Deciding if I Should Get Up in the Middle of the Night

Many nights, I find myself catching the clock "in the middle of the night" between maybe midnight and 4 am. And many of those times, I really struggle to fall back asleep.

If I'm awake in 30 minutes, I'll get up

I've noticed I've started to do what feels like bartering between my body and the time on the wall.  I'll tell myself, "Okay, if I'm still awake in 30 minutes, I'm going to just get out of bed and do "x" activity (ie: go into another dimly lit room and read, go downstairs to watch the tv quietly, have a small snack, drink some extra water, etc). THEN I'll attempt to get back in bed and fall asleep."

Trying to reset my sleep cycle

During these times, my thoughts have centered around the idea that perhaps getting out of bed would enable my internal sleep clock to reset or sync with the actual time of day/night, and by then returning to the bed with the sole intention of closing my eyes and drifting off to dreamland, my body may believe I'm truly just trying to go to bed (ignoring the first round of bedtime which had happened hours earlier) and maybe, just maybe it would work!

Several nights, I may be tired enough to fall asleep fairly quickly after following my bedtime routine, but then I find myself waking up 2-3 hours later and I feel wide awake - like fully charged, ready to tackle the day ahead.

Waking up energized in the middle of the night

Except… the day is still several hours away, it’s pitch black outside, and my house is silent. Depending on my level of frustration, sometimes I’ve found it’s easier to just give in, to get up and jump into something “productive” or on my list of to-dos until I feel tired enough to get back into bed. However, this isn’t always the right move for me.

Other times, while the clock is ticking forward, I’ll turn on calming music or an audio meditation, put back on my weighted sleep mask, and hope that it doesn't take forever to fall back asleep.

Most of the time, though, I feel like I'm playing Let's Make a Deal between myself and the clock. If I fall back asleep quickly enough that I don't check the clock more than one or two times, that feels like a win for me, and sometimes means I can sleep straight through to morning. As I’m sure you can imagine, this is a huge relief for me.

Checking the clock every 10 minutes

But then, there are times like last night where I found myself lifting my eyeshades about every 10-15 minutes to check the time and see how long I'd been lying awake. That's when the bartering began. I felt really frustrated that my body wouldn’t just relax and that my brain wouldn’t allow me to fall asleep.

I honestly cried because sleeping is something that should be “so easy” and natural, and yet it’s been a battle for me for as long as I can remember.

Getting up to read myself back to sleep

Since I'd already waited through nearly an hour of restless time checks, I got up, made some tea, and sat down on the couch to read. I only made it through one chapter before my eyes started feeling heavy, and I was anxious to capitalize on that feeling in hopes that it would lull me back to sleep without much more frustration.

Rather than disrupt my body or my mind or whatever was happening, I curled up on the couch with a throw blanket and drifted off for a few extra hours of rest. It wasn’t good, solid sleep like if I had been in bed, and it didn’t last as long either. But it was better than nothing, and I was able to start the day in better shape than I would have had I not gotten those few extra hours of mediocre rest.

Finding the right balance

I feel like anyone who's struggled with a sleep disorder knows that, oftentimes, it feels impossible to be the right amount of tired at the right time (ie: too tired to stay awake in the afternoon, or too wired to fall asleep at night.) Since I've been struggling with this middle-of-the-night chapter most recently, I wanted to share how I decide whether I’m going to stay in bed for a while longer, trying to fall back asleep, or if getting up and giving myself a change of pace and scenery will reduce frustration and help my body return to an “appropriate” level of exhaustion.

I hope that by sharing some of what has worked for me, it will empower other community members to try a mental check-in with themselves before deciding how to handle middle-of-the-night wakeups.

Ultimately, I’ve found that sometimes the tossing and turning is necessary and the quickest way back to sleepland. But other times, it's agonizing and frustrating, and so much more helpful to get out of bed, to get out of the room, and to give myself grace until I’m able to return to bed and try again to sleep.

Have you ever experienced this? Has one tactic worked better for you than another?