It seems to be an oxymoron to say that people can be both anxious and depressed, yet it happens regularly. There is a circular action to it, both in the physical response and the emotional response ~ the physical response goes something like this: you get anxious and wound up, your heart beats faster, maybe your breathing speeds up and drains your body of energy.

The truth is that every few years a new virus comes along and scares us all because we don’t know what it is, or how it will affect us. This year it’s COVID-19, in 2009 it was the swine flu, in 2016 we feared the Zika virus. Those diseases have come and gone, and we have survived and even thrived since then. Taking the long view about this will help you through this one.

There you are in bed and your anxious mind is recalling the things you didn’t get done during the day—unwanted thoughts coming at you like pop-up signs “why didn’t you______, you should have________” fill in the blanks: resisted that cookie, exercised, called that person, not watched so much TV… the list goes on and on, and sleep eludes you once again. Many people have trouble falling asleep at night, and some have trouble going back to sleep once they’ve woken up.  We’ve heard over and over that we need 7-8 hours of sleep in order to function.  If we get less than that on a regular basis we make more mistakes and can be cranky and unpleasant. No matter how much work you have, you need to schedule enough sleep so that