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.

  • hrimfaxi_workEnglish
    7•9 months ago

    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.