Getting sleep as an essential part of life. However sometimes their interruptions that cause us to wake up in the middle of the night. This is known as wake after sleep onset, or WASO. Sleep quality is as important as sleep quantity. If you are waking up repeatedly throughout the middle of the night and you are not going to get the good sleep that you need. It is recommended that adults receive 7 to 8 hours of sleep period this does not just count as time in the bed but it also counts as actual time sleeping. So if you're in the bed for eight hours, but you wake up repeatedly throughout the middle of the night calm and then you are actually only getting maybe 6 to 7 hours of sleep. This can be detrimental over the long term as it can lead to mental health disturbances, mood disturbances, excessive daytime sleepiness, among other symptoms of sleep deprivation.
Therefore if you do wake up in the middle of the night, whether that's due to a baby crying or some other interruption, it's important that you learn how to fall back asleep. Here are 8 tips for how to fall back asleep after you wake up in the middle of the night.
Keep the room dark
When you wake up after falling asleep, it can be tempting to turn the lights on and begin walking around. However, this is the last thing that you want to do. Your brain operates on exposure to light. So, if you expose your eyes to light then it will signal to your brain that it's daytime and not time to go back to sleep period that's all you want to keep it dark so that way your brain continues secreting melatonin, a sleep hormone that is controlled by the eyes’ exposure to light. Therefore when you wake up in the middle of the night, it's essential that you keep the room dark and do something very mundane that doesn't expose into a lot of light. This can help your brain continues to creating the hormone that you need, and help you get back to sleep in no time.
Avoid blue light
Blue light is a type of light that is emitted from our electronics and devices. The issue with blue lights is that it is the same wavelength of light that is emitted from the sun. The sun triggers your brain that it's time to wake up. Therefore, if your brain receives exposure to blue light from getting on your phone or device in the middle of the night when you wake up, then your brain may interpret that light as sunlight and start to wake your body up for the day. This is why it's important that when you wake up in the middle of the night, do not get on your phones and devices.
Try guided breathing for relaxation
Sometimes when we wake up in the middle of the night, it is because we are just too anxious to go to sleep period maybe there is something on our mind or something that we are ruminating over that is keeping us from falling asleep. Sometimes we have dreams that are so anxiety provoking, that they wake us up in the middle of the night. Even nightmares have this effect of interrupting our sleep if they are too troublesome. It's important to reduce your sympathetic nervous system in the middle of the night when it is jacked up by a bad dream or anxiety for the next day.
That is where guided relaxation breathing techniques can come into play. There are plenty of videos and sounds on YouTube, and apple music, and Spotify, all over the Internet. But they guide you through breathing exercises that help relax your body so that way you can go to sleep. Sleeping requires your body to be in a state of relaxation, and it cannot do this if you are stressed and worried about things. That's why guided breathing is able to relax your body enough so that way you are able to finally go to sleep.
Don't look at the time
When you wake up in the middle of the night it can be tempting to turn over and see what time is on the clock. However you don't want to do this as this can be anxiety provoking. Especially if you are lying there for a very long time and are unable to go to sleep, you may begin to get anxious about how tired you are going to be for the next day. It's important to just lie there, think about positive and calming thoughts, and try your best to relax enough to go to bed. Checking the time will do the opposite of that and only make falling asleep harder.
Keep it boring and dark
If you are unable to go to sleep, then it is not a good idea to just continue lying there in bed. When you do that, you associate your bed with the place that you are unable to sleep in your brain. You want to do the opposite, and make sure that your bed is associated with a good night's rest. The only way to do this is to make sure that you only lie in the bed right before you're about to fall asleep. So if you find yourself lying in bed for about an hour without dozing off, then it's important to get up out of bed and go do something else.
However when you do this you want to make sure that that other activity is not overly stimulating. The whole goal here is to get yourself tired enough to go back to bed and finally fall asleep. This means that whatever activity that you do has to be boring and it has to be done in very low light or even the dark period do not start walking around cleaning because that is too stimulating. Activities like reading a book with a night light, something super non-interesting like the manual to the refrigerator, is going to be your best bet for getting back to sleep.
Try progressive muscle relaxation
Progressive muscle relaxation is another relaxation exercise that you can try to help you go to bed when you wake up in the middle of the night. This is a meditation technique that consists of you progressively tensing and then relaxing muscles in your body and the continuous fashion. The best place to start is in your toes.You lie there and scrunch your toes up as tight as you can. Then you will take a deep breath and relax your toes all the way. Continue doing this working your way up your body.
Go to your legs then to your hips, then to your abdomen, all the way up until you're scrunching your eyebrows as tight as you can and trying to relax them. The whole goal of this is to build up tension as much as you can, and then relax your muscles all the way. Not only is this exercise relaxing for your body, it's also something that is low intensity and low stimulating. You may fall right asleep before you're even able to get all the way up to your head.
Use imagery to get rid of your worries
Sometimes it's hard for us to stay asleep because we are so anxious about the next day. Therefore if this is the problem that you are struggling with, it would be in your best interest to visualize all of your worries disappearing. This may be easier said than done, but activities like writing your worries down on a piece of paper next to you could even help with just getting the ideas out of your mind and somewhere else for you to deal with the next day. Many times the things that we are concerned about are harder to figure out when we are tired.
Therefore, it may be a better idea to just try and get a good night's rest, as the solution will often present itself the next day. So, throughout the night just keep reminding yourself that you are not going to solve the problem right there in the middle of the bed at 3:00 AM, and that is better for you to put your worries to the side because you will be able to solve them the next day, or at least come up with a decent solution for the meantime. You can either do this by just repeating that message to yourself over and over, or you can do this by actually visualizing your worries melting away, fading away, going somewhere in the dark, just use imagery to your advantage to picture your worries no longer being an issue for you anymore.
Determine the cause
A root cause analysis in medicine as a practice where a quality control specialist determines the actual cause of a problem instead of just addressing the problem and its consequences. And that is what you should be doing to fix your sleep. Not being able to sleep is a problem, and how tired you are the next day is the consequence. However it's better to go all the way to the root and figure out why exactly are you not sleeping instead of just trying to figure out how to go back to sleep.
Think about your day, and if there was something that was overly upsetting or something about the next day that's causing you issues. If this is a long-term problem, think about when the problem first started and if there was any major change in your life around that time period really dig deep and figure out what exactly is the reason that you are not sleeping so you can address that instead of just the fact that you're not sleeping. It may even be good to do a little bit of therapy maybe you need help figuring out exactly what the problem is.
If you have trouble going to sleep, then please click the orange button below to take a free online sleep test and talk with one of our sleep health professionals.
https://www.verywellmind.com/fall-back-asleep-fast-with-these-tips-5219514