11 Common Traits Of People Who Feel The Most At Peace At Night After Everyone Else Is Asleep
You may be a revenge sleep procrastinator without even realizing it.
Stokkete | Shutterstock Many people who live in a state of constant stress or emotional turmoil during the day tend to fall into a cycle of mental and physical exhaustion. Of course, battling anxiety, social stressors, and a chaotic routine can play into this tiredness, but it can also be self-inflicted, like author of "The Let Them Theory," Mel Robbins, suggests in her recent podcast episode, through behaviors like "revenge sleep procrastination."
Relying on revenge sleep procrastination, or intentionally delaying sleep to reclaim a sense of freedom, is one of the many common traits of people who feel the most at peace at night after everyone else is asleep — misguidedly assisting them in coping with their pent up emotions, overworked social battery, or mental health struggles. If this sounds like you, recognizing the daily behaviors that play into behaviors like this and a need for control at night can be powerful, helping you get better sleep, but also ensuring you're advocating for your needs and building a productive wellness routine during the day.
Here are 11 common traits of people who feel the most at peace at night after everyone else is asleep
1. They struggle to manage their stress
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Living in a state of constant unmanaged stress urges the body to adopt a "fight or flight" mentality. Whether you're sitting on the living room couch, answering a phone call, or meeting up with a friend, every anxiety trigger is an excuse to spiral, encouraging people to feed into emotional outbursts, isolating tendencies, and even unhealthy vices.
According to psychiatrist Dr. Allison Bailey, the consequences of being unable to manage stress throughout the day aren't just prevalent when everyone goes to sleep — where these individuals grasp onto a sense of misguided control of their routine and unpack their emotional turmoil — they can also take root in your long-term physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
"Research shows that chronic stress can have effects on almost every system in the body — from the heart to the digestive system to the immune system," Dr. Bailey says. "[This] unmanaged stress can trigger anxiety, depression, fatigue, difficulty concentrating and irritability."
While other people may use social connection, personal mindfulness techniques, or even intentional solitude to deal with their stress, one of the common traits of people who feel the most at peace at night after everyone else is asleep is their inability to healthily manage their anxieties — keeping their nervous system in a constant state of fight or flight.
2. They suppress complex emotions around others
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Alongside unmanaged stress and anxiety, suppressing emotions during the day can feed into symptoms of depression that are largely amplified at night, according to a PLOS One study.
By constantly pushing away complex emotions and avoiding intentional time spent recognizing and acknowledging feelings throughout the day, people don't just develop depressive symptoms, they also sabotage opportunities to build deeper, more meaningful connections and personal self-awareness.
People prone to suppressing emotions aren't always consciously aware of this habit when they're doing it; it's largely a symptom of unmet needs, childhood trauma, and toxic relationships. Regardless, it feeds into an emotionally uncomfortable cycle, where people feel required to delay sleep — aka "revenge sleep procrastination" — to finally acknowledge all their emotions, anxieties, and personally unmet needs from the day.
While solitude and alone time can be incredibly beneficial for self-reflection and emotional regulation, completely relying on these spaces to cope with intense emotions, especially isolated from others, can spiral into a defense mechanism against fears of vulnerability, rejection, and feeling like a burden, rather than a healthy habit.
3. They don't feel accepted
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It should come as no surprise that masking a true identity or suppressing genuine emotions isn't healthy for anyone's emotional well-being, whether it's completely intentional or not. According to a study from the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, hiding a stigmatized identity can actually encourage more social isolation and exclusion than acceptance, resulting in a lower sense of belonging that sparks feelings of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
When people spend all day masking their true identity, these moments of alone time at the end of their routine can feel refreshing — giving them a chance to take down the curtain, sit with themselves, and cope with the emotions they'd been subtly ignoring.
However, no matter how freeing and "in control" these people feel in the evenings, concealing a true identity or hiding certain stigmatized pieces of themselves only sparks emotional turmoil that sabotages connections, self-awareness, and most importantly, feelings of self-worth and confidence.
4. They people-please during the day
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According to Harvard psychologist Debbie Sorensen, people-pleasers — individuals who set their own needs aside to appease others, seek external validation, and cultivate self-worth only through resourcefulness for the people around them — tend to be more at risk for developing burnout in their personal and professional lives.
Struggling to set boundaries in their relationships during the day, they tend to go "above and beyond" for others and get overly emotionally invested in their responsibilities, putting their nervous system in a state of constant stress and anxiety.
People-pleasing is one of the many common traits of people who feel the most at peace at night after everyone else is asleep. Of course, their evening routine is a time where they're no longer expected to provide for others, but it also helps them to finally acknowledge the emotional taxation associated with the feelings of loneliness many burnt out people-pleasers experience.
Like any of these other common traits and behaviors, finding "peace" and indulging in solitude at the end of the day is only treating the symptoms of people-pleasing, not the root cause. To fully heal and acknowledge your unhealthy habits and routines, you have to commit to helping yourself — setting boundaries, investing in self-care, and learning about what you need in order to thrive from a healthy emotional state.
