So lately I (37F) have been waking up at around 5-5:30 am no matter how late i went to bed the night before. I wake up anxious, check the time, fall back asleep until I have to wake up again at around 7. Almost every morning for a couple months now. I do have a bit of stress at work but I wouldn’t say it’s more than the usual (maybe it built up, not sure). I eat healthy enough and get 3 cups of coffee a day max, last one at around 3 pm. Have an office job. I exercise 2-3 times a week most weeks. I live alone and sometimes my partner visits. The waking up is independent of whether I sleep alone or next to him. My mattress is really good and I use ergonomic pillows. What am I missing? Anybody else have or had this issue? Have you fixed it?
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Perimenopause
When you wake up all anxious, what is the anxiety about? You don’t have to answer here, just for you to think about. Is it anything that’s going on currently? Do you have a lot of things you need to do? Are you procrastinating something?
Normally if I wake up anxious during the night it’s because there’s stuff going on that I need to take care of, or concerns about things I can’t change (not much we can do about those).
Maybe try to reduce the coffees to 1 – 2 a day and see how it goes.
It can also be because it’s Summer (if you’re in the northern hemisphere). I tend to wake up with the first morning light in the Summer even with blackout curtains.
This happens to me intermittently. If you look up first sleep, second sleep this is a sort of normal thing. I don’t fully understand it.
It generally happens to me at times of hyper focus when my mind races about whatever I’ve been doing the last few days or if I am hungry. Eating carbs seems to help my sleep.
Usually mine happens for a few days and then passes. Exercise also helps.
You might want to check out the book Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Exercising twice a week is not enough to complete the stress cycle. You need 20-60 minutes of exercise daily to manage stress. The book goes over other ways to complete the stress cycle as well.
Three cups of coffee a day is likely too much. I wake up at 3am if I have more than one cup regardless of when.
I do this at 32 but don’t get back to sleep again 😩
A helpful approach is not to panic about it when it happens. I try to view it as a little nice time for me. I always make sure I get up. Then I like to make a cup of tea, get a blanket and watch the most comforting and quiet slow TV show I can (UK based so Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing is my cure) or sit in the garden and breathe for a bit. Being up sort of grounds you and makes problems seem more realistic. The worst thing is to stay in bed and continue worrying and getting more and more anxious and trying to force sleep again.
Just cut off that 3pm coffee at noon and see if it makes a difference. Drop from 3 cups to 2 cups. You may be becoming more sensitive to caffeine.
This is a shot in the dark but maybe get a blood test to check your iron levels? Low iron can cause anxiety and sleep issues
I’ve heard this is perimenopause although idk because I’ve done it my whole life.
That’s right around the time the sun starts rising, maybe try black out curtains to see if the sun is waking you.
Yeah, I’m on anxiety medication, and have 2 others I can take as needed. One is a benzo, the other isn’t.
When I started having early morning anxiety, I start taking the non-benzo on a schedule for a while.
I take Gabapentin for this problem.
I had this from the age of 40. Was perimenopause. A common symptom apparently but it’s horrible!
Hello, I am writing this at 5:26 AM, and I’m racked with anxiety!
This will stop when I’m no longer stressed out with work, my kid’s schooling, and the condition of my house. So I estimate I will finally calm the fuck down some time next week.
When I’m like this, I need to exercise to tire myself. And I calm my brain by counting or small meditations.
I agree with others about cutting out the 3pm coffee if possible. If you look at your phone before bed, I also recommend replacing that with a book. I used to wake up panicky too and that went away when I stopped with the phone ~an hour before sleep!
I had awful anxiety with perimenopause, it wrecked my life. I found 5htp helped a lot, some people have issues with it so do your own research and take a lot less than the recommended dosage which seems way too high to me. It started upsetting my stomach so I switched to L-theanine which helps my anxiety and stress. I only take a tablet when required so probably a couple a month. Both are amino acids. 5HTP is a precursor to building serotonin, L-theanine is not a direct precursor to serotonin but increases levels of serotonin in the brain, which then promotes the production of melatonin for sleep and relaxation. Not sure if you can take either of these if you are on SSRIs.
Your cortisol is spiking
yes. it sucks and im sorry it’s happening to you. not perimenopause in my case, this just happens in generally anxious/stressful periods in my life (it’s actually a good sign im more stressed at that moment than i realize!) and has been like this for years. the things that help:
if i’m anxious about a task, just get out of bed and do the task (for me, this is usually writing/research/work). it’s way better to be a little tired all day than to wake up and stew in the anxiety soup.
regular exercise every day. little bits. even just a walk outside. every. day.
no caffeine after noon
therapy
reading books/listening to calming podcasts or music in the evening and in the morning
no phone for 1-2 hours after wake up
it’s not glamorous but the above gets the job done and gets me through the days/weeks/months where i’m plagued with the anxiety wake up.
Honestly this is a related to a medical issue for me. I think my issue is relatively obscure but if you follow up on the suggestions that are more common and you’re still having problems, it might be worth looking into. Trazodone has worked wonders for me.
I often wake up anxious but can’t place the cause and i think it’s following a stressful dream.
I have this but I have anxiety disorder and getting on meds is slowly helping.
But non medicated things to do –
Before bed – tell yourself outloud that it’s normal to have anxiousness about things going on in your life, but there’s nothing to fix or solve in the middle of the night and that you allow yourself sleep so that you will be rested to tackle it. It’s cheesy but it does work speaking outloud for brain rewiring by calming the amygdala response.
You can do things to calm down your parasympathetic nervous system. Sighing actually does help and some slow breaths before bed. You can also combine this with EFT body tapping where you tap in parts of your body that helps with vagus nerve responses. I kinda massage my face where theres stress pressure points and stretch a bit before bed too.
When you wake up just remind yourself outloud the above that there’s nothing to do about it right now and it’s ok to rest so we’re going back to sleep. I actually struggle to fall back asleep but since you can then you will at least have an easier time to bounce back in until eventually it can stop.
I’ve gone from walking up 3-4 hours after falling asleep to about 6 hours of sleep sometimes 7 so it’s slowly getting there.
I dealt with this for about a year. I’d wake up with knots in my stomach, sweating, heart racing, for seemingly no reason. It’s mostly gone now but it crops back up when I’m not managing my anxiety very well.
For me, honestly I tried everything but the only thing that got rid of it long term was getting a handle on my anxiety. Even then, it took a few weeks to a few months to go away completely once I felt better. One thing that helped, weirdly, was playing a mindless phone game for 10 minutes when I woke up. I know thats not the best habit but it helped occupy my mind while my body calmed down a little. If you have some time in the morning, a nice morning ritual would be getting some sunlight immediately when you wake up. Either sit on the porch for a few minutes or go for a quick walk. That helped me a great deal when I had more time than I do now.
This happens to me when I either 1. don’t eat enough overall or 2. don’t eat enough carbs. My life stress plays basically zero role, it’s 100% my body being like “feeeeeed me”. I have a bedtime snack full of protein, carbs, fiber, and fats and it’s helped a lot.
This isn’t the only cause, but it is really common for women to not consume enough calories so it might be worth seeing if a little snack helps.
37F here. Having a consistent bedtime and not looking at screens 30 mins before going to the bed helped me immensely. I used to wake up at 2am every day and having some discipline around sleep helped a ton.