4 Strategies to Help You Sleep With Stress

Millions of people suffer from sleep issues, and many of these sleep issues are caused by stress. Whether it's stress from work, friends, family , or finances, stress has a tendency to keep you wide awake and prevent you from getting a good night's sleep. Without sleep your mind and body function improperly and that can not only lead to a less thoughtful and productive day – that can lead to more stress as well.

You can't always change what causes your stress, but you can utilize different strategies to reduce it. Here are several methods you can try to help you sleep when you're feeling stressed.

Strategies for Getting Sleep When You Are Stressed

1. Go to BedOne of the biggest issues people have is that they do not make an attempt to go to bed at any reasonable time. If you're suffering from stress, you should be going to bed early, not later. This is useful for two reasons. First, if you do fall asleep you want to get as much sleep as possible, because the more rest you get the easier time you'll have dealing with stress the next day. Second, often the stress of knowing you need to wake up in X amount of hours only adds to your difficulty sleeping. If you go to bed as much as 10 hours or more before you're supposed to wake up, you'll reduce that stress on your mind and fall asleep more easily.

2. Create a Routine

Before you go to bed, you should have and create an extensive pre-sleep routine. That routine should be free of electronics (including cell phones), and should involve quiet and relaxing tasks that you need to complete before you go to bed, like brushing your teeth, checking to make sure all of the doors are locked and the lights are off, etc. Routines represent comfort, and they train your mind to learn that performing the routine means you're getting ready to sleep. It'll take a while for a routine to effectively train your brain, but you'll find that adding a routine to your life can be a big benefit.

3. Place a Journal By Your Bed

The human brain is a fascinating tool, but it doesn't always work the way you want it to. One example is when you have a thought in your mind that your brain doesn't want to forget. Your brain will keep you awake with your mind active, doing whatever it can to ensure that your thought isn't forgotten. If you have a journal by your bed to write down any and all thoughts you have, your brain then realizes that its thought is in a permanent place, and it doesn't need to worry about remembering it any more.

4. Exercise Every Morning

It's not always what you do at night that helps you sleep. Exercising every morning can have many benefits for sleeping with stress. First, when you exercise early and tire out your body, you will be far more likely to experience a degree of tiredness at night that makes it much easier to go to sleep. Second, exercise is a natural stress reduction tool, so working out will make the day less stressful. Finally, when you wake up and perform an activity, you're continuing to create a routine. Your body learns that night is for sleep and morning is for activity, and your ability to experience tiredness will respond accordingly.

Dealing with Stress and Sleep

When you have stress, sleeping can be very difficult. But there are many ways that you can improve your ability to deal with that stress and get sleep naturally. If you're also willing to integrate relaxation strategies and/or natural supplements into your daily life, you'll find that you're much better able to cope with stress and get the sleep you desperately need.