Yeah, tinnitus.

I live in a city, of course there’s noise, mostly road noise from cars going past tbh

White noise. I cant stand random volume changes, otherwise I wouldn’t mind soft music. I also cant stand the sound of my own breathing, so silence isnt an option.

I have the TV on in the other room while falling asleep. I live alone, so nobody is bothered by it

It takes practice, like anything else. Doing something makes you better at something and not doing something will make you worse at it. In this case you have been conditioning your brain to need ambient noise. There is a line between it being a small help on some days and it being a crutch you’ve built your life around. Sounds lile you are in the latter camp.

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?

A lot of comments in here about white noise and no one talking about brown noise! Brown noise is elite iykyk

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.

Yep, HomePod has a 'babbling brook" loop. I used to use “rain on a tin roof”, but Apple is a jerk and doesn’t make bringing your own sleep sounds easy.

Been falling asleep to music recently, using Finamp and set a timer for 90 minutes because sometimes it takes me 30+ min to fall asleep. Wear one ear piece, so it’s not to drown out noise, just something to fall asleep to

Yes. Generally with Would I Lie to You or the Unbelievable Truth.

Never, but I like conversing with my internal monologue in my head. I’m not quite neurotypical, but I have been pretty good (trained?) to rein in any out of control thoughts if they ever wander by using bait I know my brain can chill with.

When I was a teen, it was sexy stuff. Young adult, plot points for a novel setting I’ll probably never write. Lately, it’s just plans for the day (I sleep so much faster now than I used to, though, since I changed my sleep habits after having kids).

Plus, my own monologue makes sense of how I’m feeling and gives me pep talks! That’s probably a product of coping with abuse, but it’s nice none the less.

Every night, White noise via the sound of rain and/or the fans of my computer if I leave it on.

No

I absolutely have to have white noise of some sort. My stupid ass brain is ALWAYS on alert for any noise whatsoever. A pin drops on the opposite side of my apartment and my brain freaks out “omg wake up and pay attention!!” it’s so fucking frustrating. Any typical creaks or whatever that a house makes, well time to focus the entirety of my attention on it whether I want to or not. A knocking heater? It’s the most dangerous thing in the universe and apparently my brain feels that it deserves all of my focus…

I swear sleeping is the most difficult thing for me to do. I’m so tired of being tired lol