You wake up in the middle of the night, stare at the clock, and feel that sinking panic as you realize you’re wide awake again—and tomorrow’s already starting to feel ruined.


If that’s you, this episode is for you.


As a functional sleep coach, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients who deal with these middle-of-the-night wakeups, and what makes this so frustrating isn’t just being awake—it’s not knowing why it keeps happening or what will actually help.


In this episode, I’m going to show you 3 ways to get back to sleep faster when this happens, and what you need to change long-term so you stop waking up in the middle of the night altogether.


Schedule a consultation to get started with the Complete Sleep Solution program so you can consistently sleep 7+ hours uninterrupted, naturally and permanently. https://p.bttr.to/3VJwvDs



Episode Transcript


[00:00:00] You wake up in the middle of the night, stare at the clock, and feel that sinking panic as you realize you're wide awake again, and tomorrow's already starting to feel ruined. If that's you, this episode is for you. As a functional sleep coach, I've worked with hundreds of clients who deal with these middle of the night wake up, and what makes it so frustrating isn't just being awake.


It's not knowing why you're awake or what will actually help. In this episode, I'm going to show you three ways to get back to sleep faster when this happens and what you need to change long term, so you stop waking up in the middle of the night altogether. We'll walk through what's really triggering these wake up.


What to do when you find yourself awake at two or 3:00 AM and how to fix the underlying issue. So sleep stops feeling like a nightly battle. All right, let's get into it. It's 3:00 AM. You're exhausted. You did everything right, all the right [00:01:00] things you're supposed to do before bed, and your brain just turned on and it's racing, and you are wired even though you're exhausted.


This is the most common pattern I see with my clients, and this was what was happening to me as well when I was struggling with sleep. So my insomnia started in late pregnancy, but it didn't go away even after my son was born, even after he was sleeping through the night, even after I became a pediatric sleep consultant to help other people with their baby sleep.


I realized once he was sleeping through the night that I still had sleep issues, and I would wake up at that 3:00 AM time every night like clockwork, even though I was so tired and I couldn't fall back asleep until almost 6:00 AM which is when my son was waking up for the day. So I struggle with this for two years, trying to do all the right things.


I was a [00:02:00] nutritionist. I was working in the supplement industry, so I tried every supplement under the sun and nothing really helped. I. It wasn't until I found out why my body was waking up at that time and learned how to fix those things that I was able to sleep through the night again. Or what actually happens to me is that I still do wake up.


I go to the bathroom, I don't know what time it is, and I go back to bed and fall right back asleep and wake up feeling great in the morning. So the problem isn't necessarily the wake up. It's not being able to go back to sleep after you wake up. Right?


Now, I also remember just feeling so desperate when I was waking up. I remember crying in the middle of the night a couple nights because I just wanted to sleep so badly and I couldn't figure out why I was awake. And so this is what I learned. Is [00:03:00] causing these wake up, and this might not be surprising to you or it might be, but it has to do with our stress hormone cortisol most of the time.


So the body should not be releasing cortisol at night. Sometimes it does when it's stressed and when there's inflammation. And so whenever your body releases cortisol, it's going to give you energy, it's going to make your mind race, and when that's happening in the middle of the night, it's going to wake you up.


So once I learned it was that, then it's like, okay, what can we do to lower cortisol at night? So that's where we get into the three strategies I want to tell you about, and then how we actually need to fix this long term. So the first strategy I wanna talk about, you might have heard of this before, especially if you've done CBTI for insomnia, but it worked for me and for many of my clients to help me get more [00:04:00] sleep.


It didn't necessarily solve or keep me from waking up at 3:00 AM but I was able to fall back asleep so much faster, and that is getting out of bed. And I know this is so hard, you know, it's because we want to. We're comfortable in bed. We are hoping that we're gonna be able to fall back asleep, but most of the time we just end up lying there, tossing and turning for hours and then your brain loses that association, that bed equals sleep.


This is why I recommend getting outta bed, going and doing something relaxing, keeping the lights dim so you don't wanna be on your phone, on screens, watching tv, anything like that. For me, I would always read, I would read my Kindle paper White, so it's, I'm not very bright, and I would read until I felt sleepy again, and then go back to bed.


So again, this didn't stop me from waking up at 3:00 AM or from being awake. But it [00:05:00] helped me go back to sleep so much faster, and so a lot of my clients have told me the same thing, that it helps them go back to sleep faster. Now, it's okay if you've tried this and it hasn't worked for you. It's not for everyone.


There are no hard, fast rules that are going to work for every single person. So you know, I have, many of my clients also are like, I've tried that, it doesn't work, I don't like it. I get more alert. And so then I don't recommend that they do it right. Like my goal as the coach is to figure out what's going to work for them.


So this is okay if it doesn't work for you, but I do recommend trying it for a week because it's probably not gonna work the first night. You might be up and down and back and forth if you're, you know, waiting to go back to bed until you feel sleepy again. And that's normal. But sometimes at the third, the fourth night is when your brain finally gets it, okay?


When I get back in bed, I'm going back to sleep. So do give it a week. Don't just give it one [00:06:00] night and say it doesn't work. But this can really help too, because it's a distraction, right? So I think when we're lying in bed, I know for me, I would start wondering, okay, why is this happening? What am I doing wrong?


I'm gonna feel so tired tomorrow. And all of those thoughts are just creating more stress and anxiety that are going to make the body release more cortisol, which is not going to help you go back to sleep. So it's kind of, you know, two things in that, okay, we're removing ourselves from the bed if we aren't sleeping, and also then we're going to distract ourselves with something boring and tiring.


