Will sleep improve after anxiety and depression are relieved?

Most of the time, sleep will indeed improve after anxiety and depression are relieved, but for a small number of people, even if their mood stabilizes, their sleep problems will still remain for a while, and they may even be more troublesome than when they were in a bad mood.

After all, the insomnia that accompanies most mood disorders is essentially "collateral damage" of emotional problems - either the person cannot stop thinking about things repeatedly during the day, and when lying in bed, the mind is still thinking about work reports and interpersonal conflicts, or the nerves are always in a tight state of high arousal, waking up at the slightest movement, and being unable to fall asleep again. When I was doing group counseling in the psychology department, I met a post-95s girl who worked in operations. When she was diagnosed with moderate anxiety, she could only sleep less than 3 hours a day for 21 days in a row. She had to rely on ice cream to hang herself when she went to work. Later, she took anti-anxiety drugs for two months as prescribed by the doctor. Coupled with weekly cognitive behavioral therapy, the first week after her anxiety score dropped to the normal range, she announced the good news in the group, saying that now she no longer had to toss and turn in bed for two hours, she could fall asleep after just 20 minutes on the pillow, and she would not wake up suddenly at 3 a.m. with her eyes open until dawn.

But don’t think that as long as you are in a good mood, sleep will 100% automatically return to normal. I have seen many counterexamples. My eldest brother, who had a follow-up consultation with me before, all his depressive symptoms have disappeared. He can go to work and socialize normally, and is also willing to go out to play ball. However, his sleep is still bad. He has to stay up until three o'clock in bed every day and wake up at seven o'clock in the morning. This lasted for almost two months. Later, the doctor asked him to do sleep monitoring, and it was found out that he had severe sleep apnea. When he was depressed before, he was groggy, but he didn't feel the discomfort of poor sleep. After his mood improved, his energy requirements increased, and the discomfort of poor sleep became more obvious. There are also people who stay up too late at night when they are in a bad mood and have developed the bad habit of lying in bed watching short videos and staying up until two o'clock before going to bed. Even if their mood stabilizes, the disordered sleep rhythm will not adjust by itself, which is equivalent to the "sequelae" of long-term irregular work and rest on sleep.

In fact, there are different clinical tendencies on this issue. Some doctors believe that sleep problems are an accessory to emotional disorders. As long as the core emotional problems are solved, sleep will naturally improve, and there is no need to spend too much extra energy on intervention.； However, many doctors who specialize in sleep believe that it is best to adjust sleep problems at the same time as emotional problems. Otherwise, by the time the mood is relieved, the conditioned reflex caused by long-term insomnia has been solidified, and more energy will be spent to correct it. It actually sounds like your phone has been stuck for a long time. Most of the time, there are too many apps running in the background that occupy memory. If you clear these background programs, the phone will naturally run smoothly. However, it is also possible that the phone has been stuck for too long and the system has a small bug. Even if you clear the background, you have to do a separate system repair to completely smooth things over.

If you encounter a situation where you are in a good mood and still have trouble sleeping, don't panic. You can either ask a sleep doctor to adjust it, or do targeted CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia) several times. Most of the time, you can slowly adjust and you won't be able to mess up your mood again because of this.