Between three and five in the morning, you’re not cursed—you’re exposed. Your defenses are thinner, your usual distractions gone. Whatever you’ve been outrunning in daylight has fewer places to hide. Old grief, new anxiety, the half-finished conversations you never had the courage to start—they all find you when your nervous system is quiet enough to finally hear them. That can feel like haunting, but it’s often just honesty with the lights off.
Instead of treating these wake-ups as attacks, you can treat them as invitations. Notice what thoughts rush in first. Notice how your body feels, what it asks for. Then respond gently in the daytime: adjust the habits that overstimulate you, speak the words you’ve swallowed, give shape to the fears you’ve blurred. Over time, your nervous system learns: it doesn’t have to shake you awake to be heard. Night can become refuge again, not warning.
