[Brooklyngirl]

I go to bed at 10:30 PM and fall right asleep every night… For the past three weeks I have been waking up at 3 AM. I’ll get out of bed and read or watch TV and almost immediately I start to yawnand my eyes tear up. I wait about 20 minutes to a half an hour and go back to bed and as soon as I lay down I am wide awake again. How many time should I be repeating the cycle in the night? It feels like I could do it for five times until the sun comes up and never fall back to sleep. Should I just give up after one or two tries and stay up for the rest of the night?

[hiker]

I am not sure how to answer. I can say only that in my experience of “early morning insomnia” I have found it best to just get up rather than trying again and again to get back to sleep. Trying over and over can turn your bed into a battleground rather than a place of true rest.

Again, only in my experience, I also have found I can get up early, start yawning within a few minutes—but then I am wide awake once I get back into bed, because my anxiety about whether I’ll get back to sleep kicks in, so of course I can’t sleep.

It might be helpful to well, assume you will wake up in the middle of the night (suggest not checking the clock). And then you realize you are still tired, so you go back to bed. I know, easier said than done, but instead of thinking, omg, I have got to get back to sleep!, just say to yourself: you know what, I would rather get back to sleep, but if I don’t, I’ve been here before, it doesn’t mean the day has to be a disaster.

And when you still have some nights when you can’t get back to sleep, it’s not “oh no, this is back, it’s going to keep happening!, instead: what are you gonna do, nobody sleeps great every night.

If my advice sounds kind of breezy, it’s not intended to be. Just that I freaked out about not sleeping for the longest time, it doesn’t work and I would rather you don’t go down that road, too.

[Brooklyngirl]

Thank you so much for your thoughtful response and sound advice !

[Scott]

Hi @brooklyngirl!

Based on what you mentioned, it sounds like you’re having great success falling asleep quickly and achieving 5-6 hours of sleep each night! Middle of the night awakenings aren’t uncommon as most people experience brief moments of being awake between sleep cycles. Hiker makes very relevant points about our reactions to our awakenings and our association between those and our bed. Our sleep drive is diminished after about 5 hours of sleep which can make it more difficult to fall back asleep after waking in the middle of the night and if you become aroused during these awakenings, it can suppress your ability to fall back to sleep. The behaviors you describe – getting out of bed and doing something enjoyable – isn’t to generate sleep but to prevent the formation of a negative association between your bed and wakefulness.

How are you feeling the next day after having a 3am waking? Instead of clock watching when you wake, what happens if you simply return to bed when you are sleepy again?

Scott J

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