What to do when you wake up too early - Sleep Coach Q&A

In today’s video, I wanted to share an answer to one of the Sleep Skills for Life Client’s questions about waking up too early in the morning.

She referred to this as her mind going into a ‘chipmunk in a hamster wheel’ which is quite an accurate way to describe what can happen. Whilst it's definitely not funny in any way to not be able to extend your sleep in the morning, this ‘chipmunk’ mode is quite a frequent experience for people. 

So let’s talk about how to stop waking up too early in the morning so that you can extend your sleep more often. The reason why you wake up too early will vary for sure, but thinking about past or future things is a very common part of this issue with early morning wakings.

Often people want to learn how to avoid early morning insomnia, but it’s not something you can avoid if the particular sleep issues are linked to your mornings. A better way to think about it is to retrain your body and your mind to extend your sleep for longer, but that takes building up your sleep skills so that you become more efficient every single day and night. 

Interestingly enough, early morning wakings like these also relate to how to stop waking in the middle of the night. Simply because these link to transitioning to lighter sleep stages across your night. One problem therefore can show up in different parts of your night and can still be sorted by working on the main root cause. 

Early morning insomnia (or sleep problems) can show up for various reasons, and it’s really important to understand what the real reasons are first. So in this video, we only going to talk about one dynamic that I see in my practice. Therefore, please make sure you don’t self-diagnose and seek an assessment from a professional like me. 

Learning how to sleep better at night takes time and effort, so this one sleep Q&A is going to just give you a snippet of all the work that is required in order to truly overcome your long-term sleep problems and insomnia for life.

Beatrix

Your Sleep Coach