32: Five Hidden Reasons Midlife Women Wake Up at 3 am

Get the Midlife Sleep Sanctuary

If you're a midlife woman who is waking up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep for 2 hours, the first step to fix this (and yes, it's fixable), is to understand the reasons why this is happening.  From there, you'll have clear direction on what to do next. 

If this is you, falling asleep isn’t the problem - staying asleep is.

For midlife women, especially during perimenopause and menopause, those 2–4am wake-ups are incredibly common. But they’re not a mystery… and they’re not a personal failure.

In this episode, Sheri goes solo and explains the five most common reasons midlife women wake up in the middle of the night, and how your body is actually responding intelligently to deeper stress patterns.

You’re going to find out:

• Why blood sugar drops at 3am can trigger cortisol and anxiety
• How natural cortisol rhythm disruption keeps your brain alert at night
• What nervous system dysregulation really means (and why high-capacity women experience it most)
• The connection between liver detox processes and sleep
• Why unprocessed stress and subconscious beliefs surface when the world gets quiet

This episode bridges science and self-awareness so you can understand what’s happening in your body and what it’s trying to communicate.

Here's a bonus: for each of the 5 reasons midlife women wake up at night, you're going to find out what limiting belief is behind the pattern.  This is what is going to quantum leap your ability to shift the disruptive sleep pattern and get a full night's rest. 

And if you are waking up in the middle of the night and are ready to finally sleep through the night consistently, send us a message on Instagram, type the word INSOMNIA and we'll send you the details for our free masterclass: Stop the 3 am Wake Up Without HRT or Medication. 

Join us in Costa Rica, October 2026 for our Retreat: Soul-Aligned - Design Your Extraordinary Next Chapter! Click here for details.

Find us on instagram:

 @midlifewomenrising

@jenreimercoaching

Transcript

Podcast record: 5 things keeping you from sleeping - February 25

@0:08 - Sheri Johnson (Sheri Johnson)

So you might have noticed a theme lately because one of the hottest topics for midlife women these days is sleep and particularly why it feels so elusive.

So last week we talked about rumination and how that can keep you awake. Today we're going to talk about one very specific scenario and that is this.

You fall asleep fine, you're exhausted, and then at three o'clock your eyes fly open, your brain is on. This isn't random and it's not just menopause.

There are some very specific reasons why this is happening. And that's what I'm going to talk about today, the five things that are keeping you from sleeping through the night.

In midlife. So if I just described you and your scenario, your insomnia, then stay tuned. We're going to get right into it.

Welcome back to the Midlife Rising podcast. You have got me today. It's Sheri. And I'm going to be doing a solo episode.

Jen is tied up with some other stuff over the next few weeks. So I'm going to bring you a couple of short, but very high impact episodes.

So let's dive in. Today, I want to talk about sleep, but specifically the kind of insomnia that has you waking up in the middle of the night, and you can't get back to sleep.

So last week, we talked about ruminating, which is one thing that happens at this hour of the day at two, three, maybe even four in the morning.

Thank you. Thank So, if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen, because that's kind of, that's, we're going to give you some ideas as to what you can do if that is your scenario.

But today I'm going to walk you through five things that keep you waking up in the first place. So, here's the first.

Your blood sugar is dropping. What happens when your blood sugar drops in the middle of the night is it wakes you up, you're hungry.

But it's not just your blood sugar that drops. It's that when your blood sugar drops, your body is trying to rebalance that blood sugar.

So, it's going to try to bring it back up. And normally it will, if you're awake, it will tell your body, go eat something.

We're hungry. But when you're asleep, it might wake you up because you're hungry. But. But it will keep you awake because if you haven't eaten, your body is going to kick in with cortisol.

Because what cortisol does is it brings that blood sugar back up. So this obviously doesn't happen to everybody. There are midlife women who sleep through the night.

And it's likely because they are not experiencing any of these five things. They're not experiencing a blood sugar imbalance as number one.

So the reason why our blood sugar drops, it's not that it drops. Your blood sugar actually, it's not an even line.

It's not even meant to be an even line through the course of the day. But it shouldn't be on a roller coaster ride.

