hit up these tips when you're struggling to hit the hay

Are you part of the 3am club? It’s when you wake up in the middle of the night but instead of going straight back to sleep, your brain decides it’s a great time to go through every thought you’ve ever had. It’s fun! It involves lying in bed for hours knowing you’re going to be a moody, tired wreck the next day, but not actually being able to do anything about it.

Why do people fall into this never-ending sleeplessness trap? Sleep psychologist Dr Frank Cahill says it’s generally because they start trying to fall back to sleep. “This is what we call sleep effort,” he says. “Sleep effort is when you become aware of your wakefulness and your brain goes, ‘This is not good,’ and then you start thinking of ways to fall back to sleep.” This usually involves looking at your clock and mentally logging how long you’ve been awake, which activates your brain even more. “Then they put pressure on themselves to get back to sleep and they could be lying there tossing and turning for hours.” And hours. And hours. And oh no, now it’s time to get up and I’ve been awake for four hours and 37 minutes and it already feels like lunchtime.

It’s actually pretty common to wake up around three hours after going to sleep. “We often wake after completing our first two 90-minute sleep cycles,” Frank says. But ideally, you go to the bathroom, kick off your doona or push your partner back to their side of the bed and go back to sleep. But what if that doesn’t work? You’ll find plenty of methods across the vast plains of the internet Wild West, many of which you may have searched for in the wee hours of the morning. We put some of them to Frank to see what actually works.

WORD AND LETTER GAMES Lots of people swear by a brain game where you pick a four-letter word, then think of three words that begin with each letter in that word and keep going until you fall asleep. It’s called ‘cognitive shuffling’ and Frank says it’s not a bad method. “Having something structured like that keeps you focused and distracts you from the fact you’re awake and should be asleep, and other anxious thoughts.” Ideally, you get bored after a while and go off to sleep. Except when you don’t! “Some people get through a word, realise they’re still awake and become even more frustrated – it can be a double-edged sword.”

LYING ON YOUR KITCHEN FLOOR Whether your kitchen is sporting a wooden, lino or tiled floor, it’s most likely cooler than your sweaty sheets. Frank says that sometimes we can wake up in the middle of the night feeling hot and frustrated – but if you lie in bed tossing and turning, it can make getting back to sleep harder. “There’s method to the madness here,” Frank says. “It’s a bit like my dog: when it’s a hot night, it will lie on the kitchen floor, on the tiles, and it'll just cool itself down.” However, tiles are quite uncomfortable! The good news is, the top method Frank recommends to his clients is less likely to hurt your hips or leave line imprints down the side of your face.

GET UP FOR 10 MINUTES Frank’s top tip to get back to sleep is to get out of bed for a short break – despite how illogical that seems. He recommends sitting quietly and not doing much, “just to cool down and drop your body temperature”. We sleep better when our bodies are at a cooler temperature and this acts as a little reset. Once you’re back in bed, Frank suggests you just focus on resting, rather than trying to go back to sleep.

LISTEN TO A BORING PODCAST You know those podcasts that are designed to be just interesting enough to distract your brain but not interesting enough to keep you awake? Frank says they’re really good. “I do a lot of work in the neurodivergent community and it can be a challenge to try and switch off their active brains at night,” Frank says. If those podcasts still keep you too engaged, Frank recommends listening to an audiobook in another language: “You can’t fully understand what’s going on, but you just tune in to the tone of the voices which can be quite soothing while keeping you out of your head.”

To read the rest of these tips, nab a copy of frankie issue 125 at the frankie shop or visit one of our lovely stockists. For future issues, subscribe here.