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.

  • brownsugga@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 months ago

    We have the sounds of NYC to fall asleep to… when we (are able to) go upstate, I sleep like a rock, the silence is deafening

    • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • Montagge@lemmy.zip
        0·
        4 months ago

        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.

      • bigbangdangler@reddthat.com
        0·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • Mike D@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Moved to a very noisy apartment about a year and half ago. Near a major hospital so ambulances 24/7. Near a rather busy intersection so cars, trucks, motorcycles accelerating 24/7. Live under the approach for a large international airport, so large planes decelerating often throughout the day.

      Kept a fan on for almost a year. Fan didn’t like it so now it wobbles.

      Finally bought an old white noise machine with an actual fan inside. LOVE IT. It doesn’t filter out everything but it sure helps.

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    4 months ago

    I’m so goddamn hyper alert that I need complete silence and pitch black darkness to fall asleep.

    Except for thunderstorms. Those are oddly soothing. But that’s it.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    0·
    4 months ago

    I use an app (iOS, Android, Windows, web) by TMSoft called White Noise. I think it was like $2.99. It has a bunch of pre-programmed sounds (waves, chimes, birds, traffic, etc) that you can use. You can also import sounds, change existing sounds (alter pitch, make slower, etc), create your own mixes, etc.

    My current “sleep sound” is a mix. The base is pink noise, which nicely muffles many sounds. Since a constant hiss can be annoying on it’s own, I topped it with a pitch-lowered heavy rain (the regular pitch was a little annoying). To avoid being woken up by bass noises (lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners, delivery trucks), I added in a slowed-down heavy thunderstorm: it has intermittent peals of thunder that rumble on and then fade away; any base noises that I hear, my sleeping mind interprets as a long peal of thunder and doesn’t bother waking me up. Underneath all that, I have a very slowed-down heartbeat; my heart will tend to try to match it, prepping me for sleep. And I’ve added in some very intermittent birdsong and frogs croaking to make it a little more cheerful, and a kitten purring because that’s relaxing too so why not?

    I tinker with it occasionally, but it really helps me sleep through any disturbances at night.

  • toomanypancakes@crazypeople.onlineEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    My husband usually falls asleep to tv, so I usually put on instrumental music on earbuds to drown it out. I’ll stay up way too late listening to tv otherwise.

  • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • everett@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Bongles@lemmy.zip
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • NABDad@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        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.

        • Bongles@lemmy.zip
          0·
          4 months ago

          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.

  • Nusm@peachpie.theatl.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    We have a ceiling fan, and I also used various white noise apps on my phone. I read somewhere that sound apps running on my phone all night was bad for the battery, so I bought a small, dedicated rechargeable white noise machine.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
    0·
    4 months ago

    ADHD adult with chronic insomnia here. I usually sleep with “electronic ambient music for sleeping with delta waves”, which is the prompt I give my bedside google home before bed. I do not sleep more, but the delta waves thing seems to help me sleep deeper.