And that's where a lot of midlife women are sitting on a roller coaster that is going up. You know, you probably are thinking, well, I used to eat that stuff when I was in my 20s and 30s and I didn't have any problem.

Now that your estrogen is shifting and changing, your hormones are shifting, you no longer have the capability to handle that.

But estrogen actually helps to regulate that insulin sensitivity and it actually works better during the day. So if you're eating after dark, you're eating in the evenings, like late at night before you go to bed, then your body is even less equipped to handle that.

So there's something else that's important to mention here, and I'm going to mention it for each of the five because this is really what Jen and I focus on.

We don't just talk about the... The physiological stuff, the body stuff, everybody else talks about that. There's the missing piece is the subconscious beliefs that drive your behavior that then drive the physiological issues.

So there's subconscious beliefs that are driving you to the glass of wine in the evening or that are driving you to sit down with a movie and a bag of popcorn and a Coke.

Or maybe that is driving you to not eat anything or eat very little during the day. So there's subconscious beliefs or maybe conscious beliefs that are driving your behavior that we also need to change.

Because once we change those, it becomes much easier to change the behavior versus just trying to quit cold turkey.

That's why that rarely works. Quitting anything cold. Well, turkey, changing your habits requires a shift in your subconscious beliefs.

Okay, so that's number one is a blood sugar imbalance can cause you to wake up in the middle of the night.

Number two, this is sort of related, but it's different. Your liver is involved in a nighttime detox. And this is one that I don't hear too many people talk about.

So what happens is the liver does some major detox work while you're sleeping. And it often happens in the middle of the night.

And if your body is a little overburdened by things like alcohol, sugar, processed food, medication, or even chronic stress hormones, the liver is highly involved.

So if you have excess cortisol, if you have excess anything, the liver is involved. It is involved in so many different processes in the body.

So if it is overburdened, it can wake you up at night as well. You might feel, so it would be involved in a night sweat, restlessness, and waking up at two or three in the morning consistently.

So hormone shifts can already increase the load on your liver in midlife. And then if you're having a glass of wine every night, or a couple, or if you're eating processed foods, then your liver is having to do a lot more work.

So... So subconscious beliefs that might tie into this is using wine, and many of us do this, this doesn't come with any judgment.

I want to say that because I have been there when I've had a day, I definitely feel like reaching for a glass of wine.

Using wine as relief is something that's going to overburden your liver. Using food to numb or sedate. And those are things that are driven, those are behaviors that are driven by some sort of belief.

And what I hear, this is actually quite often a conscious thing, is, well, I deserve this. I've had a hard day.

So I deserve to have a glass of wine. I deserve to have... deserve So. Okay. So thing that I have deemed is bad, I deserve it and we're using it as a reward.

Or I need something to take the edge off. So that is, those are some beliefs that if we shift those, then we can shift the behavior of reaching for a glass of wine as relief or as a reward.

Or whatever it is, there might be something else that you're using. For me, it's more food. For you, it might be wine, it might be a glass of whiskey, I don't know.

Okay, so that's number two is the liver overload and that nighttime detox that might be waking you up. Number three is also an interesting one that I don't hear.

Here we go. Thank you. What happens when you are under chronic stress is that it either flattens that curve or it might even reverse it.

And if you are exacerbating that by going to bed late because you're trying to work through the evening or trying to get things done through the evening, then your body actually is releasing too much cortisol.

If you are under chronic stress and that curve can actually be reversed. So you end up with cortisol peaks in the middle of the night and then during the day you're exhausted because your cortisol has flattened.

So this is also going to wake you up and you're going to feel very alert when you have cortisol running through your veins.

And what can make this worse is when estrogen drops, progesterone also drops. So this is another one of your hormones.

And progesterone is a very calming hormone. When that drops, cortisol can hit harder. So all of these hormones, cortisol is a hormone, progesterone, estrogen, even melatonin, insulin, those are all, these are all hormones, and they're all interlinked.

So if one shifts, the others are all going to shift and it might not be in the direction of balance.

So when progesterone drops, if your body is not making enough of it, then you're going to lose your stress buffer.

