Quiet the Noise

It is recommended that people have 7-9 hours of sleep each night. However, sleep and I have had an elusive relationship ever since I was in high school. I stayed awake at night due to family issues. Extremely anxious, I didn’t want to face the issues head-on. Instead, I sought an escape. I turned to Adult Swim at night and watched mostly anime. It was weird being the only one awake at night watching TV, but I found it comforting. It was easy for me to get lost in the storytelling and calm my worries.

In high school and college, I would only function on 2-4 hours of sleep a night. After college, the family issues were gone, but I would still feel odd going to sleep early. I kept watching late-night programming. It was like I was caught in a loop of my own making. I tried to rein myself in and force myself to sleep, but I would just lie awake with my mind spinning through a million thoughts per second. It was maddening.

I was having trouble focusing, so I need to do something. I tried to figure out what would help me sleep. I had a sudden inspiration. During college, I came across podcasts, and they reminded me of storytelling. I thought maybe I could let the stories put me to sleep. And guess what? It worked. I would listen to Stuff You Should Know, Stuff They Don’t Want You To Know. Stuff Mom Never Told You, and Pop Culture Happy Hour. After 15-30 minutes listening to those, I would sleep like a baby.

The podcasts were good for me. I was sleeping better and able to focus again. However, that was short-lived. Family issues started coming up again, and I became anxious. I did therapy, but that only helped a little bit with the anxiety. I didn’t know how to resolve it, so I would stay up late at night, either watching Netflix or YouTube videos. I started functioning on 2-4 hours of sleep again. Not only did I lose focus, but I was tired all the time.

Things got worse when I went into the hospital last year. My anxiety was at a 20/10. There were too many changes occurring that I had no control over. Then I had a major panic attack. The ventilator was giving me air, but it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I hit the call button. However, when no one came quickly enough, I started hitting the bedside table hard with the remote control until someone came to check on me. They put me on anxiety meds, and everything calmed down. Once I got home, I continued taking the anxiety meds, but still felt very anxious at night. I couldn’t stay awake late at night anymore because my schedule revolved around others now, and I didn’t want to get in the way of everyone’s schedule.

One day, in searching for some type of remedy for sleep, I came across an interesting feature on my iPhone. If you go into accessibility, audio and visuals in settings, there is a background sound feature. There were several calming sounds to choose from. I found it helpful for a bit, but I wanted a better sound to focus on.

I researched solutions and came across an app called White Noise. There was a subscription to it, but it provided a ton of sounds. It allows you to make a sound mix from a variety of different sounds. My current mix consists of the following noises: Train Cabin, Clothes Dryer, and Rooftop HVAC. I found that combination comforting. It feels like I am being wrapped up in a warm blanket, and helped me relax enough to fall asleep.

Now, I go to sleep between 12 and 1 am and sleep until around 9-10 in the morning. Sometimes, I still get anxious during the day, but I rely on the White Noise app and the remote control buttons for my bed to ground me. It isn’t perfect, but these things have helped me to keep going forward in the chaos that is my life right now.