The world is filled with frightening things—jellyfish and hair loss, for instance. While waking up in the middle of the night isn’t the best time to dwell on these fears, many of us find ourselves wide awake at 3 AM, pondering how we might have to pee on ourselves if we get stung in the ocean. Or is that just me?
If this resonates with you, here’s something important to know: urine doesn’t actually help with jellyfish stings, so you might as well go back to sleep. More importantly, waking up around 3 or 4 AM is quite common. In fact, most of us wake up several times during the night without even realizing it—unless we spiral into worry.
Throughout the night, we cycle through several stages of sleep. Each cycle starts with light sleep, transitioning into deeper slow-wave sleep, followed by the more active rapid eye movement (REM) phase. After REM, it’s normal to wake up briefly before dozing off again.
This entire cycle takes about four hours. So, if you usually go to bed around 11 PM, it’s likely you’ll find yourself awake around 3 AM. Ideally, this interruption should be brief, but if negative thoughts creep in, you might end up wide awake and unable to return to sleep.
In other words, stress doesn’t necessarily cause us to wake up in the night, but it can turn our momentary arousals into full-blown crises. What’s more, we tend to be less rational in our nocturnal ruminations than we are during the day, which is why our problems always seem so much more formidable at 3am.According to psychologist and cognitive therapist Greg Murray, this is because we know that there’s nothing we can actually do to solve an issue at this time of the night. During the day, we can be proactive about dealing with certain problems, but at night all we are able to do is worry – and that’s exactly what our minds tend to do.Offering a solution, Murray recommends practicing mindfulness meditation, whereby focusing on one’s breath or senses helps to quieten the mind and reduce our chances of getting swept away by a worry-cane. With any luck, this should help you get back to sleep, although if all else fails, Murray suggests reading a book to help take your mind off those jellyfish.
