Yes, I can relate. Too much cortisol causes this.

Posilutely, I can relate, all the way to the irony of the less I have to do, the more intense the anxiety over having to do ^it^. Having too much free time on my hands gives my anxiety devils plenty of room to dance their jigs.

Those grounding exercises and distraction remain ,my go-to remedy, especially the distraction. I do them as often as needed. Some days they are all I manage to do. Practice, practice, practice.

This morning I was trying to sort out whether the dream I had was about something that actually had happened in real life or was about something that happened in a previous dream. Reality totally eluded me until I was well into my first cup of coffee.

My brain flips to “on” the minute I wake up. I keep a notebook on my nightstand and sometimes just jot stuff down, sort of a data dump of whatever I have spinning in my brain first thing in the morning. It helps me weed out the noise.

I also find going for a really early morning walk helps me sort out things so I am more clear headed about what I need to do, what I want to do and what I can let go.

I do find for me, if I can channel the racing thoughts and those feelings of having a ton to do first thing in the morning, I end up being able to do a ton of problem solving and processing, and tend to have pretty creative ideas. It ends up being a really productive time of day for me in terms of that but it’s not by accident. I really try to take advantage of the explosion of thoughts in my head during that time.

That was me this morning. Some really weird anxiety-inducing dreams last night and then I woke this morning and my neck and traps were sore (a trigger for me) and I had nothing to do because I'm at home with the day off (a whole other stress-filled story unto itself) so my brain went into auto-pilot on "am I anxious? why am I anxious? how should I fix the anxious". I started journaling and, predictably, it was along those same lines.

At some point I caught myself and was able to step back and reframe the journaling as, "here is where I am, and that's okay. These are the things I observe are going on, and that's okay. Here's what I'm going to do today." I immediately felt my mind slowing down and my body settling back into itself.

For me, I'm slowly realizing that the key is just to slow down and put one foot in front of the other. My brain loves to race around trying to figure everything out and solve all the problems, and I used to believe that was the way out of every uncomfortable situation. But I've started realizing that slowing the old brain down and accepting that maybe I don't need "out" of the discomfort is actually a much gentler way of dealing with it.

Hoping you find some peace.

Thank you all for sharing, things to look into, something to try, and most importantly knowing others feel exactly the same. Wishing you all a great Wednesday!

I struggle with this too, high levels of cortisol in the morning can cause this. like you i have little to do in the morning. but moving my body and finding something to do helps.. like cleaning. i then get in a comfortable place and do a guided visualization or morning meditation it brings the anxiety down even more. there are lots of free videos on youtube. i hope this helps. best wishes!