Are you someone who wakes up regularly in the middle of the night? And if so, do you always roll over to find that it’s around the same time – somewhere between 3 and 4 in the morning?

If so, you’re not alone – I know that’s the time my kids are most likely to crawl into bed with me – and scientists think they might have the answer as to why.

No, it’s not ghosts.

Director of the Centre for Mental Health at Swineburne University of Technology, Greg Murray, says it’s a phenomenon he runs across all the time.

“As a cognitive therapist, I sometimes joke the only thing good about 3 am waking is that it gives us all a vivid example of catastrophizing. Waking and worrying at 3am is very understandable and very human. But in my opinion, not a great habit to get into.”

About 1 in 3 people experience this at some point in their lives, and that number has likely increased since 2020. Experts believe the waking is related to stress and anxiety.

“We actually wake up many times each night, and light sleep is more common in the second half of the night. When sleep is going well for us, we are simply unaware of these awakenings. But add a bit of stress and there is a good chance that waking will become a fully self-aware state.”

Other things, like unpredictable schedules, spending too much time scrolling, or less time outdoors can also cause us to wake more in the night.

A schedule can help, according to sleep physiologist and director of Sleepyhead Clinic Stephanie Romiszewski.

“You’ll notice that if you’re waking up at the same time every day, that will start to become your regular time. Try to keep up with exercise and get bright light exposure in the mornings. Make sure you have social time, too. We need our brains to understand the only opportunity to sleep will be the usual nighttime.”

The reason for the timing of our nighttime wakings is probably as simple as the time most of us go to sleep, explains sleep expert Aneesa Das.

“Throughout the night, our sleep cycles between rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep. Each stage of sleep has a different threshold for how easy it is to be woken up. One likely explanation for waking up at the same time each night is that you go to sleep at the same time and then, at the same time each night, you reach a light stage of sleep and wake up.”

As we inch closer toward morning, we spend less time in a deep sleep, which is when psychology professor Michael K Scullin says anxiety dreams can creep in.

“Scientists have suspected for about a hundred years now that unfinished tasks rest at a heightened level of activation in the brain until they can be completed.”

He suggests keeping a pad of paper and pen near the bed to write the things down on a list, transferring them from your mind and hopefully make it easier to fall back to sleep.

Sleep medicine professor Colin Espie agrees.

“When people wake up during the night the thing that comes to mind that may worry them is usually quite predictable. That is, something that has been happening the previous day or something that’s coming up the next day.”

Even though this is a fairly normal pattern to experience, all of the experts agree that you should talk to a doctor if it happens for over three months in a row. That’s because it could become a habit, which would be hard to break.

Get good sleep, y’all.

Try to leave your troubles at the door.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about why we should be worried about the leak in the bottom of the ocean.