It’s 3 AM and Your Brain Won’t Shut Up: What Your Body Is Really Protecting

By Joy Stephenson-Laws, Holistic Coach, J.D., Founder

It’s 3:47 AM.

You’re exhausted. You have a presentation at 9. Tomorrow will be hell, and knowing that only makes sleep feel more impossible.

Your mind is running surveillance footage on repeat: replaying that conversation, planning tomorrow’s scenarios, checking mental locks. The harder you try to relax, the more awake you become.

What if the problem isn’t that you can’t sleep—it’s that part of you won’t let you sleep?

Why Forcing Relaxation Makes It Worse

Here’s what most sleep advice gets wrong: it treats insomnia like a problem to solve with techniques. Just breathe deeply. Clear your mind. Relax.

But your body isn’t confused about how to sleep. It knows exactly how. It’s making an active choice not to.

When you try to force relaxation, your nervous system hears: “Stand down.” And it responds: “Absolutely not. Someone has to stay alert.”

You’re not fighting insomnia. You’re fighting your own internal security system—what I call your **night guard**.

Your Body Has a Night Guard On Duty

Sleep is the ultimate act of trust. Every night, you’re asked to become completely unconscious for eight hours. You surrender control. You can’t monitor threats. You’re defenseless.

For most people, this feels safe enough. Their nervous system believes: “The environment is secure. I can power down.”

But if your nervous system learned that nighttime wasn’t safe—that you had to listen for footsteps, protect younger siblings, or stay alert for danger—your night guard refuses to clock out.

Your guard isn’t malfunctioning. It’s doing exactly what it learned to do: keep you alive by keeping you aware.

Maybe you had to monitor a parent’s mood as a child. Maybe you’re a parent yourself, body trained to wake at any sound. Maybe something happened at night that taught your body: unconsciousness = danger. Or maybe you’re genuinely stressed about tomorrow, and your guard knows vigilance is needed.

The exhaustion you feel? That’s the cost of running 24-hour security inside your own body.

The Practice: Talk to Your Guard

Instead of fighting your guard, try having a conversation.

When you’re lying awake, say internally or out loud:

**“Thank you for trying to keep me safe. What are you worried about?”**

Then listen. The answer might surprise you.

Maybe your guard is protecting a child who once needed vigilance. Maybe it’s worried about tomorrow’s deadline. Maybe it doesn’t trust that everyone you love is actually safe.

Then update your guard with current information:

**”[My child] is 31 now, asleep in his own home. If he needs me, my phone will wake me.”**

Or: **“Tomorrow’s presentation matters. I’ve prepared. Being awake won’t help me perform better—rest will.”**

You’re using your thinking brain to provide information your fear center can’t access on its own.

Sometimes your guard will believe you. Sometimes it won’t. But the conversation itself often softens the desperate quality of sleeplessness.

What Happens If You Do Nothing

Six months from now, you’re still lying awake at 3 AM. Your body has learned that sleep requires a fight every single night. The guard gets louder, more convinced it’s the only thing keeping catastrophe at bay.

A year from now? You’ve forgotten what it feels like to trust your own body. You’re living in a state where unconsciousness feels dangerous, where the act of closing your eyes triggers alarm bells.

You’re not just tired. You’re teaching your nervous system that you can’t be trusted to keep yourself safe—so it has to do it 24/7. The pattern deepens every night you fight it.

**Your guard is trying to protect you. But it’s running on outdated threat information, and it’s costing you your health.**

What You Need Beyond This Conversation

Recognizing you have a night guard is the beginning. But there’s more:

What do you do when your guard won’t believe you? How do you physically signal safety to a nervous system that’s been on duty for decades? What about when your guard is actually right—when vigilance is warranted?

Chapter 7 of *From Chains to Wings* walks through the complete dialogue practice, the physical movements that signal safety (not force relaxation), and what to do when nothing works. You’ll learn why some guards scan for threats while others replay conversations—and what each type needs to stand down.

Your guard probably won’t retire tomorrow. But tonight, instead of fighting yourself about why you can’t sleep, you might have a different conversation. One where you acknowledge the guard, thank it, and gently update it about what’s actually true now.

That shift—from fighting to dialoguing—changes the quality of sleeplessness itself.

Your body isn’t broken. Your guard is just using old information.

*From Chains to Wings* teaches you how to work with your nervous system instead of against it.

Joy Stephenson-Laws, J.D., is a healthcare attorney with over 40 years of experience championing fairness in the healthcare system. She is the founder of Proactive Health Labs (pH Labs), a national non-profit that now embraces a holistic approach to well-being—body, mind, heart, and spirit. As a certified holistic wellness coach, she helps individuals and families create practical, lasting health strategies. Her own experiences as a mother inspired her to write resources that spark important conversations about safety and wellness.

She is the author of Minerals – The Forgotten Nutrient: Your Secret Weapon for Getting and Staying Healthy.Her children’s book, Secrets That Sparkle (and Secrets That Sting), empowers kids to recognize safe vs. unsafe secrets in a gentle, age-appropriate way.

Her latest book, From Chains to Wings, offers compassionate tools for resilience, healing, and emotional freedom.