Why do I wake up at 3am?

You wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, brain feeling way too alert. A glance at the clock shows 3am… again. You try to fall back asleep, but it’s like the night has ended even though there’s hours left until the alarm. 

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This happens so often, that it’s one of the most asked questions in my practice. It even has a name - sleep maintenance insomnia.

The biology: what’s happening in your body

What’s really happening is that your body is moving into the second part of sleep. By the time it’s 3am, you’ve probably had several hours of rest. Sleep is always deepest at the start, and becomes lighter towards the morning. 

Around this time your stress hormones start to rise and sleep hormone fades. You might also be completing a sleep cycle around that time, which naturally brings a short awakening. It’s normal and it happens to everyone. 

Together all this means that the 3am is biologically fragile and even smaller stressors can wake you and make it difficult to fall back asleep.

The psychology: what your mind’s doing

What is your reaction when you realize it’s 3 am - again. You panic.

We start to think about how many hours we still have until the alarm, and then anger or anxiety follows when we think about how difficult the day is gonna be with less sleep. What this does is puts your body into stress mode, the fight or flight.

The only challenge is that wakefulness in the middle of night is not a lion that you can hide from. With all the stress hormones flooding your blood, it’s almost impossible to fall asleep, because your mind is now going at 100 kilometers per hour.

And this creates an insomnia loop. A wake up is followed by strong emotions, that starts the stress response, which cannot allow you to sleep. Because nobody sleeps when they’re fighting with a lion…

What happens over time is this: by looking at the clock every time we wake up, we teach our brain to wake around this time on its own. For most of us time is very important information. We structure our days, weeks and months based on time.

So doing something (like unintentionally waking up) and pairing it with something we find important (looking at the time), teaches our brain that this is a crucial thing to do. And so, our brilliant mind does what we tell it to - no questions asked.

So why are you waking up at 3am?

First and foremost - it’s your reaction. A very uncomfortable truth is - we don’t have any direct control over sleep. It’s a passive biological function, just like digestion. Just because you really want it to happen, it won’t. You might have a tasty lunch and then decide you want to go for a run with a friend right after it. Just because you ask your stomach to digest faster - it won’t.

So we can only create an environment that supports sleep or hinders it. When we react with fear and put effort into sleep we tell our brain: wakefulness is dangerous. Danger means stress response. And over time - insomnia.

Another crucial sleep ingredient is not enough sleep ‘hunger’ (aka sleep drive). The longer you’re awake, the sleepier you’re gonna feel. So if you woke up less than 16 or 17 hours ago, chances are - your body is just not ready for sleep. If you manage to fall asleep, the weaker sleep drive will likely make you wake up at night.

If you feel that these two bits are under control, it’s very likely that your nervous system is operating in hyperarousal. This means that throughout the day you might be more tense than relaxed. Unfortunately, our bodies are not made for that. And so an active day might roll into the night and make your sleep fragmented. The only way out is then working on what you do in the day and how you react to all that is happening.

Final thoughts

In short, wakefulness is not a problem. What we do when we wake up - is. Rumination, checking the clock and effort to fall asleep are the culprits. This means that there is nothing wrong with your body - it simply works in the way that it’s told. Until we remove the brakes and sleep can happen again naturally. And this is good news, because if your body learned something, it can also re-learn.

So if you’re stuck in this 3am loop—exhausted, frustrated, and wondering if this is just how your nights will be—know this: your body isn’t broken. It’s responsive. And it can be retrained.

If you want help breaking this cycle, you can keep exploring my blog. I share stories, insights, and honest answers from working with insomnia over the past couple of years—and living through it myself.