And that cortisol hits you in the middle of the night and it hits your heart. So that's also why midlife, menopause, perimenopause.

Pause can actually make this worse. This is why this becomes a problem in midlife, although it can be something that happens in other times of your life.

There are some lifestyle drivers here that are going to work against you. One of those is this feeling of being constantly productive, trying to do more, trying to be more productive, get more done, be more efficient, more effective.

All of that actually adds a lot of stress to your body. Emotional labor, which is something that women do, we take on the project management of our households.

We take on the emotional labor of caring for ill parents, for children that need, even if they're adult children, that need support.

So women tend to take on the emotional labor of the family, and also sometimes their friends. family. family. on the the labor labor

Doom scrolling. We all know what doom scrolling is. Doom scrolling can actually raise your cortisol. I feel it. If I start scrolling, I almost have this feeling like I can't stop.

If I'm going on for too long, especially on Pinterest, where it's just the never ending magazine that is tailored to me that I love.

It's almost like I can't stop. And because I can't stop myself, I can feel the cortisol rising up. So doom scrolling, whatever your advice is, whatever social media platform you use, that can really raise your cortisol.

And then the fact that you have no actual decompression window. If you are someone who is doing right up until the point you go to bed, you come home from work, you're making dinner, you're then cleaning up the house, you're picking up the kids, doing all the things, and then you finally drop into bed.

And without any kind of decompression window, your body hasn't had enough time to process. Now, the beliefs that are behind this one are really around not being able to slow down.

So a belief that, and most of our clients, our friends, they don't actually put it this way. But the underlying feeling is that you can't slow down.

That maybe if you do, you're going to drop the ball or something's not going to get done. And then it just makes for a bigger to-do list tomorrow.

So there's this belief, I can't slow down, or at least not yet. Or there's this delay of slowing down.

I'll slow down after this next project. Once it slows down at work, then I'll be able to, and it never does slow down.

And then there's also the my worth or my value depends on my output. My worth equals my productivity. And that's a deeper belief that stems from, oh, patriarchy.

could go on and on about this one. So in the interest of a short episode, I will leave it at that.

And we talk a lot about how to break down the societal conditioning that we have, we've grown up with, but it's been around for thousands of years.

We break that all down inside of our programs. It's so important because it is so insidious. It's within every single one of us women.

Okay, so that's number three is the cortisol rhythm might be reversed. And that's what's waking you up at night.

Number four. This is one that definitely I don't hear a lot of discussion out in the midlife space. Your nervous system is stuck in sympathetic mode.

So you probably know if you've been to yoga, they talk about the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

Go lay down, buddy. Sorry, Robbo. Dog is wandering around here. Lay down, buddy. Come on. Go lay down. So the sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight.

The parasympathetic is your rest and repair. So they talk mostly about the parasympathetic nervous system in yoga because yoga helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

And what happens to a lot of midlife women is that they live in low-grade hypervigilance all day. So you could be sitting at your desk and feel like your nervous system is ramped up.

You may not even be aware of it. I certainly was not. I talked on one of our recent episodes about this, about my, it's kind of like a smartwatch, but it tells me when I'm moving into stress mode that is not related to my doing a workout or going for a walk, my heart rate's ramping up and...

The, body is in a stressful state and I'm just sitting at my desk, not even realizing that this is happening.

So this is, I can almost guarantee this is happening to a lot of women out there, not even realizing that their nervous system is in sympathetic mode in fight or flight or freeze or fawn.

People pleasing is fawning without even realizing it. So we do this, if you are a people pleaser or even a recovering one, this is likely you, but this might also just be, you know, type of personalities, trying to manage everyone and everything, being strong and independent, being capable.

This is something that is really common in. In high capacity, successful women. So your body never fully drops into repair mode at night when it's supposed to.

It's a little bit like trying to turn off the car when the engine is still revving. We wouldn't do that.

You can't. Well, you could. But it's not going to be good for the car. And it's not good for your body.

So at 3 a.m., even a slight internal shift is going to wake you up. So the signs of this are if you're a light sleeper or you startle easy, you're probably in a state of this nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system is activated.

