Waking at four every morning since week three

Started 18 June 2026 · 13 replies · 83 hearts · read 861 times

PeggyRotherham, UK · 18 June 2026

1 month ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Waking at four every morning since week three

I have avoided asking about this for six weeks out of pure embarrassment.

It is not severe. It is relentless, which turns out to be a different problem, and one I have found much harder to describe to anybody.

I have had a fortnight of this and then three good days and then another fortnight, and the pattern is the bit I would most like to understand.

I would like to hear timescales more than remedies. Knowing how long other people's lasted would turn this from an open-ended thing into a bounded one.

The number in the title is the actual number: four, not a round figure I reached for because it sounded about right.

Thank you for reading something this unglamorous. Any experience welcome, and timescales especially.

KezWigan, UK

I was tired for about eight weeks and then I was not. I have no explanation. I offer it as data because the eight-week accounts are what I needed at week three.

5me too 5

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

I want to say that the honesty in this thread is exactly what makes this circle worth having, including the parts nobody enjoyed writing.

GigiNaples, IT

Same here, and I am glad you said it first.

NilsUppsala, SE

Kez — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Light in the morning was the thing that helped most and cost nothing. Twenty minutes outside before nine, most days, and my nights changed within a fortnight.

GildaTrieste, IT

Mine was worst in winter and much better in summer, and I now think a good half of it was seasonal and would have happened anyway.

SunnivaBodø, NO

I would say do not soldier on with this silently for months. I did five months and my GP's first response was to ask why I had not come sooner.

RunaAarhus, DK

Sunniva, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Somebody here said to treat energy as a budget rather than a personal quality, and that single reframing changed how I planned my weeks.

TorinBelfast, NI

What I noticed was that the tiredness came in a wave in the mid-afternoon and if I could get through forty minutes it passed. Trying to push through it never worked.

6me too 9

SamPortland, OR

What made the difference for me was a fixed wake time rather than a fixed bedtime. Somebody here suggested it and it took about ten days to work.

RillaAberdeen, UK

#10

This is the honest version, and the honest version is harder to write.

SinéadCork, IE

#11

My sleep needed a completely different shape from the one it had before. Earlier, longer, and less negotiable, and it took me months to accept that.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#12

Facilitator note: everything described here is a matter for you and whoever prescribes for you. We are here for the company and for the vocabulary.

NkemPort Harcourt, NG

#13

Gently disagreeing with Rilla, or rather adding the other half of it.

I raised fatigue at a review and was taken seriously, tested, and reassured. I had expected to be told it was normal and left there.

4me too 7