Nocturnal emotional distress: causes, possible symptoms, and what to do

Summary of the characteristics of nocturnal emotional discomfort, and advice on how to manage it

What for many is the ideal time to rest and regain strength, for others becomes a time of high tension and sleep problems.

Despite the fact that night is that phase of the day that socially and biologically we associate with well-being and rest, for others it becomes a time when their own mind sets a trap and makes them worry about things that they will not be able to solve at that time of day.

Nocturnal emotional discomfort is that set of emotions that we experience while trying to sleep and that, even if we manage to sleep, disturbs our sleep hygiene, affecting us not only at night but also during the day. We will now explore what causes this problem and what it entails.

What is nocturnal emotional discomfort?

The night, despite being the time when we should immerse ourselves in the deepest of dreams, sometimes becomes our but nightmare. What should be a time to rest and recover energy becomes something fearful, gloomy and disturbing, not because of the fear of darkness but because of how it can make our emotional discomfort become very intense. We feel bad, so bad that we do not sleep well and, of course, the next day we wake up in a bad mood, tired and very frustrated.

Lying in our bed, the darkness of the night makes us become very conscious of all the ideas that make up our psyche. Since there is no one else to talk to and there are few distractions in the environment that can affect the sense organs, our mind begins to bring to light the memories, obsessions and worries of the day, turning over and over a lot of issues that, far from making us sleep, make our mind even more active. Sooner or later we will fall asleep, but our sleep will be disturbed and will not help us to rest.

Of all the times of the day, the night is the one that seems to make us the most emotionally vulnerable people, left alone with our emotions. We are left alone with our mind that, in case we are emotionally tense or there is a problem in our day to day life that we have not yet solved, it will appear with total prominence in the night darkness. All this makes up what we call nocturnal emotional discomfort, worries that break with the tranquility and rest of the moment when we should be calmer.

Why is emotional discomfort intensified at night?

The night has a number of distinctive characteristics that promote diverse psychological states, depending on the predisposition of the person.

On the one hand, there is the reduction of external stimuli, both environmental and social. While we are lying in bed we do not talk to anyone, nor do we hear or see anything. The environment is calm, there are no noises or striking visual stimuli, nothing that can distract us. When we find ourselves in this situation, bodily sensations are increased, not because they become stronger per se, but because when they are felt in isolation, it gives the sensation that they are stronger.

At night we notice more strongly our chronic pains, muscular tension, tachycardia, the urge to urinate and any other bodily sensation that is the least bit uncomfortable.

During the day we do not pay much attention to them, but at night, and especially at night, we do not notice them at all. But at night, especially when we can't sleep, they start to worry us and may even make us start to think we are ill: "My Heart is pounding, what if I have a problem? I should go to the traumatologist...", "I've been urinating a lot lately, do I have prostate cancer?"

On the other hand, we tend to give a lot of importance to the fact of not being able to sleep when we cannot sleep, being fuel for the emotional discomfort at night and that, when it increases, makes it even more difficult for us to sleep.

It is like the whale that bites its own tail: we can't sleep, we worry, we get to sleep, we wake up again and again, we sleep very poorly and, when we wake up, we find that we are in a very bad mood, tired and frustrated. This makes us not perform well the next day and, when it's time to go to sleep, we can't help but worry if we will have the same bad night again.

The silence of the night and the lack of activity in all senses can lead us to delve into the depths of our mind, rummaging through drawers of our psyche that we don't even realize exist during the day. It is very difficult for us to keep our mind blank and therefore we entertain ourselves thinking about things, playing as a filter the negativity bias that makes us pay more attention to the bad than to the good.

If there is a problem in our daily life that we have not yet solved, when the night comes, we will start to think about it even more... The problem is that we are not going to be able to do much while we are lying in our bed, so thinking about it will only make us more nervous unnecessarily. To give many mental turns to something while in bed the only thing that achieves is to entangle us in a spiral of suffering and more emotional discomfort at night.

The interruptions of sleep and mental disorders

On many occasions, and despite having managed to fall asleep, sleep is constantly interrupted by waves of discomfort, especially anxiety and worries that suddenly emerge and wake us up louder than the loudest alarm clock. This prevents our rest and mental hygiene, which is a risk factor not only for being tired the next day, but also harms our health and mental hygiene. This impedes our rest and mental hygiene, which is a risk factor not only for being tired the next day but also harms our mental health, increasing the risk of mood disorders such as depression.

