Picture this: you’re sleeping blissfully, trying to get those eight hours of beauty rest, when all of a sudden you find yourself awake. Not just kind of awake, but full-blown, wide-eyed awake in the middle of the night. You toss and turn trying to get comfortable so you can sail back off into dreamland, but it just isn’t working.
Sound familiar?
Waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep is so annoying. Not only that, but it makes the coming morning even more difficult. Nothing makes it harder to get out of bed than being tired because you didn’t get enough sleep!
If you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night and having a hard time getting back to sleep, you are not alone. As it turns out, sleep disorders are pretty common, with 33 to 35% of adults experiencing insomnia symptoms.
This is what is known as sleep-maintenance insomnia, or the inability to stay asleep throughout an entire night. Aside from waking up at seemingly random times during the night, it can also make it difficult to fall back asleep after waking up.
Related: Do You Suffer From Chronic Sleep Deprivation? Here’s How to Tell, and What to Do About It
The Culprits
There are plenty of factors that could be robbing you of your precious beauty sleep. They can be related to lifestyle choices, health issues, or just your sleep environment. Let’s take a look.
Health Issues
There are many health issues that can cause or intensify insomnia. These are the factors that will likely need intervention from your doctor if they are interrupting your sleep.
- Depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders
- Sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, and other sleep disorders
- Cancer and cancer treatments
- Other conditions, such as lung disease, heart disease, nerve disorders
- Pain or discomfort, whether it is chronic or acute
- Hormonal changes
Aging can also lead to circadian rhythm changes. This could mean a shift in timing, duration, and quality.
Lifestyle Factors
The things you do during waking hours could have an impact on your sleep. Changing some of these habits and other lifestyle factors could improve your sleep.
- Consuming alcohol can reduce your sleep quality and lead to more sleep disruptions
- Nicotine, caffeine, and other stimulants can continue to disrupt sleep for hours after consumption
- Studies suggest that sedentary lifestyles and not getting enough exercise can increase sleep disruptions
- Using smartphones and other devices later in the evening can cause sleep problems, because light (and blue light especially) affects the circadian rhythm and can disrupt your sleep schedule
- Irregular schedules and working night shifts can have a big impact on sleep, and lead to frequent sleep disruptions
Environmental Factors
Your sleep environment can have a big impact on how much sleep you get! Out of all the factors that could be making it hard to stay asleep through the night, these are the easiest and quickest to fix.
- Light can have a negative impact on your sleep, even if it is very dim. This includes light coming through a window, night lights, and even your phone lighting up for a minute with a notification. Your body’s circadian clock responds to light and sees it as a signal to be awake.
- Noises – quiet or loud, sudden or ongoing background ones – can cause sleep disturbances, and even prompt the release of stress hormones. However, white noise can help some people sleep by masking other background noise.
- If your room is too hot or too cold, it can leave you uncomfortable and lead to sleep disturbances.
- Sharing a room with a partner, kids, or others can definitely cause you to wake up. This can be because of noise or physical touch, but some people sleep lighter with others nearby.
Tips for Getting Back to Sleep
Waking up unexpectedly can sometimes be unavoidable, depending on what is causing it. But these tips below might help you get back to sleep faster – instead of staring at the ceiling for hours.
Keep the Lights Off
Like I already mentioned, even a small amount of light can have a negative impact on your sleep. Our bodies are hardwired to see light as a signal to be awake, back from before artificial light existed. When the sun went down, it was a sign that it was time for sleep. Conversely, the sun coming up and bringing light was a sign to get up and moving.
Your circadian clock is most sensitive to light during the couple of hours before bedtime and throughout the night. So if you’re trying to go to sleep, turning the lights on is clearly the wrong move. Lights will disrupt your sleep cycle and make you more alert. Even if you need to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, do your best to get it all done without flipping the light switch.
Don’t Look at the Clock
I know from personal experience how hard it can be to avoid the clock in the middle of the night. After finding myself unexpectedly awake, the first thing I wonder is, “What time is it?” And after I’ve been laying there for a while, I start asking myself how long it’s been since I woke up.
This is a tough one, but you can’t let yourself look at the clock. Watching the minutes tick by is only going to stress you out, and stress is an archnemesis of sleep. Plus, sometimes just knowing that I don’t have much longer before I have to get up can make me kind of anxious or upset, more enemies of sleep.
Don’t Look at Your Phone, Either
You already shouldn’t be looking at your phone to see the time, but you can’t look at it for anything else, either. I know that it is tough, especially when you are just laying there with nothing to do. You might be tempted to check your notifications. Or, you might be tempted to pull out your e-reader and do some reading.
Related: Should You Be Wearing Blue Light Blocking Glasses?
No screens! All those blue light-emitting devices will definitely send your brain into alert mode. Of all light, blue light has the most impact on our internal clocks. It mimics the sun’s rays at the brightest part of the day.
Save the notifications, texts, emails, and social media for the morning. It will all still be there, I promise. If you think a little reading might help you relax and settle back to sleep, keep it old-school with a regular book, and keep the lighting to a minimum.
Try Breathing Exercises or Meditation
Breathing exercises may help you relax and calm your mind. They can also help distract you from being frustrated or stressed out about not being asleep. There are many different kinds of breathing exercises out there that you can try. The 4-7-8 method is one that involves four seconds of inhalation through the nose, holding the breath for seven seconds, and then exhaling through the mouth for eight seconds. Or, just do some slow, deep breathing. Some think this may activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is involved in relaxation and sleep.
Meditation may also be a good activity to turn to if you can’t fall back asleep. The practice may help you quiet your mind and body. Breathing patterns can sometimes be incorporated into some meditation techniques, as well.
Listen to Something Relaxing
When you can’t get back to sleep, listening to relaxing music or sounds can help you in two different ways.
The obvious perk is that it might help you relax, letting your mind unwind and drift back off to sleep. Try soft, relaxing music; white noise or sleep aid apps; even ASMR content can help. You may need to try out a few different things to see what works best. What works for you might not work for me, and vice versa.
Listening to relaxing music and sounds can also help block out background noises. This is especially helpful if those noises are what woke you up in the first place!
Get up and Move
It sounds counterintuitive, but you might need to get up in order to go back to sleep.
In theory, we could just stay in bed, keep our eyes shut, and force ourselves back to sleep. Unfortunately, that might not be working out so well, and it will just leave you feeling frustrated. If you’ve been doing that for a while, maybe 20 minutes or so, without any sleep, try getting up for a few minutes.
Take a leisurely stroll around the house, or sit in a comfortable chair in another room. You can use this time to listen to that relaxing music or read a chapter of a book. (Hey, still no screens though.) Calming activities like these can help prepare your mind to go back to sleep. It also helps distract your mind from racing thoughts that could be keeping you awake.
