Hello Smallwolf & everyone.
I imagine the most difficult thing would be to recognise the anxiety & the thoughts, to feel your body reacting, & stay still, with the feelings, acknowledging them without moving towards the laptop. Finding out if the feelings can become tolerable. Maybe taking many attempts to realise you can tolerate the feelings, & doing so, over time, you won't need to urgently check for emails, or even turn on the laptop, for longer periods of time after you first wake up.
I'm trying to do something similar when my phone rings. I want to pause. If the speech is off, turn that on first, then check if the caller is identified, then decide about answering. I don't want to be like Pavlov's dog, jumping to the sound & panicking in my effort to answer it immediately, before the call goes to voicemail. At one time my Voicemail didn't work properly, & I was unable to retrieve messages. That's when I began panicking about answering. Now, I don't want to answer scammer calls.
Similar for noises I hear outside. There is no benefit to me to look out everytime I hear a noise & feel an impulse to identify & locate who & what the noise is - I can't see enough unless they were a few inches from the other side of my window where I look. So why do I keep doing that? I am trying to just stop myself & yeah, maybe identify what the cause of the sound is, maybe which direction it is coming from. Even that is 99% more than I usually would need to know... so let that be enough. When I can do that, allowing the sound to be, as it were, left alone by me, I will slowly calm down without looking outside or opening a door (not the security door),or window to hear better... I can do this.
So, stop, note if intervention is required, & if not, let it be. I will calm myself. I've noted my thoughts & feelings. I am in no actual danger, just notice. It's okay.
For me, this is a sort of mindfulness. Even if it is not, I don't think it atters what I call it, while I feel my method helps. 😺
mmMekitty