Thread: Hyper sensitive to sounds

Do you mean real sounds or hypnagogia?
I also can't fall asleep comfortably after waking up this way. Earplugs are good idea. I sleep with headphones lately with some binaural sounds which aren't disturbed for me. I think that some people just are sensitive for sounds and changing it seems to be unnatural for them. But I may be wrong. Maybe meditation will be good way to cut off from the outside world. It rather not disappear itself.

LiLeila , no these are real sounds. The sound of my wife's breathing, cars going by on the street, that sort of thing. I'm not normally this sensitive to sound, just in this particular case.

This might sound odd, but maybe what you need is more sound,

Seriously.

It probably isn't that you are physically hypersensitive to sounds when falling asleep (we're just not built that way), but that you are paying more attention than you normally would to the sounds. In other words, your wife's breathing is coming into your brain just as loudly as ever, but you are unusually focused on the sound. This focus is probably based in survival instinct that goes back to when we were living in trees, when it made a lot of sense to pay attention to the sounds of the night. This happens to me pretty much every night, and I have found one excellent tool for it: white noise.

My nightly white noise generator is a fan by the bed (pointed upwards in winter), but I also have a white noise machine that I use during daytime naps and and WILD sessions. The white noise machines aren't cheap, but they are worth it; one might be worth the investment.

White noise is probably your best bet because it cancels out the sounds you are focusing on, bathing them in a single steady sound on which it almost feels unnecessary to focus. I've found earplugs a problem for two reasons: first, they never really block out all the sound, so I find myself listening more carefully for the sounds of, say passing cars as they drift through the plugs; and second, because they can be uncomfortable, which is a distraction in itself.

tl;dr: You are probably not hypersensitive to sound when falling asleep, but more attentive to it; try some white noise to cover over those sounds so you don't pay attention to them.

I could try some white noise played off of my tablet, to see if it works. Thx Sageous. I've read many of your posts and respect your oppinion. Not to say that I don't respect the oppinion of others mind you...