Waking Up Anxious? 5 Ways To Ease Morning Stress & Start The Day Right

It's natural to wake up feeling anxious before an especially big day, but if you find yourself starting every morning with a racing heart and sweaty palms, it could be a sign you need to pay closer attention to what your jitters are telling you.

Anxiety is a natural reaction to stress and worry. While anxiety can arise at any time of the day, it's not uncommon for it to start first thing in the morning, when our bodies tend to produce the most cortisol1, a stress hormone.

"Morning anxiety" (not a medical term) implies that one's anxiety starts to fade as the day goes on. If that's not the case and your anxiety symptoms persist throughout the day or start to interfere with your life, you might be dealing with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Naturopathic doctor Erica Matluck, N.D., N.P., tells mbg that morning anxiety is usually a reaction to excess cortisol.

It's normal to have elevated cortisol levels early in the day and lower levels at night. However, chronic stress can cause your cortisol levels to spike even higher in the morning, leading to those uncomfortable anxiety symptoms. In this way, stress and cortisol work in a vicious cycle: Stress can cause cortisol levels to rise, and high cortisol levels can exacerbate stress further.

The next time you start the day feeling anxious, try to breathe through it.

Board-certified psychologist Anna Yusim, M.D. recommends breathing in for 2 counts, holding your breath for 4 counts, then slowly breathing out for 8 counts. Repeat this calming breathwork routine three to four times.

"Gratitude has a positive effect on your heart rate variability," Matluck explains, "which correlates to your resilience and ability to adapt." Calm anxious morning thoughts by instead focusing on three to five things you feel grateful for in that moment.

"Exercise has also been shown to have a positive impact on reducing anxiety3, and we can always benefit from moving our bodies in a healthy manner," Hallett says.

While waking up with anxiety is no fun, remember that these anxious thoughts and sensations are there for a reason: They're trying to protect you.

"Oftentimes, anxiety becomes amplified because we quickly and aggressively try to push it away or deny that it exists, versus letting it move through you and realizing that it even will eventually lessen," clinical psychologist Ayanna Abrams, Psy.D., previously told mbg.

Lack of sleep could further amplify the stress you feel in the morning. A 2013 study out of U.C.–Berkeley found that sleep deprivation and anticipatory anxiety actually affect the brain in a similar way, meaning that people who are prone to anxiety are more likely to feel the negative impacts of a bad night's rest.

Yusim recommends a steady morning meditation practice to anyone who is waking up with anxiety about the future and wants to ground themselves back in the present moment.

Since the body fasts while we sleep, Matluck says that some people feel anxiety in the morning because their blood sugar is low.

Going back to our primitive fight-or-flight response, low blood sugar is another thing that used to signal that the body was in danger and should start to stress out.

If your anxiety spikes in the morning, cortisol could be to blame. To calm yourself down in the moment, try a mindfulness or conscious breathing practice. And to keep mornings from feeling so stressful in the first place, be sure to prioritize a mindful nighttime routine.