Why Does All My Anxiety Come In The Middle Of The Night?

There are few things worse than climbing into your bed at night, utterly exhausted from a day of work and parenting and cooking and cleaning, ready to slip into deep slumber — only to be interrupted by your own brain.

And not just your brain doing brain things, but your brain relaying back to you every single dumb thing you said that day, your brain projecting the worst-case scenarios of every situation you’re currently dealing with, your brain reminding you that, actually, everything is out of control, so you might as well panic.

Anxious thoughts love to spike at night. Whether it’s right before you fall asleep or if you get up in the middle of the night to pee, they’re always there, waiting until it’s just dark enough outside to convince you that it will always be dark, forever, and that no light will ever come, ever, and good luck thinking you can survive life because look at you here, panicking in your own bed, having to put Friends on mute so you don’t wake up the whole house because you need Chandler Bing as a distraction.

Good news: You’re not the only one doing it, and there’s nothing wrong with your brain. In fact, your brain is just doing what brains do.

What causes anxious thoughts to spike at night?

Whether you have a diagnosed anxiety disorder or just feel a little more worrisome and fretful at night, it’s totally normal to feel like your brain is doing its best to think of the worst possible things at night. And listen, anxiety isn’t all bad. It’s how our brain protects us. But at night, it could be coming from a few different things:

• Blood Sugar Dysregulation: Alexandra McNulty, LCSW-C, owner and lead therapist of McNulty Wellness Collective, says that if you’re waking up in the night and your brain is hitting play on those anxious thoughts, it might be attributed to dysregulated blood sugar. “You don’t have to be diabetic or pre-diabetic to experience these effects. For women, restricting or undereating are common behaviors that can contribute to these fluctuations in blood sugar that may affect their sleep,” she says. She recommends trying a protein- or fat-rich snack before bed and avoiding simple carbs, sugary snacks, and that glass of wine.
• Hormonal Shifts: In the most ironic of all ironic behavior, if you have a lot of middle-of-the-night wake-ups that lead to your anxious thoughts, you can blame your hormones shifting — specifically, a spike in cortisol, the “stress hormone.” This naturally happens in our bodies around 3 to 4 a.m. to prepare us for waking in a few hours. But for some, it wakes them up fully in the night, and that’s the perfect time for all of your most worrisome thoughts to come to the surface.
• Evolutionary Behavior: “As humans, we used to scan for danger at night because darkness was a vulnerable time and posed a threat, so we might become more vigilant at night,” says Dr. Erica Rozmid, a board-certified behavioral and clinical psychologist. “Either way, when we are tired, we are less adept at using skills, so worries at night might feel more intrusive or bothersome. In the morning, you might feel more in control as you work toward a goal — like getting ready for the day — and think about what's next.”
• Fewer Distractions: And honestly, some of it may just come down to night being one of the few times you’re not overly distracted. Everyone’s asleep, the house is quiet, you’re trying to rest; it just happens. “Nighttime is when our bodies begin to slow down, which can make it an opportune time for anxious thoughts to surface,” says Rozmid.
• You’re Often In “Fix-It” Mode: If your days are filled with worrying about what you need to do next, you may be more likely to experience these nighttime woes. “When a person tends to have a lifestyle that requires constant anticipation of problems, their brains can struggle with turning off ‘fix-it mode,’” says Dr. Mona Nour, LCMHC. “So in the evening when their world slows down, their brains are still searching for things to fix.”

How can I stop the nighttime anxiety?

Again, anxiety isn’t a “bad” thing — it’s there to help. “Our brain is hardwired to chew on itself,” says McNulty. “Rumination is a common behavior because it’s our brain’s effort to problem-solve or work through things that are bothering us. While this is unhelpful, especially when keeping us up at night, our brains are hardwired to keep us ‘safe’ and anticipate threat — through worrying. Compared to safety and staying alive, sleeping or being content is lower on our brain’s priority list.”

But that doesn’t mean you have to let the anxious thoughts win or send you spiraling. Addressing them is helpful, and Nour recommends picking a “worry time” during the day — usually in the evening — that is about 10 to 20 minutes. You can use this time specifically to let your anxious thoughts and worries take over and let them have their space.

Nour says many of her clients think this practice is “stupid” — at first. “I ask them if they worried after that time, and they almost always say no. They discover that worrying does not actually solve anything unless they use worry for its natural intended purpose: to make a plan and move on. They have been able to reclaim their evenings by remembering that every time they worry, it's just the brain's signal to make a plan,” she says.

Rozmid also suggests scheduling worry time, and recommends writing your worries down in a book and closing it so you know you can come back to it next time. This gives your brain space to let the anxious thoughts out, and also gives you the chance to feel like you’re being proactive by writing them down to deal with later.

What can I do during the night to curb these anxious thoughts?

If you find yourself actually experiencing the anxiety in the night — whether it’s at bedtime or 3 a.m. — there are a few things you can do to help get yourself back to feeling regulated and back to sleep.

McNulty says it’s important to remind yourself that you are capable of navigating the problems in front of you, and that you trust yourself to do so. “Don’t feel responsible for handling hypothetical problems — that’s a task for future you if and when it were to become relevant. For now, ground yourself in the trust you have in your ability to tackle things when they are relevant. Don’t task yourself with resolving them now or convincing yourself that everything is OK — cast these worries as irrelevant and allow yourself to engage in one of the absolute most helpful practices to allow you to tackle life’s stressors: sleep.”

Elva Meldina, a trauma therapist, also suggests using a grounding skill called “container” — an EDMR resource strategy — to shut down your brain. She says you should imagine putting all your thoughts and worries away in an imaginary container. In the morning, or whenever you feel ready to tackle those worries, “take it out of your container” and deal with it. Meldina says this allows you to stay present in the moment.

Why is everything so much better in the morning?

There’s a reason “sleep on it” works as a coping mechanism for stress or anxiety, and it’s because everything truly does seem better in the morning... and that’s not a coincidence. “The logical brain starts to go offline at night, and the emotional brain takes over,” says Hillary Pilotto, MA, LCPC, founder and psychotherapist at Better Balance Counseling. “It is basically the emotional brain’s party time. It will hyper-fixate, ruminate, and catastrophize without the logical brain there to fact-check it. That is why a mildly awkward thing you said three weeks ago suddenly feels like a crisis at midnight.” But Pilotto says this is why “sleep on it” is so important.

“When we wake up, the logical brain is back online, and we have access to perspective and rational thought again. Morning doesn’t make the problem small, but it gives us all our tools to look at the problem.” She encourages all of her clients to avoid texts, emails, or big decisions between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. “Nothing good comes from making decisions when only half your brain is showing up.”