For us to be able to perform a proper mental and physical recycling, to balance body and mind, it is necessary that we enjoy a good rest, going through the REM and non-REM phases several times a day. Anxiety is one of those factors that prevents us from going through these phases properly, it does not allow us to sleep well because we feel bad and we feel emotionally and physically exhausted the next day.

What can be behind nocturnal emotional distress?

It is common that, when a person feels emotional discomfort at night, this is because, in reality, the emotional discomfort of their day-to-day life has taken center stage at night, a time when there are not too many distractions. Feeling anxious at night is a symptom that there is really a lot of poorly managed emotional tension, just as it would be if you were to feel anxious at night.The same as it would happen if any other negative emotion manifested during the hours we have to sleep.

Without going into the beliefs of the interpretation of dreams, it is considered that dreams are mental elaborations that are generated with the aim of managing everything that our mind has been exposed to during the day. These dreams are made up of memories, events or fears, and they are an attempt of our mind to an attempt of our mind to relocate what we have not organized consciously while we were awake.We can take advantage of the hours of inactivity in the real world that being asleep entails.

When what we have to filter, digest or elaborate has a great emotional load, the nightly mental task that dreams involve will be much heavier and more complicated. For this reason our rest can be very altered, and if we add that we may have the predisposition to fall asleep late, this anxiety can cause us to wake up earlier than we should, preventing us from sleeping the recommended 8 hours. We may also have nightmares, night terrors, sleep paralysis, repeated dreams or sleep is constantly interrupted.

As we said, all this has repercussions on our psychological state, being a magnet for mental disorders. Y even if we do not suffer from any disorder, not having had a good rest makes it difficult for us to manage our daily chores.In addition to the fact that it causes us fear not knowing what will happen the following night, if we will be worried again, we will sleep badly or we will have nightmares.

How to manage this problem?

Although it is normal that from time to time we feel an intense emotional discomfort at night for whatever reason, if it becomes something very daily or that it becomes a prolonged stage of our lives we should to ask for psychological help.

This discomfort, no matter how bad it is at night, is only the tip of the iceberg of a bigger problem, an anxiety or depression that reaches all aspects of our life but, as we are so distracted by our chores and social events, we do not even realize how bad we are.

But when we have no distractions and the mind is unoccupied, we already we take it upon ourselves to occupy it with witty ideas, ruminations and fears that disturb our peace of mind.

For this reason, and given that if we do nothing, this may end up becoming a health problem, we should see a mental health professional to learn how to elaborate and manage everything we are experiencing, as well as to acquire tools to control these intrusive ideas that prevent us from sleeping properly.

But, in addition to seeing a psychologist, we have a few keys to reduce nocturnal emotional discomfort and have a good sleep hygiene. To break the emotional discomfort loop, we need to understand that it requires us to evaluate the factors that have contributed to us feeling this way. Other considerations to take into account are the following:

1. Solve the problems.

In order to discard the worries we must solve the problems that cause them. While we are trying to fall asleep, it is common for all those problems that we have not been able to solve to come to our conscience and we look for a solution while we are trying to rest.

As we have said, we will not be able to do much at night, since the problems of the day are solved during the day. If it happens that at night a solution for such a problem comes to us, the best thing we can do is to write it down on a piece of paper and try to stop thinking about it. By writing them down, it is more likely that the next day we will take them more into account, and we will be motivated to apply the solution once and for all.

2. Regulate physical activity schedules

Both the lack and the excess of exercise can alter our sleep. Therefore, it is necessary to regulate our physical activity schedules, preferably three hours before going to sleep, with a moderate-high intensity and a minimum of 30 minutes.

Physical activity causes us to release endorphins that induce a state of relaxation and calmness, which, if it coincides with the time of sleep, can lead to a state of relaxation. which, if it coincides with bedtime, will help us fall asleep quickly. However, if the time to exercise is too close to bedtime, although these endorphins will be released sooner or later, we will still be physiologically overexcited and it will be difficult to fall asleep.

3. Maintain good eating habits

Eating at untimely hours and bad influences sleep, so we must maintain good eating habits, eating healthy and avoiding large dinners. If we overdo it with dinner, we are more likely to suffer interruptions in our sleep, which will prevent us from resting completely and the next day we will feel bad. This will prevent us from resting completely and the next day we will feel bad, both because we have not been able to rest and because we have had a very heavy digestion and our stomach hurts.

4. Performing relaxing activities

Yoga, progressive muscular relaxation or Mindfulness are strategies that can help us to strategies that can help us to reduce anxiety and improve our mental state. Although they are not a panacea, they are easy to apply tools that can help us reduce nighttime emotional discomfort.