Waking up at 3am with racing thoughts? How to stop overthinking at night

If your mind starts racing as soon as you lie down, or you keep waking up at 3am and can’t get back to sleep, you’re not alone. Racing thoughts at night are one of the most common reasons people feel tired, and simple habits can help your mind settle.

We make personalised sleep affirmation tracks. You tell us the thought that keeps you awake, and we write 20 affirmations about that thought for you to play in bed. If you’re reading this page at 3am, you can order a track in a few minutes and then put your phone down. Get a sleep track for tonight.

I lived with racing thoughts at night for years. I slept plenty of hours and still woke up shattered, because my mind spent the night going over the day and inventing things that might happen. Those nights are why I started Build Your Inner Voice.

I had never listened to subliminal tracks before and wow, I feel like I couldn’t do without them now. More confident, less anxious, sleeping much better.

Carly, UK · verified review on Trustpilot

What racing thoughts at night can look like

You plan the whole of tomorrow in bed, in so much detail that you wake up feeling you’ve already done a day’s work.
You lie awake counting every hour that goes past.
You replay every conversation from the day and decide that everybody is annoyed with you.
You fall asleep easily, then wake at 3am with your mind already wide awake.
You sleep all night and still wake up feeling as though you never switched off.

Why a subliminal sleep track helps

In a dark, quiet room, your own thoughts are the only thing to listen to. Your track gives your mind something calm to hear instead.

For sleep, most people choose fully subliminal. You hear only the background sound you choose, such as rain or waves. Your affirmations sit underneath the sound, so you have no words to follow while you drift off.

If you choose the 4 hour Overnight Loop, your track keeps playing through most of the night. You won’t need to reach for your phone if you wake at 3am.

Get a sleep track for tonight

Sleep is already selected when you use the button above. Your track usually arrives within 10 minutes and is yours to keep. The Overnight Loop takes a little longer to arrive.

An example of a sleep track

What you might write

I wake at 3am and my brain starts running conversations that haven’t happened yet.

3 of the 20 affirmations we wrote for this example

I wake up feeling rested.
Getting back to sleep comes easily to me.
I trust myself to handle conversations when they actually happen.

More on this, if you want it. Tap a heading to open it.

Why do I keep waking up at 3am?

Sleep runs in cycles, and you usually wake briefly between cycles without noticing. In the early hours your body also starts raising cortisol, the hormone that helps you wake up. If a worry is on your mind, one of those brief wake-ups can turn into being wide awake. Sleep cycles are regular, so waking with a worry often happens at the same time each night.

Why your mind races as soon as you lie down

During the day, work and other people keep your mind busy. In a dark, quiet room at night, the worries you’ve carried all day get your full attention.

Imagining a conversation that hasn’t happened yet can feel like sensible planning. Your body reacts to an imagined conversation much as it would to a real one, which is why a night of imagined conversations leaves you so tired.

If your night-time worries are mostly about work, we have a page on imposter syndrome at work. If they’re mostly about your partner, we have one on relationship anxiety.

Why you’re tired after 8 hours in bed

Sleep moves between lighter and deeper stages through the night, and your body recovers most in the deeper stages. A mind busy with worries spends more of the night in lighter sleep, which is why you can wake up tired after a full night in bed.

Going to bed earlier often doesn’t help, because you just get more hours of the same light sleep. A calmer mind at bedtime helps you sleep more deeply.

How to stop overthinking at night

Most of these tips come from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for sleep. The first 3 tips on this list helped me most.

Write the worry down in one line. Your mind keeps repeating a worry so you don’t forget it, and once it’s on paper your mind can let it go. Writing tomorrow’s to-do list before bed has also been shown to help people fall asleep faster.
Get up if you can’t sleep. If you’re awake for more than about 20 minutes, sit somewhere dim until you feel sleepy, so your body doesn’t learn to link your bed with worrying.
Give your mind something calm to listen to. A quiet room doesn’t stop racing thoughts. Your sleep affirmations give your mind something other than the worry to focus on.
Get up at the same time every day. A regular wake-up time, even after a bad night, is the best way to set your body clock.
Have a wind-down routine. For the last half hour before bed, keep the lights low and do the same few things in the same order each night.
Breathe out for longer than you breathe in. Breathe in for 4 counts and out for 6, for a few minutes. A longer out-breath helps your body relax.

When you order a track, you also get our full sleep practice sheet with more ideas like these.

When to speak to your GP

Everyone has bad nights now and then. Please see your GP if:

you’ve been tired for months and the tiredness is affecting your daily life
your mood is low and you can’t get back to sleep after waking very early
someone has told you that you stop breathing or gasp in your sleep

Poor sleep can have a medical cause, and it isn’t a lack of willpower. If your thoughts at night are frightening you, or you’re struggling to cope, please talk to someone now rather than waiting.

Free, any hour, if you need to talk to someone now:
UK and Ireland Samaritans, 116 123
United States Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, call or text 988
Anywhere else findahelpline.com lists the number for your country.

Common questions

Do sleep affirmations work?

Hearing the same sentence again and again makes you more likely to believe the sentence. Affirmations work best when they fit the person, so we write your sleep affirmations about the exact thought that keeps you awake. You can read the studies on our science page.

Sleep better from tonight

Your sleep track is written about the thought that keeps you awake, and you keep the file.

Get a sleep track for tonight

Are you looking at wellbeing support for your team? See how Build Your Inner Voice works for employers. Would you like Build Your Inner Voice through your job? Ask your workplace to offer Build Your Inner Voice, and we’ll write the message to your workplace for you.