I wake up at 3am to 4am daily as a neighbor makes noise walking their dog. This cannot be helped. Once I am awake, my mind won’t stop going over details about everything from the mundane to the critical. Often, I am able to fall asleep again after three or more hours of wakefulness, but only minutes before I have to wake for the day.
Does anyone have success with quieting the mind without substances so that they can fall back to sleep?
Edit: I want to thank you all for the helpful comments. I’m reading through them now and wioo be internalizing some of the suggestions.
To provide more context for those who asked:
I do have ADHD and OCD and Anxiety.
I sleep with a fan and a white noise track (10hrs of non-repeating noise I d/l’d with newpipe).
My apartment building has a fire escape that the neighbor uses as their front door. This path means using a heavy steel door on a power hinge. (Slam!) The door is against the wall that my headboard is on. They have every right to use whichever door they like, and I don’t know them well enough yet to ask them to change for me. They are trying to be as quiet as they can, other than using the loudest path possible. They seem very nice, and their dog is quiet and well trained.
I’m in the middle of a long period of unemployment and I am beginning to worry about finances, as my savings are about half gone in a year.
Thanks again for all the suggestions! I’ll report back with my results in a few days.
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Here is what I do, it is a type of visualization meditation.
I have been watching futurama (original seasons) for 20 something years. I have seen each episode literally hundreds of times. I have them burned pretty well into my brain at this point.
I have ripped just the audio track from the DVDs. When I wake up in the middle of the night (2-4 times per night!), I turn on a random episode as audio only.
The goal here is to try to visualize the episode as you only listen to the audio. This forces you to focus on something rather than stress about life. It really helps me stop thinking about anything else. Because I know the episodes so well, it has become quite easy to stay focused on it (like watching with your eyes closed). And since I’ve seen the episodes so many times there is no fear of missing out, so you don’t try to stay awake to finish an episode. I can typically fall back asleep within 5-10 minutes with this technique.
I personally have these on my phone in a playlist and sleep with a single wired ear bud in one ear. I have a sleep timer set for 25 minutes. If I wake up, all I have to do is tap the button on my wired Apple headphones and it’ll continue playing for 25 more minutes. No need to open my eyes or take off my sleep mask.
This is a great tip that I do as well
6133 hours of futurama. That’s like 50 minutes or ~2 episodes every day for 20 years. And that’s just for 100 times for each episode. Nice.
I’m kind of a fat-ass (5’11" 235 lbs.) with the 'betes, so I also sleep with a fan. I find the fan isn’t quite enough, so I try to keep the temp in the appartment below 70°F (66-68°F ideally). I like to read before bed to get myself “out of my own head”, preferabbly something interesting but not too interesting like Neitzsche, Oliver Sachs, David Graeber.
I focus hard and repeat to myself several times, “i deserve a full night of sleep,” to help get rid of whatever is in my brain. Then i take 5-10 breaths to think about getting comfortable, feeling my pillow and covers. Then i relax one body part for 3 breaths, starting at my feet, then ankles, then lower leg, … Keeping my mind as focused as possible on it to prevent brain wandering. If thoughts creep in, i start over reminding myself that i deserve sleep.
Ive never managed to sleep this way, I tried so many times, but instead of thinking about the thing I should think about, like breathing, my stupid brain thinks about thinking of doing the thing…
It is hard. Took me about a year of practice to be able to go back to sleep. Adding that i deserve sleep helps me put down my phone and turn off the tv.
- Make sure you can’t see a clock at night. Not knowing how late it is will stop your mind from going over at least one detail, how much time you have left to sleep.
- Get a notebook next to your bed so you can write things down if something urgent comes up in your mind. If you’re like me, changes are you’ll never write down anything.
- Try to not think about anything for 10 seconds or better 10 breaths. No toughts whatsoever.
- If everything fails, have a book or e-reader ready, so you can relax while reading for a bit. Nothing with LCD screens though, they tend to wake you up even more.
I found that history documentaries are the best. The battlefield series is a gem. I put in one earbud and have the audio without the screen on. Every night. https://youtu.be/BgeJo7l9NUk?si=zsx6ChVuu4EK0aNa
Lots of great advice here already, the only thing I’d add is 4-7-8 breathing. There are lots of guides and explanations online, but essentially you breath in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, then exhale for 8 seconds.
It takes practice before you can do it and stay relaxed at the same time, so I would suggest practicing during the daytime so when you do it at night it doesn’t fully wake you up. It took about a week of practice before I felt comfortable enough to feel the benefit, but I still use 4-7-8 breathing in lots of contexts four years later.
I think the theory behind it is tied to vagus nerve and helping the body relax and enter rest and digest states.
I’m a light sleeper with a loud mind, as well, so this kind of thing has always been a problem for me. The two main things I find helpful may not do the trick for you, but here goes:
First, trying to force myself back to sleep always just ramps my brain up worse and makes it more difficult than it already was to fall back asleep. I stopped trying to force the issue, which has counterintuitively sped up the time it takes me to fall back asleep. I don’t get up or engage my mind with anything significant, but if I’m awake, I’ll put soft music on my earbuds or scroll on my phone set to the dimmest setting. I may not fall back to sleep immediately, but I’ve found that lowering the pressure on myself to fall back asleep makes it happen more readily than when I spend 2 hours and 45 minutes being like “if I fall asleep right now, I can still get another 3 hours. go to sleep. fall asleep. sleep will happen… now!”
Second, I’ve increased my oversell magnesium intake. I know you said no substances, but I feel like this is different. There have been a few studies–popular science type stuff, nothing peer reviewed that I know of–indicating that magnesium improves sleep quality and the ability to return to sleep if woken up. Might be the placebo effect, but I don’t care because I’ve noticed an improvement.
Sorry you have to deal with this flavor of insomnia, too. Super sucks.
Do you have ADHD or something similar?
I always need to have something playing in the background to stop my mind from overworking.No, they have thin walls
Can you get the dog taken away from them?
???
Have you tried ear plugs?
I have an ADHD brain, sleep lightly because of raising kids, and my wife snores. I have found the best comfort success with Mack’s Silicone earplugs. I can shape them just right, so they’re not painful when I am sleeping on my side. Each plug, split in half, lasts about three nights before my body oil makes them difficult to adhere to my ears. They’re don’t block a lot of sound, but they both soften the sounds that happen and they make me hear my own breathing more, which is relaxing and focusing in it’s own way.
Good information.
I get good results with the store brand, one use foam ones. I don’t need them every night, just when things are loud or I’m in a new place.
