What Is The Reason Some People Keep Waking Up At 3am Every Night?

The world is full of terrifying things,  jellyfish and hair loss, just to name two. And while 3 am isn’t exactly the ideal time to start panicking about them, that’s when many of us find ourselves wide awake, wondering if we’d really have to pee on ourselves after a jellyfish sting. Or is that just me?

If this sounds familiar, then the first thing you need to know is that urine doesn’t actually help with jellyfish stings, so you might as well just go back to sleep. More to the point, though, it’s actually pretty normal to wake up at three or four in the morning. In fact, most of us wake up several times a night, we just aren’t really aware of it unless we happen to tumble down a rabbit hole of worry.

During the course of a night, we all go through several sleep cycles. Each of these begins with light sleep, which then gives way to a deeper slumber as we enter slow-wave sleep. Following this, we enter the more active phase known as rapid eye movement (REM), after which we are highly likely to wake up before falling asleep again.

This whole process takes around four hours, which means if you typically go to bed around 11pm, you should expect to find yourself conscious again at 3-ish. Ideally, this brief interruption won’t last more than a few moments, but if you happen to get trapped in a negative thought spiral then you could find yourself wide awake and unable to get back to sleep.

In other words, stress doesn’t necessarily cause us to wake up in the night, but it can turn our momentary arousals into full-blown crises. What’s more, we tend to be less rational in our nocturnal ruminations than we are during the day, which is why our problems always seem so much more formidable at 3am.

According to psychologist and cognitive therapist Greg Murray, this is because we know that there’s nothing we can actually do to solve an issue at this time of the night. During the day, we can be proactive about dealing with certain problems, but at night all we are able to do is worry - and that’s exactly what our minds tend to do.

Offering a solution, Murray recommends practicing mindfulness meditation, whereby focusing on one’s breath or senses helps to quieten the mind and reduce our chances of getting swept away by a worry-cane. With any luck, this should help you get back to sleep, although if all else fails, Murray suggests reading a book to help take your mind off those jellyfish.

An earlier version of this story was published in January 2025.