That's men for you: What percentage of the population is awake at four o'clock every morning?
I suspect the percentage is high. Sleeplessness seems to be every second person's problem and it doesn't surprise me that drivers are falling asleep behind the wheel with fatal consequences.
What can you do to increase the chances that you will face the day with a good night's rest under your belt?
There are two measures in particular that can help. One is to avoid anything that could be described as problem-solving when you're meant to be sleeping. The other is to avoid fretting about the fact that you're not sleeping.
Many people lie in bed at night frightening the life out of themselves by thinking about their problems. But when you're in bed each problem seems a thousand times worse than it does during the day. Not only does it seem a thousand times worse but you feel like you are the only person in the universe with so monstrous a dilemma.
When morning comes you wonder what all the fuss was about - but by then it is too late and you are exhausted.
So the first thing you can do for yourself is to take your attention away from your problems when you are in bed. It's alright: they'll still be there in the morning and you can worry about them then.
To take your attention away from your problems you need to put it somewhere else. To do this, just gently notice your breathing, the warmth and comfort of your bed, your stomach rising and falling.
Whenever you find yourself drifting into a problem-solving scenario, re-running something that happened yesterday or rehearsing tomorrow, just stop and get back to noticing your breathing.
Similarly, when you notice yourself thinking in sentences, stop and go back to noticing your breathing, the warmth of the bed and so on.
While this is going on, it is very important to avoid fretting about the fact that you are not asleep. Once you start "awfulising" about being awake, your brain becomes alert. Once your brain becomes alert it is likely to go looking for something to worry about: how am I going to get through that meeting tomorrow without sleep, how dare they try to pull the wool over my eyes anyhow, who do they think they are? etc.
You can avoid fretting by taking the attitude that you are in bed to rest deeply and not necessarily to sleep. Make sleep a non-issue. That means no tossing and turning in exasperation - just notice your breathing and the warmth of the bed and accept that you are there to rest. There is now a good chance that you will drift back to sleep but remember it doesn't matter so long as you can rest deeply.
And don't keep checking the time - that will just keep you worried and awake. If you have a clock that chimes the hours, consider taking the battery out of the darn thing.
People who go to the bathroom during the night might consider using a very gentle light - perhaps one of those battery-operated nightlights you can buy. If the lights in your bathroom are as strong as all the floodlights in a premiership football stadium, then they're just going to wake you up.
This is because you have a gland in your brain called the pineal gland which is regulated by light and dark. So far as is known, the arrival of daylight causes it to switch off its production of sleep-inducing melatonin so as to get you alert for the day ahead. So you really, really don't want to fool the pineal gland into thinking it's morning.
Remember too that in order to sleep it helps to be in bed. In our time-deprived society there can be a temptation to spend the minimum possible number of hours in bed. That is not a good deal: you pay in tiredness and general rattiness the next day.
Go to bed in a dark room, stop worrying about sleeping and quit problem-solving. Sweet dreams.
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.