That will help us feel sleepier faster, help the body be able to clear that cortisol faster, so then you can go back to sleep faster. Now the second strategy that you may not have heard of, and this might seem a little woo woo, but it has really helped me and quite a few of my clients as [00:07:00] well, and this is called Tapping or EFT, which stands for Emotional Freedom Technique.


So this is where you tap on certain acupressure points around your face, and studies show this lowers cortisol. It lowers our stress hormones, it lowers that stress response. And so I have found it to just be really helpful. And sometimes I do this if I'm stressed and I'm having a hard time falling asleep as well.


So, you know, these things can also be done anytime, not just in the middle of the night, but. If I go to bed, or if I do wake up in the middle of the night and I just feel wired, like I can tell that my mind is racing. You know, I'm not in this relaxed state even though I want to be sleeping. So I again get outta bed and go do this tapping.


I actually interviewed an EFT expert and we went through a couple of [00:08:00] sequences to do specifically about sleep, so I will link to that episode in the show notes so that you can watch that as well. But I. It's crazy how when I sit down and I start tapping, I start yawning almost immediately. And that can mean that you're releasing things as well.


But I just start feeling sleepy right away. And it helps when you're first starting out to follow someone's sequence. But now that I've done it a lot over the years for many different things, not just for sleep, um, I find that I can just kind of talk. I just talk, like, I just kind of get everything out to me.


It's a nice alternative to journaling. I don't want to get up and turn on light and write a bunch of stuff in the middle of the night. It's just not my thing. I find it so much easier to talk, so I kind of, if I'm wired about something, I'm like, I'm wired. This is what I'm wired about and then I kind of get it all out and then I start saying, and I'm just letting it go right now.


It's time to go to bed. It [00:09:00] is time to relax. I'm letting this go till tomorrow and it probably only takes a few minutes, and then I get up and go back to bed and usually fall asleep pretty quickly after that. So this is an amazing strategy, even though it might seem a little out there. Now if tapping does seem a little too out there for you and you don't want to try that yet, then there's always breath work that you can do.


And there are lots of techniques. I'm not gonna get into details here. There's a lot of information out there about different breath work. My favorite is to keep it really simple and anytime our exhales are longer than our inhales, we're calming the nervous system. We're telling our nervous system that it is okay that we are safe, and so that's why.


The different kinds of breath work you can do, whether it's box breathing or 3, 4, 7 or whatever it is. Usually the exhale is longer than the inhale. And [00:10:00] so I'll start off by maybe inhaling for four counts and then exhaling for six, and then I'll increase it to eight, and then maybe I inhale for five counts and exhale for 10 counts.


And again, this is going to literally help lower cortisol. It's going to calm the nervous system. So the goal isn't necessarily with this to just fall asleep immediately. It's to calm down, is to help your body clear cortisol so that then you can sleep. 'cause when the body and mind are calm, then you can sleep.


So I will say these strategies can be very helpful, but they aren't a long-term solution, right? They are helping you be able to go back to sleep faster, which is huge 'cause you can get more sleep and feel a lot better the next day. But they aren't solving the problem of, okay, why are you waking up at 3:00 AM in the first place?


Why is your body re releasing cortisol at 3:00 AM when it shouldn't be? And they, this is actually a signal [00:11:00] that something is off, that your body is stressed. And we all, when we think of stress, we think of mental stress, right? And it's true. If you're super busy all day long and then try to lie down and go to sleep, it's going to be hard.


But you know, many of my clients are working on managing that stress. They have a relaxing bedtime routine. That's not the issue. It's because there are imbalances in the body that are causing it to release cortisol in the middle of the night. And so some of those things can be being on the blood sugar roller coaster.


When that's happening all day, that's gonna continue into the night. And whenever blood sugar drops too low, guess what? Your body releases cortisol. 'cause then cortisol tells the body to release glucose into the cells, which raises your blood sugar again, but it's also going to wake you up. Um, things like not being able to detox well.


Having pathogens in the gut that are most active at night. [00:12:00] So there are many different reasons why the body might be releasing cortisol at night, even low estrogen and progesterone, especially for women in perimenopause. Um, but also men can have these hormone imbalances too, and depleted sex hormones that can directly affect sleep.


So the goal is to find out why your body's releasing cortisol and fix those things. That's the long-term solution. Then you either sleep all through the night or you do what I do. You still wake up, go to the bathroom, and then go right back to sleep. If you're someone who desperately wants to sleep, but night after night, your body just won't cooperate and you're ready to fix it from a natural health first perspective.


Maybe you're exhausted, frustrated, and tired of guessing what's wrong or trying things that only work for a week or two before the problem comes right back. What if instead, you could finally understand why your body isn't sleeping and have a clear personalized [00:13:00] path to fixing it? That's exactly why I offer a free sleep, better consultation.


This call is a chance for us to get to know each other. Talk through what's been going on with your sleep and health and see if I can help you. I'll answer your questions and if it makes sense, we'll talk about what it could look like to work together inside my Complete Sleep Solution program where we focus on finding and fixing the underlying imbalances that are keeping you awake, typically in six months or less.


So if you're ready to stop guessing and start addressing the real reasons you're waking up, head to the link in the show notes and book the free consultation. And if you want to learn more about the imbalances in your body that are causing it to release cortisol and causing you to wake up at night, you want to watch the next video called Silent Sleep Robbers.


Five Hidden Imbalances, keeping You Awake.

Listen and follow: Apple Podcasts · Spotify