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.

  • @fireweed
    4•9 months ago

    I wake up at 3am to 4am daily as a neighbor makes noise walking their dog. This cannot be helped.

    I’m stuck on this comment. Why can it not be helped? This is not acceptable behavior on your neighbor’s part. Sleep is a critical factor in every human’s physical and mental well-being, which is why policies like noise ordinances exist. You do not mention what your living circumstances are, however if there are other neighbors nearby (especially if this is an apartment/condo situation) they are presumably being woken up too. You also don’t mention how you’re being woken up; are the dogs barking or loudly running around? I don’t see why you should need to accommodate your neighbor’s inability to follow very standard social contracts regarding nighttime quiet hours. Unless you are in some kind of highly unusual living situation where it’s completely within your neighbor’s right to be an early-morning nuisance, you should be addressing the illness not the symptom, especially if there are other people being affected too.