2y ago

Does anyone else struggle with silence, particularly when trying to sleep?

Does anyone else find absolute silence difficult to deal with? In particular difficult to sleep in complete silence?

I think it started from a young age, being obsessed with music. Falling asleep with music.

As an adult, I still struggle with this and need some form of audio to drift off, be it music or something else.

More recently, I find stand-up comedy works best - it's light-hearted and doesn't require too much thought.

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I have tinnitus, so absolute silence is never enjoyable for me. Music works extremely well; I fall asleep with the tv on.
- When I read the title of the post, I immediately wondered if anybody else with tinnitus had commented yet.
  "Silence" sounds amazing, would love to try it some time 😅
  
  Me too. I don’t even remember what silence doesn’t sound like. XD
  
  Put your hands over your ears and drum your fingers on the back of your head for 20-30 seconds.
  It doesn't last for long but (if it works for you), blissful silence.
- I Think I might too. Need to get checked. Always a low humming. Sometimes high pitch ringing. But I meant more of not being able to settle my mind.
  
  Well, I have ADHD so I can identify with that also. lol
- I've been using a fan. It almost entirely hides the ringing
Try a fan. And this one's weird, but I have an analog clock in my room and the rhythmic ticking helps me sleep.
- I know were you are coming from and I know a few people who have a clock in the room and sleep… but I just can’t… the rhythmic ticking drives me crazy haha
  podcast or audio books are my go to - sometimes I’m stuck on the same chapter for weeks
  
  I can't handle the constant having to rewind and going wait did I already listen to this last night? that happens if I listen to podcasts or audiobooks to sleep.
  Maybe I should just find a podcast I don't care about actually hearing everything in that I could use for sleep.
- I feel like the thoughts in my head would drown it out.
- I have an air purifier in my room that is always running so filling the room with humming and providing clean air.
A plus one for the white noise machine. Game changer.
I have tinnitus. Had it my whole life. I live with a fan running in every room except the kitchen and bathroom. They are on 24/7 365. The silence literally makes my head feel like it's about to pop
- Luckily, I have children to do this for me haha
Tinnitus fucking sucks. I hate silence
- Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
- I think I have a strange version of tinnitus where instead of ringing I'll feel pulses as vibrations in my ear, it syncs with my heartbeat.
  
  I think that's a known glitch where the heart beat doesn't go away after you get critically injured, it should be patched in the next update.
  
  It's called pulsatile tinnitus.
I fixed that problem...I never hear silence!
All I hear is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......
- I've had ear ringing properly once for like 3 weeks. Never had such a hard time sleeping because the quietness just makes it all the more louder. Really drove me insane and was glad when it started to slowly recede. Good chance I would just eff myself if it were permanent.
- I wish three was a cure for tinitus
- MAWP!
Others have made great points; I'd like to add my favourite: you can play rain sounds from Spotify (and iOS devices can do this without any subscriptions from the Hearing CC toggle)!
It helps me during nights I have a lot on my mind :)
More the opposite. I can't stand all the noise. Especially during spring & summer when you have to open your window during the night.
- Growing up, my bedroom faced a main road (even though it was a decent way aways), always want the bedroom window open. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Same problem. I just use a box fan though for white noise.
Yes, but more so because of my tinitus. It fucking sucks, I can't really focus on reading books because the silence is deafening.
I usually fall asleep to a podcast. One that is interesting, but not so interesting that it'll keep me up. A history podcast or something like that.
- I do this too. Unmade Podcast is my sleeping podcast. 2 dudes talking podcast. It's a little hard without it.
  
  I quite like We Have Ways podcast, although they never balance their mics so one of them ends up blasting my ears waking me up while you can't hear the other one at low volume 😂
As a teen, I needed complete silence/darkness to sleep well. Then I met my now-wife, who needed a TV on to sleep well.
It took a while, but we eventually compromised on a fan for background noise.
- I prefer seperate rooms haha
I sleep with a fan. Luckily hotel A/C's have a constant fan function.
I must have earplugs and an eyemask to sleep. Always wanted pitch black and complete silence since I was a child.
- My wife is the same.
Yes, I can't sleep without white noise
Yep. I also have a bit of tinnitus so I prefer a bit of sound. Usually I play an episode of Frasier, Mom or Modern Family. Usually before the end of the episode I'm sleeping.
- Do…do you live in my house? I will say that I tend to wake up to hear tossed salads and scrambled eggs though and shut off the TV when I can just roll back over and be asleep though.
  
