A good night’s sleep can affect your overall mood in many ways. This is one reason you need to make sure you’re sleeping enough. The following will highlight how sleep can affect your mood, which should help motivate you to address sleep-related issues.
Dealing With Depression
Depression may not always happen with sleep issues, but it could. This issue could get worse if you continue to have trouble sleeping. Sleep depravity seems to increase your risk of experiencing depression because of amygdala activity.
The amygdala is more active if you don’t sleep as you should, and this is the region of the brain that connects to negative emotions, such as depression. Remember that chronic depression could affect other areas of your life. Your desire to do things could slowly slip away if you don’t seek help to take care of the problem.
Feelings of Irritability
The amygdala region of the brain can also trigger irritability. This is another emotional change that could hurt you in many ways. Irritable folks are angry most of the day, no matter if they’re at work, home with their partner, or with their kids.
These relationships can fracture and cost you more than you can bear. It’s important to get to the root of your sleep issues before things progress. It could be as simple as putting your phone away at night because the light can make you stay up. If you must use your phone or a computer after sunset, you should use blue light filtering glasses to protect yourself from this. The problem may also require something like TMJ sleep therapy if your issue involves TMJ pain that affects a good portion of the population.
Loss of Empathy
Empathy is important as it allows you to feel what others are feeling. This may not seem like something to worry about, but it’s a great ability that helps you be a better person. The problem is you might not be able to access this ability easily if you haven’t been sleeping well.
This could lead to all sorts of issues in your life, like if you work in an industry where you must show that you care. You could have a situation where you can’t be there for someone when he or she really needs it, such as if someone you know deals with a tragedy. Your lack of care could cause the person to feel more emotional pain.
Issues Connecting With Others
Your ability to be friendly requires positive emotions, but they can be suppressed when you’re not sleeping well. You know how precious friends can be and how fragile these relationships are. The negative emotions you might feel could drive a wedge between your friends, and that serves no one. Of course, it’s best to let others know what you are experiencing so that they don’t blame you for things.
Still, your anger, depression, and uncontrollable anxiety could make it hard to be around those you cherish. This goes beyond the folks you know. You can also have trouble being friendly with strangers, and you know how helpful that can be. Friendliness is sometimes the reason you get deals or make new friends.
Inability to Enjoy Things
Since the part of your brain that’s associated with negative feelings is activated, it’ll make it hard to enjoy happy moments. If you don’t sleep well, you might not benefit from those positive emotions that happen to you on any given day. When you experience positive things, your brain creates various neurotransmitters, like serotonin or dopamine.
These neurotransmitters make it easy for your body to benefit from positive experiences. The benefits you receive when you experience something good include things like increased endurance, improved blood pressure, pain reduction, and even a stronger immune system. You can sacrifice all of this and more simply because your mood has changed because you aren’t sleeping well.
A good night’s sleep is within your grasp if you invest some time into figuring out what’s been keeping you up at night. Talk to a sleep specialist, and let the professional know that you’ve been having trouble sleeping to see what could be done to rectify this problem.
