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Awake! 3 Scenarios for Getting Back to Sleep in the Middle of the Night
We’ve all been there. We wake up at 3 AM to go to the restroom or check on a child or a phone we forgot to silence. And then we try to get back to sleep. Sometimes we can. Many times we can’t.
Our ineptitude might boil down to the moment that we say to ourselves, “Oh no, I’m awake. I’ll never get back to sleep.”
It’s downhill from there: the lists of things not done, the relationship gone sour, the excitement of a new project just begun. Active and alert, our minds can’t shut off. Prophecy fulfilled.
The thought —” I’ll never get back to sleep “— is pivotal — and worth examining. It’s a habit and, lucky for us, habits can be changed. And it’s not just the thought. It’s the bodily responses triggered by that thought — short breaths, rapid heart rate, and tightening muscles.
Cognitive behavior therapists call what we say to ourselves in such situations “scripts.” We have learned them so well that we barely know we have them.
Learning a new script isn’t automatic and involves some effort as we need to develop alternative scenarios. Perhaps the effort is why people reach for a sleeping pill. But unlike a pill, a new scenario won’t have harmful side effects.
