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.
Headphones with boring content is how I do it
Something interesting enough to you to keep your attention to stop your mind from wandering and working itself into a tizzy, but not so intense or dynamic as to keep you up thinking about it.
I like to listen to The Empty Bowl and a couple other podcasts at 70% speed. There are even podcasts out there, like Sleep With Me, specifically meant to help you doze off.
30 minutes math or philosophy videos narrated by a someone with a not annoying voice are the best, 3blue1brown’s videos are really good for this, and if it doesn’t work at least you kinda sorta learn something. I also quite like Vsauce