  Put your TV on a 15/30min sleep timer?
- Yeh. Exactly me.
If I'm not asleep by a certain time of night, "hour of the wolf", then I find it very hard to sleep without something in the background. Usually I use the sound of a babbling brook that I recorded while in Iceland.
I need constant noise from something like a fan to sleep.
I have horrible tinnitus after years of searing guitars. I have to sleep with a white noise machine or I am completely tweaked
- I feel like I am the same. I love worry about my hearing in ten years time.
Most people I know sleep with a fan on for this reason. Really common, yeah.
I would love absolute silence. I got Tinnitus in my right ear 24/7/365.. It will probably never disappear.. And I also sleep with a CPAP which makes annoying sounds when sleeping. So I would absolute silence.
Buy yourself a white noise machine. I’ve been using one for almost 10 years, it’s helped my sleep routine immensely. I prefer it to something with talking because the fluctuations of something like comedy would disrupt me. Also, I think that concentrating on something like comedy makes me want to watch it and I would woke up.
The next thing is an eye mask. Even if your room is mostly dark, I’ve found it helps me to stay asleep.
The noise in my head is plenty loud already.
I find it helpful to listen to .mp3s of people talking about something I'm interested in. I can focus on that and drift off to sleep and wake up not even realising I fell asleep. Also, I've found a hindu mantra that helps sometimes. It's so hypnotic, it just carries me into the navel of sleep.
blameitonjorge, nexpo, night mind I've found work great as they talk in a very mellow manner. As long as you're ok falling asleep to the type of stuff they talk about lol
If silence is the real culprit you should try out a white noise generator, generally speaking it should overload/excite you less then music or human voices and could help you sleep faster.
Where I live silence during the night is not really an option, and I had had problems only when on vacation "away from civilization", but small stuff like white noise, a fan or similar low but continuos sounds helped me out without asking for my attention (which happens with movies, music or similar).
There are even apps that simulate different kind of sound and let you mix them (like rain, birds, wind) but I didn't have enough patience to really dig on this solution.
- I think it’s more getting out of my own thoughts. And I feel white noise etc won’t shift my focus from that.
I need a fan or white noise. Silence is just "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" until I fall asleep.
I also have a sometimes hard time falling asleep, I guess I think and overthink everything too much…
So my go-to are audio books and podcasts.
- I am a wild over thinker. Problem I have with audio books and podcasts, is i miss too much of them by falling asleep. Haha. Even with the sleep time on like only 30min.
  
  I mostly listen to audio books for sleeping that I’ve already read or listened too before, otherwise it has the opposite effect haha. This way I don’t care if I miss something or re-listen to something.
  Sometimes I fall asleep within the same 5 min for a week 😂
Silence isn't a thing.
Sound of leaves rustling, the ocean, or even gentle wind? I sleep, no problem
A house quietly creaking and my blood flowing?
I've put on music or Netflix since childhood
Try weed. Not right before sleep but a bit earlier, while watching those stand-ups for example.
- Yeh. It’s amazing. I have a medical license for it. But sometimes I want to not sleep haha. More about the silence being frightening. Rather than not being able to sleep. Haha.
I do this too as a way to escape my thoughts. Meditation/mindfulness has helped in the past and it’s probably the healthiest solution. I don’t do that enough though…
The only time I ever would've preferred silence to some background noise was when I was at a scout camp along the banks of a river and the cacophony of frogs and crickets at night was super fucking loud. I barely slept the whole time I was there.
Other than that, I always put on some kind of ambient sounds or yoga music.
Absolutely. A consistent noise like a fan is best, but music is good too.
Yes, I can't stand complete silence. I have a fan going at pretty much all times, summer or winter, and I definitely can't sleep without it. I have a white noise generator, but I prefer the fan because I'm so used to the airflow that the room feels dead and suffocating without it now.
My father and my son both can't sleep without a fan. Ceiling fans don't count because they're too quiet.
When we moved from the middle of town (a block from the railroad tracks, no less) out here to the country, my girlfriend had trouble sleeping because it was too quiet. Then she had trouble sleeping because of my snoring. You just can't please some people :)
I can't sleep if I can hear voices. Other noises generally don't bother me, but my brain tries to listen to whatever is being said.

75 comments