A strange phenomenon has befallen me. It happens every morning. The weekend does not provide respite. The alarm clock goes off and a feeling of dread comes over me. I don’t get out of bed ready to embrace the day the way I used to.
I loved early mornings – ‘seize the day’ and all that. Once upon a time I did. It stopped in February this year. I cannot put my finger on it but my guess is a few life changing events happened all at once which acted as a trigger.
I have not been able to shake the feeling off though despite those problems having been sorted. My brain these days treats the early morning hours (about 6am) as a call from Dracula’s Castle.
In desperation I went on You Tube and searched the ‘Fear of the Morning’. Sometimes you think that you are the only person in the world going through something peculiar. The power of Social Media lets you know that you aren’t the only dingbat in the world going through a peculiarity. I found a number of videos which have helped me.
My triggers could be perimenopausal related because morning anxiety is associated with the menopause, or a midlife crisis or everyday life stresses. It is a debilitating condition to have. If you don’t start the day right those anxious feelings follow you around all day like a buzzing insect that will not fly out of the windows which you have opened. So it is with morning anxiety. It becomes lunchtime anxiety, morphs into afternoon anxiety and evening enemy. It is never a friend.
If you are suffering from morning anxiety, drop a comment and let me know how you are dealing with it or not. My forward plan is to lie in bed and mindfully think about what it is that is causing me morning anxiety. At the moment I am concentrating on the symptoms and not the cause. A bit of a silly-billy strategy. If you don’t know the cause the symptoms will move into your home and claim a whole room to themselves. At the moment, my anxiety has claimed a corner of my home so I had best get a move on.
Plato got it right.
“Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.”
—Plato
