Divorce Insomnia Matters More Than You Think: Letting Go & Clearing Energy Blocks

Did you know that the time you wake up in the middle of the night, either from a nightmare or racing thoughts, is an indicator of something specific that needs to be addressed in your healing journey?

If you’re experiencing restless sleep, I want you to come back to this divorce insomnia blog over and over again, because it is probably one of the most underrated parts of the healing journey.

But let’s first start with explaining what divorce insomnia is.

What is Divorce Insomnia?

Divorce insomnia is when the feelings about your divorce wake you up at night.

Your mind races and your body feels restless—and that’s completely understandable. You’re going through a lot, and your brain continues to process your healing while you sleep, either through dreams or periods of wakefulness.

Nighttime Wakeups Reveal Energy Imbalances: What 1–3 AM and 3–5 AM Patterns Mean

It’s pretty widely accepted that our dreams are a relevant part of our subconscious mind and our unprocessed content from the day. But I cannot emphasize enough how much sleep, the quality of our sleep, and our dreams matter in our healing journey.

The time of night that you wake up and the content of your dreams are a clear indicator of what’s going on in your body and where energy needs to be moved.

It’s important to wrap your mind around the idea that much of healing is learning how to move energy.

When you are waking up at a particular time, there is energy that is getting hung up in its healing process.

If you are not responding to those wake-ups with energy-moving techniques, it becomes a missed opportunity.

How the Brain Uses Sleep to Process Emotion

Very often, I would go to therapy and I would struggle to connect to what I needed to feel and process. But then inevitably, I would wake up in the middle of the night in a panic about something, a nightmare, or with racing thoughts. This would be an indicator that there’s a feeling I need to process. Obviously, on one hand, this is not convenient. I would think, “Okay, brain, you couldn’t have done this earlier today or yesterday in therapy, but now you’re waking me up in the middle of the night.”

But there’s a gift there, because in the middle of the night, we are mostly stimulation-free. It’s quiet and there’s capacity to focus.

Often, we women get stressed out about getting back to sleep, and we put pressure on ourselves.

Why Your Brain Wakes You to Send a Message

I have a long history of insomnia, not just divorce insomnia, and when you start thinking about having insomnia in the middle of the night, you just get yourself in a loop. I have a long history of sleepwalking, night terrors, and vivid dreams, so it was very common for me to wake up in the night.

Being a therapist, people come and they tell me they wake up in the middle of the night and immediately grab their phone, turn the TV on, do a crossword puzzle, or force themselves back to sleep.

The thing is, these are moments where your body and mind are trying to communicate to you. It’s happening for a reason, and it needs your attention.

I used to wake up from a nightmare and just want to say to my husband, “Hey, just tell me everything will be okay, so I can go back to sleep.”

When I started approaching my waking up in the night differently, things started shifting for me much more quickly.

There was a mindset shift from wanting my phone or husband to solve it for me to me saying,

“These are my feelings and they’re coming to me. I’m awake and I will deal with these feelings now, because these feelings are asking me to deal with them now.”

Night Waking Is a Signal, Not a Crisis

We talk so much about attachment style issues, and we start to heal attachment issues when we start showing up for ourselves in this meaningful and attuned way. We can talk about how our caregivers or exes weren’t attuned, but if we’re not attuned to our bodies and our emotional needs, we women are just reinforcing those old attachment styles.

So, what not to do when you wake up from nightmares or panic or overthinking or to-do lists? Scroll, force yourself back to sleep, or toss and turn for hours.

Waking Between 1 and 3 AM Reflects Resentment Stored in the Liver

The time that you wake up is always a key indicator and something that I use when I’m helping clients in EMDR therapy and with homeopathic remedy selection.

If you wake up between 1 and 3 AM, in Chinese medicine, it is related to the liver and “Chi energy.” The most common emotion that you’re needing to be tackling between 1 and 3 AM is anger and resentment. 

So, if you tend to wake up at these times, I want you to ask yourself, “Do I know I’m struggling with anger?” Some people will say yes, but others may respond, “I don’t know, I don’t feel angry.” You may not realize how angry you are—there’s likely some suppressed stuff stuck inside.

Liver Time Signals Suppressed Anger

I want you to consider that you have some liver clogging going on—it might be lifestyle-related, but it’s also anger-related.

We women have to figure out how to start getting some movement, strengthening lifeforce (or Chi), and unclogging that liver from anger.

If I woke up at this time, I would start taking deep, intentional breaths and sighing things out. I might grab a little castor oil and massage that liver zone. I might make a note that next week I need to concentrate on some intentional water and liver detoxification protocols (like dandelion tea), and EFT tapping.

With EFT, I would start doing a karate chop side of the hand, saying, “I choose to love, honor, and accept myself.”

I would use EFT to move that anger through my body and just start acknowledging, “I’m angry, I’m resentful. And I choose to love, honor, and accept myself. I choose to let this anger go.” Then sigh to let it all out of your body. 

Release Anger Gently with EFT Tapping, Sighing, and 528 Hz Healing Sounds

After the EFT tapping, I would put on some sleep meditation music. They’re 528 Hz sleep meditations, which means they’re automatically vibrationally aligned with healing and love, which is medicine for that resentment or that anger in your liver.

Put on some sort of 528 Hz meditation or music and let your body be able to relax, so you can allow yourself to fall back to sleep.

There are also homeopathic remedies you can use to support this process.

Support Your Heart with Ignatia, Tapping, and Self-Holding

Now, if you’re waking up between 3 and 5 AM, it’s a sign of grief.

In Chinese medicine, that’s the cardiothoracic section of the body—your lungs and heart.

Firstly, for homeopathy, I would take 30c of Ignatia, which is a grief and a nervous system remedy. Then I would say to grab a pillow and hug it to your chest.

Visualize the pillow as the wounded parts of yourself, find a steady breath, cross your arms across your chest, and start butterfly tapping, picturing the parts of you that need to grieve.

Very often, we want to run away from these feelings when we wake up in the middle of the night. We women want to try to escape them, suppress them, or avoid them.

But I’m here to tell you that leaning into the nightmares and using butterfly or EFT tapping will help clear what keeps recirculating energetically in your body and mind that is driving the nightmares.

3–5 AM Is Grief Time—Be Gentle With Yourself

I want you to be really nurturing to yourself between 3 and 5 AM.

Take a moment to be especially attuned to those younger parts of yourself that may feel so sad, undersupported, and needing a big, beautiful hug.

I would love to know what time you tend to wake up most.

Send me a DM with your divorce insomnia time on Instagram. I would love to hear your middle-of-the-night stories.

I’ve always been a restless sleeper, but this is the most peaceful I’ve ever slept. So, I promise you this is going to change your quality of sleep moving forward.

I love you so much. Peace.