Guide Your 3 a.m. Brain

Contributed by: Ginger Rothhaas, Compassion Fix

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and your brain starts a failure debrief meeting? Past regrets...future worries...things I’m afraid I will forget to do...things I did that I shouldn’t have...things I didn’t do that I should have. This used to happen to me a lot, usually around 3 a.m. I would be lying in bed, asleep, and then wake up just enough for an alarm to sound inside my head. My brain was up and at ’em: “time to list everything we’re worried about!”

When you wake up in the middle of the night, often it triggers anxious thinking. We’ve all been there—our bodies exhausted and our brains in overdrive. There is actually a biological reason for this. Here’s the neuroscience behind waking up in the middle of the night: when you awake, your amygdala—your brain’s “fear center”—gets triggered and goes into “fight or flight” mode. Which was useful millions of years ago, when a bear may have wandered into our cave. Not so much now, though.

When triggered, our brains turn to the nearest fear risk: often, the anxieties and worst-case scenarios stored elsewhere in the brain. It runs through that list in an attempt to keep us safe.

And there we lie, thoughts racing, wide awake.

Understanding why your brain is racing is the first step toward helping to quiet down.

Remind yourself: “nothing good happens in my brain at 3 a.m.” You are not going to experience positive thinking. That’s not how we are programmed.

What you can do, though, is have a plan in place. Have something ready to help manage that busy brain. Give it something more productive to work on. Guide your 3 a.m. brain - here are some examples:

• I'm going to do some deep breathing.

• I’m going to make a list of my favorite songs (or movies, TV shows, etc.).

• I’m going to relive a favorite vacation.

• I’m going to start planning a fun project.

• I’m going to think about what I can do tomorrow to have a good day.

• I'm going to talk to my higher power.

Ideally, your plan should be something you can do while lying in bed so that you can drift off back to sleep. Be gentle with yourself: it may take some time to quiet that impulse in your brain.

Write yourself a note and put it by your bedside as a reminder before you go to sleep: “nothing good happens in my brain at 3 a.m.” Then, if you wake up, you might read it and stop the negative thoughts before they begin. With a plan in place, we can quiet our beautiful brains that are trying so hard to protect us.

You deserve inner peace. To achieve it, we each have to learn to work with our complex brains. You are the driver of where your brain goes. Take it to peaceful places, not scary ones.

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Ginger Rothhaas, MBA, MDiv. is a seminary trained compassion coach who teaches about compassion at the intersection of neuroscience and spirituality. She is the founder of Compassion Fix Coaching, and she has written a book of mental health practices coming out in Fall 2023 titled Being Human: 150 Practices to Make it Easier. She lives in Kansas City with her husband, their two teenage children, and two very enthusiastic dogs.

You can find Ginger at:

Websites: gingerrothhaas.com, compassionfix.com

Facebook and Instagram: @gingerrothhaas and @compassionfix