Why is it that those emails you haven’t answered, that text you meant to send, and that one thing you said that came off awkward and ungrateful decide to throw a raging party in your head at 3:00 am? They hang around in the shadows all day and for a good portion of the night, and then BAM, it’s the wee hours of the morning, and out come the glitter and the glow sticks in the after-hours nightclub of your mind. It’s not a silent disco in there either; it’s a full-on Taylor Swift level packed arena, and I’m singing along to every song.
I know all the words by heart.
Apparently, the part of my brain that is capable of positive self-talk and logic and normalizing does not function between the hours of 1:00 am until it’s time to get up and make coffee and breakfast. As a protective mechanism, I’m typically asleep then. But on the occasion, I find myself awake, all I can say is that I am never as unsuccessful, terrible at my job, or as bad a friend/partner/family member as I am at 3:00 in the morning.
Daytime me can remember that there will always be more email, and sometimes I just have to set it aside to work on bigger projects or nothing will ever move forward. She’s also pretty good at acknowledging that there are big societal constructs around profit and productivity that have left many of us with more on our plates than will ever be “done.” She can acknowledge that everyone has awkward moments and fumbles at being grateful sometimes. 10:00 am me can tap into the energy of being a lifelong learner about what it means to be a messy human— what can I learn from how I feel about that thing I said or what I did or didn’t get done? At 1:00 pm, I can keep boundaries and prioritize focused work and sit with both the discomfort of that and the inherent right for my soul nature of it. But I can’t sing these songs at 3:00 am. The words escape me.
I don’t know them by heart, yet.
So until I do, I’m left staring at the ceiling trying to figure out how to sweep up the glitter from the party. Here are a few things I’ve found that manage to at least chase those unbearably sparkly thoughts into the cracks between the floorboards:
Body scan. Thinking about each part of my body melting into the bed. Starting with un-crinkling my forehead, softening my eyes, unclenching my jaw, letting my neck and shoulders feel heavy. If I can hold my focus on each part of my body I’m working to relax, I can usually stop the thought spiral and relax enough to fall back asleep.
Thinking of all the possible tiny beautiful things from the day. The trick here for me is to keep the very, very tiny. Trying to think of big giant gratitudes can just fuel the fire of “I have no right to feel so sad/mad/whatever because I have SO many BIG good things.” Whereas thinking about how excited I was to see that orange cat in my neighbor’s window, or how delicious that cold water from my insulated cup was all day, or how good the basil I cut up at dinner time smelled, can be just enough to break the spiral of negative thoughts by occupying my brain with the task of thinking of the most minuscule lovely things.
Guided meditation and a change of location. I’m not sure if it’s one or the other of these that works, or the combination of the two— so I’m listing them together. I don’t sleep with my phone by the bed, so if I want to listen to a meditation, I have to retrieve it from the kitchen. Then I just make my way to the couch to avoid the added step of digging my headphones out of my purse to avoid waking up my partner. Typically this combination does the trick. Here’s my favorite meditation to use for this.
Here’s the thing though, none of those tricks work every time. I’m still experimenting here. I would love to hear about your experiences with this. Does your brain throw middle-of-the-night ragers? What tricks have you found to put yourself back to sleep? One thing I’m particularly curious about is whether you ever actually just get up and do the thing you can’t stop thinking about. It always seems to me like I should fight the urge to wake all the way up enough to say, open my laptop, answer a message, and schedule it to send the next day… but maybe that would help? If you’ve done this, I’d really like to hear about your experience.
Beautiful Thing of the Week
Just one (and a half) little things bringing me a spot of joy this week. Longer lists are available to paid subscribers1 every other week (and there’s a sale on subscriptions through August 15).
📗I read this article from Oliver Burkeman after one of these 3:00 am brain parties recently1, and it really helped reset my perspective (as did the sun coming up, eating breakfast, exercising, etc.). This part was especially succinct and helpful:
It’s really good to meet deadlines, keep commitments, answer messages promptly, and so on. But for almost everyone, in almost every context, it isn’t actually essential- in this existential, life-or-death sense— to do so.
🎶 Just dropping this here, because it’s been in my head since I typed the title to this post (also crediting it for the subtitle*).
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Be well, find tiny joy-
Mary Chris
A couple of these recent 3:00 am soirees have prominently featured the thought that I was going to lose all my subscribers by turning on paid subscriptions for some of my posts. There are good reasons to go paid and good reasons to stay totally free. When it’s not 3:00 am, I can see the value in experimenting with this and learning from it, but in the middle of the night, it seems like everyone will think it’s stupid and demanding and unsubscribe immediately. So, this is really just my long-winded way of saying THANK YOU for proving 3:00 am me wrong. I’m SO glad you’re here. ❤️
This is my favorite submission to the Healthier Hustle. I am glad it's not just me. 1:30-3:30am, after being asleep for hours, is absolutely when I replay ALL my life's choices. I tend to wash my face and envision all that worry /replay running down the drain. Then I practice the 4-7-8 breathing technique. Close your lips and inhale through your nose for a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of seven. Exhale completely through your mouth making a whoosh sound for a count of eight. This completes one cycle. I usually don't make it through more than 2 cycles before I have fallen back to sleep.
Yep, 3AM monkey-mind is not uncommon. Sometimes, it's a sugar thing—it's when the body metabolizes that second glass of wine I shouldn't have had after 7pm. Sometimes those middle-of-the-night muses are just human nature taking over (see this article on how humans slept in 2 phases before electricity: https://www.sleepscore.com/blog/two-phase-sleep/). Either way, my remedy is to whisper aloud to my monkey-mind, "There is nothing you can truly do about any of that at 3AM. Rest is what you need." One deep breath, sighed out long like my cat before his nap, and I doze back off.