5. They're quick to anger
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When individuals fall into behaviors like revenge sleep procrastination to cope with uncertainty, stress, and anxiety from their days, they tend to subtly sabotage physical needs like sleep patterns.
Considering every part of our body, mind, and emotional state is inherently connected, sabotaged fundamental needs like sleep can throw everything out of equilibrium, sparking mental health concerns like depression, stress, anxiety, and emotional overwhelm.
For people without the self-awareness or tools to cope with these uncomfortable feelings, suppressing them can feel like a quick fix, but in the long run, these unmet needs and unacknowledged emotions only encourage anger, irritability, and emotional outbursts. Emotions can't be ignored or swept under the rug — they demand to be acknowledged and felt.
6. They feel detached from their physical body
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Experts from Cleveland Clinic argue people experiencing chronic stress, mental health struggles, or periods of poor sleep quality — sometimes as a result of revenge sleep procrastination — often develop "transient depersonalization" where they feel disconnected from their physical body.
Negatively affecting their ability to recognize their own sensations, emotions, and feelings, this disconnect and detachment can quickly sabotage a person's ability to cope with stress, connect inward to find peace, and emotionally unwind after a taxing day.
7. They're low energy during the day
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Many people who find solace in isolation to cope with discomfort or mental health struggles at the end of the day are dealing with an unregulated nervous system. Whether its behaviors like people-pleasing, emotional suppression, or feeding into toxic relationships that lead to unmet needs, not finding a balance between healthy social connection and self-awareness fuels a constant state of stress and overwhelm.
According to public health professional and mental health advocate Alex Bachert, a person with an unregulated nervous system often experiences a sleuth of negative physical and emotional consequences in their routines as their body yearns to cope with suppressed emotions, chronic stress, and unregulated anxiety or fear.
From poor sleep quality, to brain fog or fatigue, and even mood swings, some of the common traits of people who feel most at peace at night after everyone else is asleep are purely reactionary — coping with feeling unheard, unvalued, and unsupported during the day.
8. They struggle with concentration
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Both chronic stress and experiences of anxiety can have serious consequences on an individual's cognition. From sabotaging memory skills, to sparking brain fog that harms attention-span and concentration, and even making problem-solving and complex thinking difficult, the anxiety and stress that causes nervous system dysregulation isn't an isolated emotional experience.
When an emotionally dysregulated person struggling with chronic stress, loneliness, or depression comes home, away from other people that add to their overwhelm, they may experience a sense of peace that helps to promote their attention and cognitive skills like concentration.
Considering the alone time seems to help — despite simply being a coping mechanism for symptoms of dysregulation — they continue to prioritize this isolating time, oftentimes to the detriment of their sleep schedule, social connections, or self-awareness.
9. They cultivate superficial relationships
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Research from the American Psychological Association argues that deep, meaningful connections are a pillar of building a healthy emotional state, helping to fend off the consequences of isolation, anxiety, and loneliness.
"Connecting with others in meaningful ways tends to make people happier, and yet people also seem reluctant to engage in deeper and more meaningful conversation," psychology professor Nicholas Epley suggested. "This struck us as an interesting social paradox: If connecting with others in deep and meaningful ways increases well-being, then why aren't people doing it more often in daily life?"
Despite understanding and even acknowledging that social connection helps ease anxiety and depressive symptoms, many people who feel more at peace by themselves don't have the self-awareness, self-esteem, or social skills to build meaningful connections during the day.
Whether it's anxiety that encourages them to isolate, burnout and chronic stress fueled by people-pleasing behaviors, or a discomfort with emotional vulnerability, their lack of social connectedness is a self-indulging cycle.
10. They have disproportionate emotional reactions
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Constantly suppressing emotions and hiding from vulnerability encourages people to lose a sense of inward connectedness with their emotional state. As one of the common traits of people who feel the most at peace at night after everyone else is asleep, meaning they're no longer forced to hide from or filter their emotions, this suppression can result in disproportionate reactions.
Without embracing opportunities to hold space for their emotional responses in public, people who suppress emotions often "overreact" to subtle casual problems or lash out at people unexpectedly for making simple comments.
Experts from the Cleveland Clinic argue that disproportionate responses are largely associated with emotional dysregulation and nervous system imbalances, causing irritability and mood swings to occasionally bubble up quickly in the face of triggers, trauma, or stress.
11. They're more creative
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Many studies, including one from Comprehensive Psychiatry, argue there's a link between psychopathy or mental health struggle and general creativity.
However, not all of the common traits of people who feel most at peace at night after everyone else is asleep are inherently tied to negative emotional well-being, lacking self-awareness, or social isolation; in fact, some people simply enjoy their alone time enough to carve out space from their sleep schedule to make time for it, even at the expense of their energy levels and general mental clarity during the day.
While behaviors like revenge sleep procrastination or emotional suppression tend to urge people to seek out alone time to a fault — sabotaging their sleep schedules and isolating them into unhealthy coping mechanisms — there are certain people who simply find joy in reclusive routines.
Demonizing this alone time isn't helping anyone, but finding ways to bring awareness to the interconnected nature of isolation, mental health struggles, self-awareness, and even modes of relaxation can help struggling individuals to make peace with their routines and make a change for the better.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.