would help you understand how to deal with people.
4. Do you feel incompetent at your workplace? Try equipping yourself with a few more skills and knowledge necessary to put you in the limelight in your office. Shock them with your improvement.

#4 Not So Fast

Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast — William Shakespeare

Hitting the snooze button in the morning is as tempting as an ice-cooled mojito on a dry desert. But some over-enthusiastic folks jump out of bed at the first beep of their alarm.

Such people believe that allowing their mind to weigh the options to sleep further or wake now leads only one way. They are not necessarily wrong since we are a species hardwired to take the easier route. However, such quick jumps out of bed can make you feel dizzy.

It occurs because your body is shifting suddenly from a reclining position to an erect one. The fluid in your ear, responsible for body-balance, is shifting along with your body postures. In most cases, such dizziness will not last very long, though.

Besides, when you wake up suddenly from a deep sleep, you can experience what experts call ‘sleep inertia’ — a result of certain parts of the brain not being fully awake. The symptoms of this condition involve drowsiness, disorientation, poor decision making, etc.

Ideally, you need to spend a few minutes in bed after waking up and before you leap out.

Checklist to get out of the bed with the least strain

1. Do not stay curled, like a ball on the bed. When you are awake, and if the temperature is cool and the bed too cozy, many people go for this coiled posture. According to experts, it is not a healthy practice. Dr. Amy. J.C Cuddy from Harvard says that those who lay curled and maintained that position has lower confidence levels.
2. Please do not check your smartphone as the first thing you do in the morning. I know you have heard it before, but its importance can only be understated.
3. Stretch yourself as soon as you wake up. Your body has only had limited movements in the past few hours, and it now requires a good healthy stretch to relieve itself from the soreness in your muscles and joints. The practice will improve your overall flexibility.
4. Self-affirmation is one of the positive things you can do from your bed, even before you get up. It helps that as soon as you wake up, your conscious mind is only warming up. Therefore your affirmations have a better chance to go straight into your subconscious. Once an idea takes a seat in your subconscious mind, it will get automated.

#5 The Most Obvious Reason

When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves — Anthony J. D’Angelo

Is there something that’s ailing you? If you have a problem that’s profoundly worrying you, every second you are awake, those issues are silently working in your mind. Even if you assume that you have ostracized those thoughts from your conscious experience, it is still operating from the recess of your subconscious.

Getting a good sleep would have given you that temporary relief you badly needed, but as soon as you are awake and back to your senses, the same problems start rushing into your mind. This is going to disturb your peace straight away and make you feel stressed in the morning.

Only you can know what these problems are. None of us have cracked the code of living a worry less life; it’s all about choosing the right set of concerns to address and fix them wisely. It would be extremely improper to pass judgments on your personal issues, knowing there are unique personalities and unique situations in this world.

Human beings are not very good at stopping thoughts either. In fact, the more you try to arrest an idea, the more resilient it becomes. Scientists call it ‘the white bear’ problem. If I ask you not to think about a white bear, you probably can’t resist imagining a white bear. Instead of trying to stop thoughts, we should try and divert it to something better.

Although it’s impossible to offer a checklist to iron out your life’s unique problems, I have given a few general suggestions.

Checklist to solve your (general) problems

1. Solving any problem starts with accepting the situation. Many people evade them and wait for it to snowball into something more caustic. You need to take the bull by its horns. There is a solution to every problem, and if there isn’t, there is no point in worrying about them.
2. Do not hesitate to seek professional help. There are experts out there, armed with different skill sets and knowledge base to address the specific issues you have. For instance, if you are devastated by your partner betraying you and cannot handle this by yourself, try sharing it with your close aide or visiting a counselor.
3. For emotions like confusion regarding your future, fear of failure, finding no meaning in life, regrets of past, etc., perhaps a good book, video, or a piece of advice can set the scores right. Even Medium is seething with self-help and personality improvement hacks. A small change in the mindset would help you perceive things in a new light in many cases.
4. Change your attitude towards problems. Know that you are not growing unless you put yourself in challenging situations. The more successful people on this planet are likely the people who faced more problems but treated them with grace. Here is a counterintuitive idea to face problems from a best seller(book).

Final Thoughts

Apart from the points mentioned above, there are many reasons why you may not feel energized in the morning. For instance, if you do not drink enough water, you feel the effects of dehydration early in the morning. If you had an improper meal, disrupted sleep patterns, or a nightmare that woke you up in the middle of the night, the effects could still linger in your body.

It is essential that you introspect, take a riverboat journey into the jungles of your mind, look at your routines, and analyze your habits to zero in on why you wake up feeling tired.

Let’s wake up with our batteries full and take the day head-on.