How Career Anxiety Gave Me Insomnia
By: Jessica Spencer
Tags: Careers, Sleep, Career Paths, Insomnia, Anxiety

How Career Anxiety Gave Me Insomnia

And what I’m doing to stop it.

Photo by Hernan Sanchez on Unsplash

A quick Google search will show ‘reports’ that say we’re spending more time focusing on our careers and less time on everything else.

Our families, our friendships, our hobbies — they’re all suffering because of our drive to succeed.

I’d like to say it’s another way that tabloids are trying to blast Millenials but there might be some truth to it. Over the past few years, I’ve found that a healthy balance can be hard to find.

I love working — there’s no denying it. After a long slog at the day job, one of the things I enjoy most isn’t going home to relax on the couch with a drink — it’s working.

That means writing, working on my podcast and preparing for the weekend when I train as a radio presenter. You might class those as hobbies, but they’re all things I’m working towards doing at a professional level.

In the past few months, anxiety had started to grow around my future. Where was I going? Would I ever get a job that I wanted? Would all of my hard work go to waste? After months of working relentlessly, I felt like I was getting nowhere — and that’s when the insomnia started.

In the beginning, I would find myself waking up throughout the night. Next thing I knew, it was two weeks later and as tired as I was, I was struggling to sleep at all.

For some people, insomnia and anxiety are inextricably intertwined.

A bad night’s sleep doesn’t just leave you tired. It causes a knock-on effect into every aspect of your life, affecting your energy levels physically, mentally and emotionally.

If you suffer from insomnia, you’re seventeen times more likely to develop anxiety as a result. With stress being a major driving factor in both, it’s something you need to get a hold of or else you’re going to put your health at risk.

When your body and mind hold onto stress, that is carried into the night. Because you haven’t released the tension that built up during the day, you could find yourself waking up or struggling to sleep at all. This makes the next morning even more difficult, and over time this can build up into anxiety.

Career anxiety is a significant player for why people can develop insomnia.

It could be the thoughts of tomorrow’s work are keeping you awake, or maybe you’re worried about your contract ending. Either way, the anxiety can eat at you until it’s impossible to rest.

Over the past five years, I have relied on several techniques to relieve some of that career-related stress.

Planning

As time goes on, it can become harder to work when you’re not seeing any progress. Say if you wanted a promotion and someone else got it, your motivation could wane until you feel like you’re wasting your time.

Career planning can go a long way to getting your motivation back. By figuring out the steps you’re going to take to move yourself along, it can revitalise you.

The future you’re working towards should feel more in reach and that reassurance of being on track will allow you to relax.

Hypnotherapy Tapes

It was about seven years ago when I tweeted that I couldn’t sleep and two of my followers recommended the same app.

‘Relax and Sleep Well’ by Glenn Harrold provides a hypnotherapy tape that could start you snoring in about ten minutes.

I won’t lie — hypnotherapy felt weird at first but it became a lifesaver.

The breathing techniques used in the tape can really pay off. It’s been almost a year since I last used the app, but I’ve listened to it so many times that I can still hear the tape in my mind’s eye. That way, I can fall asleep without needing to have my phone nearby.

Breaking Up The Day

When I visited occupational health, here’s what they recommended to me. Every day after work, I should do something that I’d enjoy before going home.

That could mean going to a cafe, taking a walk or reading a book. By taking out half an hour between work and home to relax, you’ll go home without thoughts about work buzzing in your head.

In the end, you should have an easier time unwinding in the evening until you go to bed relaxed.

At the end of the day, there are more important things to life than working.

If you find that after a couple of weeks you’re still struggling to get a good nights rest, it might be best to start taking notes about your sleep. This can help you figure out if there are any triggers. You should also consider having a chat with your doctor to see if there’s a medical cause for the bad sleep.