Do you often wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. with an intense feeling of anxiety? Do you get stressed that you’re awake and begin making a mental laundry list of everything you need to do the next day? Do you start thinking about fights you once had with your spouse or ponder how you have let yourself down in the past?

If so, you’re not alone. It’s common for people to wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. regularly and there’s a reason why we choose this time to catastrophize and worry. The good news is that there are some steps we can take to get through that awkward phase of the night so we can wake up refreshed.

Why the stress hits so hard at night

Many of us reliably wake up in the middle of the night because after we’ve had a good chunk of sleep, our bodies start to slowly prepare us for the day: melatonin, the hormone that puts us to sleep, has already peaked, and levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, begin increasing.

That biological phase of sleep is why we start to feel stressed.

After the big hormone release at 3 or 4 in the morning, if you are dealing with stress in your life, you are more likely to wake up. If your life is calmer and you don’t already have a stress baseline, you will probably........

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