I must have noise to go along with going to sleep. Usually thats an audio book or long-form video essay type YouTube videos. I wear one earbud to bed if I’m sleeping at night with my girlfriend or just blare it from the TV if I’m sleeping alone during the day (rotating shift). I feel like when I don’t have engaging audio and I’m trying to sleep I can’t quiet my mind enough to sleep. A fan or random ambient noise isn’t enough for me.
Sleep music . changed my life . i used to lay awake for an hour . i created a world in my head and would continue the story every night . now with sleep music I’m out in minutes , the people of my world prolly miss me.
I honestly would prefer library silence or less. Earplugs cause other issues for me so they are not an option, I have tried. I also prefer almost complete darkness.
I’m honestly looking to build a float tank to use for times when I am really struggling to sleep. When I scuba dive the only reason why I don’t try to take a nap is the risk of losing my regulator or running out of air.
Podcast recommendations:
- The Drowsy Historian
- History of English Podcast (Kevin Stroud)
Both have no ads at all, and uniform volume.
Gooooood stuff right there bud
I use a fan. Without it it’s too quiet and hot.
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Yeah, tinnitus.
He’s 100% right. I laughed at the imaginary pain, until it happened to me.
“Trust me, you do not want tinnitus.” – Sterling Archer
Used to. Had to have the radio going on low or a fan running during the summer. Not anymore. Any chance you’re adhd? Sometimes The noise in the head is hard to shut off so you can sleep.
Whatever it takes to quiet the thoughts. Plus, adding a base layer of familiar sound helps drown out the odd sounds that makes your brain assess the danger. I don’t often use sound, but for a while I did key myself into playing a particular Deadmau5 album to knock me out for a lunch nap.
The thoughts can be a problem. You can’t stop thinking about how to fix something from earlier. My favorite mental game is picking a category and going through the alphabet, naming an item for each letter. It’s OK to skip a letter, come back later. You’re still thinking creatively, but the speed is much slower. The “problem” is no longer something threatening you (bills, arguments, chores), it’s just finding a one-word response at a time. Cities, towns but not real cities, desserts, bodies of water, car models, zoo animals, construction materials, colors…
Yes, either the fan, or gentle psybient music, something. Because it’s never silent, and earplugs make me cough, I need sleepy sounds.
ETA I also love when a neighbor has a party, sleeping to the distant sounds of a party, music and all, relaxes my mind so much. I think my subconscious must figure things are ok if people are partying. I have had sometimes the opportunity to sleep above a dance club and that also was so nice.
I do not. AI prefer quiet for sleep.
The sound of rain is nice though to go to sleep.
Nope, the quieter, the better
Yes.
There’s a retirement village nearby, and EVERY MORNING around 4 o’clock, some motherfucker with a huge rubbish truck goes in.
The driver parks.
The driver walks over to the large industrial bin.
The driver opens the lid to see if it’s worth putting the contents in the truck. If it is, he lets the lid SLAM down, then pushes the rusty metal bin over the bitumen road towards his truck GRRRRNNNNNNNTTTT (because the wheels on those things never work).
He then gets back in his truck, does the little garbo magic with the mechanical arm thing, the truck lifts the bin, and he bangs it against the top of the truck receptacle a few times for shiggles BANG BANG BANGGGG, then moves the mechanical arms to place it back down on the bitumen with a gentle kiss BANG!
He then gets out of his truck, and pushes the now empty industrial bin over to where it was GGNNNNNNKKKKTTTTTT and positions it gently against the brick wall there BANG!
He then gets back in his truck, and reverses out the driveway DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT, and finally fucks off.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of people live there. If I can hear that truck as a neighbour, how much worse must it be for the oldies trying to sleep there?
Hearing loss can be a blessing…
“If I’m awake everyone else should be awake to witness it.” ~ asshole on a motorbike, overrevving on a 30mph road at 5 am
My fiancée sleeps with a fan. I sleep with my finacée snoring.
I do the same, I can’t sleep without a fan
I even use a fan in the winter. I like cold air on the outside and warm air on the inside. More than that, something about the wind moving past my head is soothing.
Lmao thats a tough one
Not necessarily.
I’m hoping you already have, but if you haven’t, get your fiancée to get a sleep study. Very often snoring is their way of telling you they are dying slowly.
Yup, I ignored my snoring. That led to waking up tired every day, then a sore neck, then a mild headache that went away after waking up, and finally all of my extremities started to tingle. It all went away once I was able to wear my cpap for maybe half of the night.
I live in a city, of course there’s noise, mostly road noise from cars going past tbh
I had insomnia for about the first 45 years of my life. At its worst, I would miss at least one night of sleep per week. By “miss” I mean I would go to bed at a reasonable hour, lay there with the lights off and my eyes closed until about 4:00am, when I’d get out of bed, get dressed, and go to work.
I tried drinking myself into a stupor. I tried white noise CDs. I even got a prescription for Ambien from my doctor. That scared me because I thought meds would do the trick, but I took it and still didn’t sleep.
One day I saw a post about the Sleep With Me Podcast. It’s described as bedtime stories for adults. I followed the link, started listening, and thought, “this guy may be the most boring person I’ve ever heard”.
I started playing it when I went to bed, and it worked for me from the very first night. I fell asleep within minutes of starting the episode, but then I woke up after it ended.
The next night I loaded my phone with all the episodes. I slept through the night, but then I couldn’t wake up in the morning. My alarm would go off, I’d hit snooze, then I’d hear the podcast playing and fall asleep again.
What I finally settled on was setting a sleep timer to stop the podcast a few minutes before my alarm would go off.
I’ve been listening to that podcast every night for the last 11 years. It’s been the best sleep of my life. I’ve actually had the experience of being consciously aware of losing consciousness. It’s a weird and wonderful thing.
The thing about the stories he tells is that it seems like there might be a point, and you start listening to the story, but he goes on so many tangents and diversions that it never actually goes anywhere. After a while, my brain just shuts down.
The first episode I listened to was telling a story about a group of people about to enter a pyramid. It ran for over an hour, but I didn’t hear more than a few minutes.
The next episode continued the same story, and when I started it the next night, the people were still outside the pyramid. In over an hour of telling the story the night before, absolutely nothing happened.
Damn dude, I figured I’d give it a shot. Over 12 minutes in and it’s been ads, introducing the concept, then more ads, then a short song, then another ad, THEN welcoming you to the show with another explanation of the concept. If I wasn’t trying it because of a recommendation I never would have made it this long in.
Yeah, it doesn’t work for everyone. He even says that in the intro.
I’d point out that if you thought he’d get right into the story, you weren’t paying attention to my description. I’m usually asleep before he gets through the intro.
Nah I got the gist of it from your comment, just almost 15 minutes of pure ads at the beginning is abrasive to me.
I did stick with it, but unfortunately for me I have the same issue as I do listening to an audio book in bed. Even though he’s talking nonsense about butter and whatnot, I’m still paying attention too much. Was worth a shot though.
I swear I’ve read a creepypasta of something like this happening to someone.
That podcast sounds like the audio equivalent of Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, where the narrator is so in his own head he spends pages going into tedious detail describing tiny facets of the most inconsequential recollections from his childhood. Highly recommended for falling asleep.
