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Slightly complainy rant by kerplunk
Getting things off my chest, the journal:
I gotta figure out what to do about this issue I've developed with waking-up-to-early-and-frequently during the night. It makes me feel really tired and not well-rested.
part of it is the noise in the house: the wall in our room bring all of the sounds of walking directly into our living space, all the pipes in the house converge behind a different wall, and i'm a very light sleeper in the first place. Also my parents and house mates tend to stomp or wear shoes on the hardwood floors early in the morning or late, after midnight. Baths/showers also occur like in this timeframe.
Being stressed out and high-strung also leaves me with such mental energy that it take a long time to fall asleep without the use of a sleep aid. My mom also has issues staying asleep, and she tends to get up during the wee hours, at 1:30 or 2:30 to "do things," usually audible (stomping etc).
I hear every last bit of it unless i'm totally lost in REM sleep.
Not sure what to do other than get through school (years from now), get a job (wow), and move out (golly, wouldn't that be nice). There's no other room we could work with, really. Every other room is occupied, except for the rooms that have no doors of any kind. So we are kind of stuck in place with this situation, as we have been for th elast 6 years.
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Yeah, i'd love one of those boxes. :o
I sleep with a fan on, it's just not enough. :\ I'm just such a light sleeper I even hear the rattles in the fan's motor assembly. I haven't figured out what to do about this. Melatonin doesn't keep me asleep through the whole night, unfortunately.
Maybe I could get a white noise maker that is a bit louder?
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Yeesh, that sounds like a lot to deal with, I'm sorry you have to deal with that.
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I have to admit it could be worse, and it's really only a problem when my stress is high and my energy is already low. Just tends to be like that a lot lately. :P I have some more ideas, but they involve stronger sleep aids.
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comically large over-ear earphones maybe
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When I lived in dorms I would use my shooter's earplugs (super good at dampening noise) and then set my phone alarm to an annoying tone with vibration on and lay it down beside or underneath my pillow. :x
It's weird, but it worked for me.
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interesting I wouldn't have expected a phone's vibration would work to relax you like that, but on the other hand I totally find comfort in car/plane vibrations. I find that kind of vibration totally relaxing. But then again, I was once told about a smartphone app that could wake you up gently with subtle vibrations from under your pillow. Maybe that would work in the other direction somehow.
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No I didn't use the vibration to relax me XD I used it to wake myself up in case my alarm wasn't loud enough for me to hear through the earpro.
That's a good idea though, I never thought to use vibrations to go to sleep before. O:
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Have you tried earplugs? I have to sleep in them most of the time I am in the Pittsburgh house. I hear /everything/ and when the hypersensitivity gets bad it's awful. Last night it was bad here in the underground room in the Ohio house, that usually doesn't cause any sound problems, and I could hear variations in the sound of the vent that were bothering me and had to wear the plugs. They /feel/ lousy but fortunately I have so far been able to tolerate that over noise issues.
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Also you might try playing another ambient noise over the other noises. This is a great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1542960083&feature=iv&src_vid=cqCoUvz_nwI&v=DydIK14AvXI and there is a link in the comment to buy it for 3 bucks so you don't have to have an internet connection on all the time. I listen to that and pretend I am my transformers character on Its ship.
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Also look into noise canceling headphones. I don't know if there are any made for sleeping in or that would work for that. Look up Sensory Processing Disorder. There is a tumblr group I follow that is full of people that are especially sensitive (to the point of sounds and things being painful) and they talk about ways to limit/deal with noise and other sensory overloads. Web pages for/by people with SPD might have some more tips on what to do.
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I'll definitely look into that tumblr group - sound like a good resource. I have tried NC headphones and I thought they don't cancel certain sounds enough for me, but I also haven't spent a ton of time with them, either.
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Here is that particular group: http://fyeahsensoryseaturtle.tumblr.com/
I read down though these and it's like, wow. So much of this stuff is relevant to me but I don't think I have it nearly as badly as some of these folks. There's one mention of someone skipping their allergy meds just to help block out their overwhelming sense of smell and I am reminded of the last time I was sick and actually got a bit of a break from some of the stuff that was overwhelming me. But I can still smell exceptionally well even when I have a cold x.x its just dimmed. I think being sick pretty much exhausted me to the point that I couldn't pay attention to everything in my environment, and also didn't feel like I /needed/ to be working on anything so I could relax. Stress/needing to do things seems to make the hypersensitivity worse.
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This right here: fyeahsensoryseaturtle.tumblr.com/post/93125046565/i-was-watching-a-documentary-about-town-councils-the
At some point I'd written a tumblr post about how I was semi-terrified that when living in a house in a city, the neighbors might end up getting a new air conditioning unit or something that would change the sound outside so that no one else was bothered but it and couldn't even detect a difference, and I would just be stuck with this noise that would drive me nuts.
Half the reason I am in ohio right now is /due/ to noises driving me nuts in Pittsburgh.
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Word, it is all about awareness.
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I believe the stress I have experienced has provoked my hypersensitivity, as well.
The worst part of my stress was between the last 3 months of last year and first 3 months of this year. During that time I started to notice nauseating smells from around the house that started to really bother me. They smelled like normal house smells, but for some reason they seemed very vivid to me and I started to feel upset about them, and it started ramping my stress up a bit whenever I'd notice them.
Since April, I've been preoccupied with school, and my stress has had a target and an outlet, and so I've been working through it. My stress level has been lower. I also haven't been noticing those smells.
Seems to me like constant stress can heighten one's senses. Anyone living with that constantly could surely use some relief from symptoms like that.
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It seems to start a vicious cycle too. Once the hypersensitivity starts, worrying about it or paying a lot of attention to it /seems/ to make it get worse. But it gets harder to ignore it the worse it gets. I think everyone might be susceptible to this kind of thing but in some people it gets really, really intense.
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Yeah, I recognize that feeling, like when I'm feeling sleepless already and all I want to do is sleep, it's "really important" that I sleep right now. Then I get so excited that I can't sleep at all, and need to calm down from that anxiety response. And yeah, I figure whether people are or are not prone to this comes down to both nature and nurture, and some people are simply highly predisposed to the experience.
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GOOD IDEA i used to love that show and find this noise very comforting. I'll try to set up speakers near my sleep zone and give these a try, along with them nature sounds. :3
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I've not been able to do earplugs due to the comfort thing. I should probably try that again. I often find success with jamming pillows over my ears, but those don't stay on the whole night. :P
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There exist silicone earplugs that are like a type of putty. They have a smell, like well, silicone, that they can leave on your skin (bugs me a little) and seem to leave a slight residue. But, they are really soft. They don't go in your ears like the usually semi-cone-shaped squishy foamy ear plugs do, but instead you roll them into a ball and kinda plaster them over your earhole. might try those.
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beautifulscourge
dang. i can sympathise with this, and it isn't fun at all.
have you tried sleeping with some music or ambient noise in the background? people tend to sleep more smoothly through the night if they do so already listening to something relatively noisy
you could also invest in like, a sound-proof box to sleep in; i hear those are pretty cool