I Hate 3:10 A.M.

It happened again last night. I woke up at 3:10 am with my mind racing, thinking about all the things I need to get done, and all the things that aren’t going well, and all the things that could go wrong, and all the problems I have to fix, and, and, and….

Sound familiar?

Early morning waking with worry can be a vicious cycle. You wake up, you start thinking about all the things you have to do or problems you have to fix, your stress response kicks in and your adrenaline starts to pump, and sleep goes out the window.  Then, lack of sleep can make you more anxious, which makes it more likely you’ll wake up early. So, you have a drink before bed to help you sleep, and that alcohol interrupts your sleep and you wake up early….

It looks like this:

How do we break this cycle?

Here are a few suggestions from the Sleep Foundation

• Breathing Exercises:  Slow deep breathing can help relax you and fight insomnia. Here are a couple you can try, or you can read my blog post Breathe for some techniques.
• Progressive muscle relaxation: Here you tense and relax your muscles one group at a time.  Start at your toes, tense for a count of 5 and relax for a count of 5. Then move up to your ankles and calves, tense for a count of 5 and relax for a count of 5. Keep working your way up the body. Johns Hopkins has a great video on progressive muscle relaxation that you can watch in 5 minutes here.
• Writing:   If you are waking up and worrying about tasks you have to do in the future, research suggests that writing before bed may help. Specifically, people who write a detailed to-do list outlining tasks they need to do have been found to fall asleep faster.

So if you’re like me and 3:10 am is not your friend, try the suggestions from the Sleep Foundations. I know I’m going to. After all, we all need our sleep in order to keep thriving!