For many people, anxiety has a favourite time slot: night. All day we rush, filling our time with obligations and stimulation, and the moment we lie down, in the silence and the dark, the mind finally finds room to speak. So begins the familiar parade: worries about tomorrow, replays of mistakes, scenarios about things that may never happen.
There's a physiological side too. At night cortisol should be dropping, but when we live in chronic overdrive, the nervous system stays on alert. The body remains "switched on" while we try to fall asleep. This creates a vicious cycle: we get anxious about not sleeping, and that very anxiety keeps us awake even longer.
A few things help break the cycle. A steady evening routine, fewer screens before bed, and the habit of "emptying" your thoughts onto paper earlier in the evening instead of saving them for the pillow. When you wake in the night, not checking the clock and not fighting your mind often helps more than forcing yourself to sleep.
If night-time anxiety and insomnia have become the rule rather than the exception, it's worth looking at what feeds them on a deeper level. In therapy we work both with the thoughts and with regulating the nervous system. See how focused work on night-time anxiety can help, so that the night can become a place of rest again.