Insomnia is evil. I have no trouble falling asleep; in fact, it's usually within seconds after my head hits the pillow. But for some reason almost every night between anywhere from 3 to 4:30 am, I wake up (usually from an intense dream) and can't fall back asleep. I start worrying about what time it is and how soon my fucking alarm is going to go off, or even if I glance over and see I've still got over two hours before I have to be awake, my mind starts racing and at that point I'm fucked.
I so envy Ben's ability to sleep for ten hours at a stretch and immediately fall back asleep if anyone wakes him up.
When I was in my 20s a trick I used on the rare instances I couldn't get back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night was to tell myself that nothing was so important that I needed to fret over it and lose sleep—especially since nothing could be done about whatever it was that was bothering me until morning anyway. If only that still worked…
I just tend to get up and do stuff until I'm tired again, then go back to bed. At least I feel somewhat "productive" during those times. Which are frequent.
Try this: many people wake up 'at the same time" as they have literally trained themselves to do so. Set the alarm, but turn the clock around and don't look at it. So, when you wake in the night, you can't look at the time and reinforce waking up at the same time. Soon the mind becomes confused and stops waking you to check the time; the only 'cue' it has now is the alarm sound. Good luck.
I normally wake up at 4:30. No matter when I go to bed.
I have the EXACT same problem. Sigh…