People who clench their jaw or grind their teeth at night, that's quite often a result of stress, a result of being in this nervous system state.

And when you. And it's going to wake you up. So that is number four. The nervous system might be stuck in sympathetic mode.

And number five, this is the fifth thing that will keep you waking up in the middle of the night.

This is suppressed emotion. And suppressed emotion tends to surface when the world gets quiet. So this is quite often why we keep ourselves busy, because we're trying to avoid uncomfortable emotions.

And so when we get quiet, when we're in the shower, when we have alone time, when we want to sleep, this is when the emotions start to come to the surface.

And this particularly happens if you don't have that process. So if you're running all day, and then you drop into bed, your mind is going to process emotion at night.

So when you you might drop into bed and fall asleep initially. And then you wake up because that external input has stopped.

The cortical control softens. It's a piece of your brain. The subconscious is going to get louder. So if you are experiencing any kind of grief, which is a big one in midlife, we are in the generation where our parents are aging.

It's also a time if you're a parent, if you're a mother, the empty nest can bring grief. next time.

If you're getting close to retirement, you might feel grief. You might grieve even just your shifting identity, your youth.

Unprocessed grief that you might not even know is there can come to the surface. Unspoken resentment, that tends to get loud at nighttime.

Resentment because you've taken on something that you really didn't want to. You did something you didn't want to. Fears come up at nighttime.

Fears about anything really. Worries. You might not think of them as fears, but they might be worries. So financial worries.

Worries about work. Problem solving. Fears about not being able to get enough done. And also dissatisfaction. So a lot of women in midlife feel...

Feel...gemeil... you. This sense of dissatisfaction, it might to you feel like a lack of purpose or you want your life to feel more meaningful.

That can come to the surface as well when distraction disappears and that can happen in the middle of the night.

So the underlying beliefs here are that if I just keep myself busy, I won't have to feel these. So those are five things that are going to keep you waking up in the middle of the night.

They're going to keep you from getting a solid eight hours of sleep that might be so far out of the realm for you that you don't even believe it can happen.

And let me tell you, it's entirely... People have probably told you, well, it's just menopause. You know, people don't sleep well when they hit midlife.

Yes, they do. Some do, some don't. But there are a lot of women out there who do. And I want you to see them as inspiration, not as someone to resent, because it's entirely possible for you to.

Thank Lifestyle is actually driven by belief. So a lot of you... Your choices actually might just be, they might be driven by subconscious beliefs and you feel powerless to change them.

When you change those subconscious beliefs, you can change your choices, you can change your lifestyle, and your lifestyle has a huge impact on your physiology.

So that is what I want to leave you with. I could offer you what everyone else offers, supplements, you know, you've probably heard people say, just take some melatonin, drink your chamomile tea, valerian, there's all kinds of different supplements out there, sleep hygiene, make your room dark, get off your screens.

I feel like that's the stuff you've likely heard before. What I want to offer you is... Let's shift the underlying beliefs so that making these changes, taking the supplement, changing your sleep hygiene, creating rituals around sleep, calming the nervous system, all of that becomes easy.

It doesn't feel like you need so much willpower to do them. That's what Jen and I want to offer you.

So if you want that, if your body is waking you up at 3 a.m. and you just want to sleep through the night, we have a free masterclass coming up and it is on March.

We've got two of them actually coming up next week on March the 9th, sorry, the 10th and 11th. I'm looking at my calendar as I'm talking here.

So the 10th and 11th. So, it's called Stop the 3 a.m. Wake Up Without HRT or Medication. If you want to come, send me a message on Instagram with the word insomnia, and I'll get you all the details.

Okay. If you take one thing away from today, if your body is waking you up at 3 a.m., it's a sign.

Your body is not trying to sabotage you. It's not something to fight with. It's trying to send you a message.

And you just need someone to help you interpret that message. And if that feels like me, Jen, and you want to stop that 3 a.m.

wake up without HRT or Meds, then join us in our masterclass. Send me a message on Instagram with the word insomnia, and we'll get you the details once again.

Okay. That's it for today. Come back next week for another episode. episode. episode. Come Come Come Come Thank And bye for now.