Help me stop my heart pounding at 4am

[TheOpen]

I am very stressed, but a lot of my stress I can't change at the moment. Mostly work stuff and I do think (hope) it will get better by October.

Being sleep deprived makes everything worse. I can cope with my workload if my brain is functioning, but I'm in a vicious cycle of being tired, under-performing, and getting more stressed.

When I do breathing exercises at 4am it makes my heart 'louder' and faster. Does that make sense? What else can I do? Getting a good night's sleep would help so much. My room is dark and quiet and I don't use my phone after 9pm. Tell me your success stories of reducing a pounding heart at 4am please 🙏

Try some kind of white noise - I find either rain or waves really helpful - loads of black screen videos on YouTube or sleep apps available with both sounds

Breathing exercises make me worse, I become too aware of my breathing & it makes me panic

Stop eating after 6pm.

Go for a walk in nature, trees and the sea are excellent for removing stress. Exercise, pranayama breathing, Qigong, all that works for me. I had adrenal fatigue last year and almost made my body system collapse, this was due to stress. I recommend a test to see if you have nutritional deficiencies, heavy metals, hormone imbalance etc. I like to meditate while listening to sound frequencies or binaural beats, that also helps me a lot. You can check golden ratio frequency or fibonacci frequency.

Same

Sounds like a rush if Adrenalin.

www.healthline.com/health/adrenaline-rush#when-to-get-help

Thank you all. Adrenaline sounds about right. The link says it affects your kidneys in time and I also have this - reduced kidney functioning which surprised me. It was picked up by the doc who prescribed HRT about 5 months ago. HRT has reduced hot flushes but that's about it - however I would say I think this stress response has been around on and off for longer than peri symptoms

I'm going to ask the Dr about beta blockers as I do not have generalised anxiety. I'm stressed as I have too much work on and this is a short-lived thing, for about 3 months. This bit of my career will get me onto the next rung, where I expect to get a payrise and also reduce my working days down to 4 a week. I think this will make a massive difference and I agree with posters who mentioned reconsidering my job.

So it turns out I can't get seen at the Drs til the end of the month.... Any way to get beta blockers elsewhere? Will a pharmacist prescribe them?

Alcohol and the peri menopause do this to me.

I find sleeping with the windows open helps.

Thank you for the white noise and meditation tips... I can fall asleep quite well usually but my DH woke me up last night and then I could not get back to sleep (probably the adrenaline kicking in) so was awake 1-3am. At least I was peacefully alseep after that so I missed my 4am wake up call. Not sure if I should be laughing or crying!

You can get a private prescription for propranolol from various online pharmacies, situational anxiety is one of the conditions they'll prescribe for.