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I always wake up at 3:30 am, no matter at what time I go to sleep ? What should I do ?
Does your schedule allow you to go to bed earlier, so that you will get enough sleep by 3:30 am when you wake up? Another tip could be not to check the clock to confirm, which might in turn reaffirm that this is what you do, leading to a mindset of this is the way it has been, the way it is, the way it will always be……I think that would be part of the “sleep hygiene” answer.
But I have had early morning awakening for a long time, and the above has not been enough for me. An additional help some of the time has been when I can go to bed and acknowledge that OK, it seems that I wake up in the middle of the night. So if it happens tonight, I do not have to be automatically disappointed or anxious about it. It could be that if I get up and stretch a bit or read something which is sort of interesting but not a page-turner, that I will go back to bed and back to sleep. Or maybe I won’t and I’ll just get up. And I’ll get tired later and acknowledge that ideally I would have gotten back to sleep.
And the next night, the same thing. And if I did not sleep well the previous night, well, maybe I will sleep better tonight. Or maybe I won’t.
If this sounds fatalistic, well, I guess it could sound that way. But it is rather an approach to something which ultimately just happens, where trying harder or worrying about it does not help. I haven’t always remembered all this when I have had a bad run of poor sleep–and it can get harder to remember when your mind is scrambled from fatigue. But it is true.
Some great insights from @hiker there!
First of all, it’s important to understand that waking during the night is completely normal and to be expected! If you are finding it hard to fall back to sleep, I would echo the suggestion not to check the clock when you wake during the night. If you have the belief that waking up at 3:30 AM means you won’t fall back to sleep, knowing it’s 3:30 AM might be making it harder to fall back to sleep.
I’d suggest looking into cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques to ensure you are allotting an appropriate amount of time for sleep and to help you implement strategies that will address any arousal that might be making it more difficult for you to fall back to sleep when you wake.
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