Just about everyone regularly wakes up at 3 or 4 in the morning , although most of the time, we fall back to sleep without realizing it. However, there are the dreaded nights when, after a few minutes, you can’t get back to sleep and start to get super stressed.
After a few wakeful minutes, you begin to fear that you’ll never fall back asleep, and the next day at work will be downright miserable. You’ll walk through the day like a zombie, nodding off at lunchtime and unable to keep your eyes open on the commute home.
Once the can’t-sleep stress kicks in, your mind begins to wander back to when you were in high school and you said the wrong thing to someone you had a crush on. Or, you start to ruminate on your last fight with a coworker or freak out about whether you remembered to turn on the dishwasher before bed.
Fiona Barwick, PhD, director of the Sleep & Circadian Health Program at Stanford University School of Medicine, says we should stop feeling anxious when we have these 3 am wake-ups because it will only worsen the situation.
“What usually happens is that we focus our attention and effort on actively trying to get back to sleep,” Dr. Barwick says. But unfortunately, “That practically guarantees you will stay awake longer,” she told Self.
A man sleeping at night. via Shane/Unsplash
How to fall asleep when you wake up at 3 or 4 a.m.
Dr. Barwick says that understanding why we are catastrophizing at 3 a.m. can help us fall back asleep more easily. The critical thing to remember is that when we emerge from sleep early in the morning, our frontal lobe is shut off, which plays a big part in regulating emotions. Further, our brains are primarily working out of the amygdala, which produces feelings of fear and anxiety.
Therefore, if we wake up at 4 a.m. and start stressing out, we should just say to ourselves, “It’s okay. Your brain isn’t completely turned on, and you’re overreacting." This can help you calm down and let your sleep drive kick in so you can fall back into dreamland.
Why do I wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. every morning?
If you feel like you wake up every morning at 3 or 4 a.m., you’re not alone. There’s a biological reason why it’s so common . After a good chunk of sleep of 5 hours or so, our body starts to reduce its production of melatonin, the hormone that puts us to sleep. It also begins to ramp up the production of cortisol, the stress hormone that helps wake us up.
If you wake up during this process, your body is flooded with stress hormones and the part of your brain that is supposed to regulate your emotions is turned off. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?
But now, when you find yourself in that situation, you know to think, “It’s okay. I’m being pumped full of stress hormones, and I don’t have the brainpower to fight it off. It’s no big deal.” Hopefully, at that point, you remain calm and fall back to sleep.
A woman waking up. via Kinga Howard/Unsplash
If you still have difficulty calming down and can’t stop stressing out over sleep. In that case, Greg Murray, a psychology researcher with expertise in mood, sleep, and the circadian system, recommends an easy breathing exercise. “I bring my attention to my senses, specifically the sound of my breath. When I notice thoughts arising, I gently bring my attention back to the sound of breathing,” Murray writes in The Conversation.
Dr. Debasish Mridha, a physician known for his work in neurology, once said, “The best remedy for fear is to gain knowledge.” Hopefully, now that we know why we feel so stressed when we wake up at 3 am, we can let go of fear and fall back into blissful sleep.
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