Will sleep improve after anxiety and depression are relieved?

For the vast majority of people who are troubled by anxiety and depression, after their emotional problems are relieved, their sleep quality will mostly improve significantly. However, there are also a few people who will experience the situation of "the mood is relaxed, but they still cannot sleep well." There is no way to guarantee that everything will get better 100% of the time.

After all, many people's insomnia is originally a "collateral damage" of emotional problems - in a state of anxiety and depression, the amygdala of the brain is in a state of high arousal for a long time, and the secretion of serotonin and melatonin that regulate sleep will also be disordered. It is equivalent to having a small speaker in your head that cannot be turned off. You can't help but think about bad things over and over when you lie in bed. Either you stay up until two or three o'clock with your eyes open, or you wake up at three or four in the morning and keep your eyes open until dawn. I once met a young girl who works in Internet operations. When she was diagnosed with moderate anxiety, she slept less than 3 hours a day for more than three months. Later, she continued to make cognitive behavioral adjustments and took medication as prescribed by her doctor. When her anxiety score dropped below the critical value in the second week, she said when she came for a follow-up visit that she could fall asleep within half an hour of touching the pillow and rarely woke up early.

However, not everyone is so smooth. I had a middle school teacher in the past two months. After his depression was relieved, he felt much more relaxed. He could joke with students normally and go hiking with colleagues on weekends. However, the difficulty in falling asleep was not cured and he still had to take half a sleeping pill to fall asleep. Later, I accompanied her to a consultation with a colleague from the sleep department and found out that when she was suffering from insomnia, she had developed the habit of lying in bed to watch lesson preparation videos and never lie flat until she couldn't keep her eyes open. Even if the emotional problem was solved, the disrupted sleep rhythm and conditioned reflex were not automatically repaired. It was equivalent to the emotional problem before kicking down your bedroom door. After the door was repaired, you still retained the habit of kicking the door in, but you still can't get in.

There is also a view in the academic community that less than 10% of the population has sleep problems, anxiety and depression, which are parallel and independent problems, and there is no clear causal relationship. In this case, even if the emotional problems are completely relieved, the sleep problems still need separate intervention. However, the proportion of this situation is very low, so don’t worry too much about it happening. Don’t be anxious if you are in a situation where your mood has improved and you haven’t caught up with your sleep. Adjust your bedtime habits first. Don’t lie in bed and use your phone. Try to fix the time when you go to bed and get up. If it doesn’t work, go to a sleep doctor to adjust it. Most people can get over it slowly. But don’t start to think about it because you can’t sleep well. Instead, you will return to your newly stabilized mood. This is not a mistake, right?