The One Thing to Avoid if You Wake in the Night
There are many sleep issues people face, but one that comes up time and time again when people are seeking help, is a problem with waking in the middle of the night.
The good news is, if this is a problem you’re facing, and you find yourself waking up and struggling to fall back to sleep, there’s a simple thing you can avoid that will help to begin fixing the issue. Staying in bed.
It may seem counterintuitive, but there are three key reasons why staying in bed when you wake in the middle of the night can be a real problem for your sleep.
It’s really difficult to stay in bed awake in the middle of the night and not find things to start ruminating on or worrying about. Whether this is things that have happened in the past, or things that you worry are going to happen, this can leave you feeling in a low mood. This is all because the middle of the night is not a very good time for having rational thoughts. It’s dark, you’re isolated, and you can feel very alone.
If you start to spend lots of time awake in bed, you will begin to associate your bed with being awake, not asleep. In fact, your bed itself will become a cue to be awake. This is because, by frequently staying in bed awake at night, you’re actually teaching your body that night time is a time to be awake, not asleep.
You will find yourself wanting to check the time. This is a problem because if you check the time when you’re awake in the middle of the night, you’ll actually be programming yourself to wake up the same time every night. This usually triggers another chain of anxious thinking because you’ve realised that it’s late and you’ve not had enough sleep, so you’ll begin to worry about how you will feel and cope tomorrow.
So, in short, if you find yourself waking in the night, the best thing you can do is get up! This will help to avoid building a negative link with bed and sleep. If you can’t drift back off to sleep when you wake, simply get up and go to another room, read a book, or do something you enjoy, and then when you’re feeling sleepy again, head back to bed.
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