Divorce Keeping You Up at Night? How to Stop the 2 A.M. Spiral
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[GET THE GUIDED DIVORCE MEDITATIONS HERE]
If divorce is keeping you awake at night, you're definitely not alone.
You go to bed exhausted, but the second everything gets quiet, your brain decides it's time to solve your entire divorce.
What if my ex is hiding money? What if something happens with the kids? What does that email from my attorney mean? What if this goes to trial? Did I remember to send that document? Should I respond to that text? What if I can't afford this?
Suddenly it's 2:34 a.m., you're wide awake, and you're trying to solve problems that probably cannot be solved from your bed.
In this episode of How Not to Suck at Divorce, Andrea Rappaport and family law attorney Morgan Stogsdill are talking about divorce anxiety, insomnia and what to do when you can't stop thinking about your divorce at night.
And we're giving you an actual strategy.
Morgan explains how to separate the things that genuinely require action from the things that feel urgent because your anxious brain is filling in the blanks. Andrea shares why losing sleep during divorce can make an already difficult situation worse—and potentially affect the decisions you're making the next day.
The goal isn't to pretend everything is fine.
It's learning to recognize what needs your action—and what needs your inaction.
In This Episode You'll Learn
- Why divorce anxiety can feel so much worse at night
- What to do when you wake up worrying about your divorce
- The pen-and-paper strategy Morgan recommends for getting worries out of your head
- How to determine whether something actually requires action
- Why you should think twice before emailing your divorce attorney late at night
- How to create a running list of questions for your attorney
- Why you should draft—but NOT send—emotional late-night emails
- How late-night texts and emails from your ex can destroy your sleep
- Why setting communication boundaries with your co-parent matters
- How to use OurFamilyWizard notification settings more strategically
- Why sometimes doing absolutely nothing is the smartest action you can take
- What to tell yourself when your brain refuses to shut down
- Why resting can be enough when you can't force yourself to fall asleep
- How changing your environment may help break the cycle when you're lying awake spiraling
The 2 A.M. Divorce Brain Dump
If you wake up in the middle of the night and your brain is racing, Morgan recommends keeping a pen and paper next to your bed.
Write down everything that's occupying your brain—not just the divorce stuff.
Then go through the list and ask yourself:
Can I actually take action on this tonight?
Or:
Do I have any control over the outcome of this tonight?
If the answer is no, cross it out for tonight.
If the answer is yes, decide whether it truly requires action immediately or whether you can make a plan to handle it tomorrow.
Most things can wait until morning.
And if it's something you want to discuss with your divorce attorney, write it down or put the email in your drafts. Do not hit send at 2 a.m.
Your rested morning brain may have a very different—and considerably shorter—email to send.
Stop Letting Your Ex Into Your Bedroom
Not literally. We have an entirely different podcast episode for that problem.
We're talking about your phone.
If your ex tends to send inflammatory texts, emails or co-parenting messages late at night, you do not have to allow those notifications to dictate when your nervous system goes into overdrive.
Morgan recommends setting boundaries around when you receive and read messages. Andrea also points out that if you're using OurFamilyWizard, you can choose when you receive your daily notifications.
Your ex's 10:30 p.m. message does not automatically become your 10:31 p.m. emergency.
And it goes both ways.
Don't send your ex angry late-night messages either. Aside from destroying everyone's sleep, creating a documented pattern of bad communication is probably not something you want your attorneys—or potentially a judge—reading later.
What Needs Action—and What Needs Inaction?
We often divide our problems into two categories:
Things I can control.
Things I can't control.
Andrea offers a different way to think about it during divorce:
What needs my action?
And:
What needs my inaction?
Sometimes inaction is an active decision.
You can recognize that something is scary, painful or uncertain without trying to solve it tonight.
You aren't pretending the problem doesn't exist.
You're deciding:
Not now.
Tomorrow, you can reopen the box.
Tonight, your job is to rest.
When Your Brain Still Won't Shut Up
Sometimes you've written everything down. You've made tomorrow's list. You've silenced your notifications. You've decided what can wait.
And your brain is still going.
That's exactly why we created our Guided Divorce Meditations.
Earlier this week, we released one of the meditations completely free on the podcast: For When You Can't Sleep.
It's about 10 minutes long, and Andrea walks you through putting those thoughts and fears somewhere safe for the night—not throwing them away, not pretending they don't matter, but giving yourself permission to stop carrying them until morning.
The complete Guided Divorce Meditation library is $20 and includes meditations created specifically for different moments of divorce when you need help quieting the noise.
[GET THE GUIDED DIVORCE MEDITATIONS HERE]
Resources Mentioned
Divorce Crash Course
Guided Divorce Meditations
OurFamilyWizard
Soberlink
Subscribe, Rate & Review
If How Not to Suck at Divorce is helping you get through your divorce a little smarter, calmer and more prepared, please subscribe and leave us a review. It helps more people find the show and allows us to keep creating resources that actually help you through this process.
Rate the podcast:
www.ratethispodcast.com/notsuck
And remember: you are going to get through this.
One step at a time. One day at a time. And sometimes, one hour at a time.
You've got this.
And we've got you.
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