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 onlyinutes before I have tonwake for the day.
Does anyone have success with quieting the mind without substances so that they can fall back to sleep?
I used to have this problem, too. Both when trying to fall asleep in the evening and after waking up in the middle of the night for any reason.
What really helps me is putting on an audiobook or podcast that I like but already know (this part is important because otherwise I will just listen to it for the rest of the night because I want to know what happens) and setting the volume to very low. I set the sleep timer to 15 minutes and most of the time I’m asleep way before it turns off.
I had to experiment a bit to find audiobooks that hit the sweet spot of being engaging enough to keep my mind from wandering but not so much that I can’t drift of to sleep but once I found a few, it’s been a real game changer.
I’ve found that music can work too - but it really has to be the right type of music. I don’t know the right terms, but basically songs that are slow in tempo and don’t have high notes. As an example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9LhmrVaFl_o
It takes some work, but building a list is as simple as putting songs on and remiving the songs your brain latches onto and keeping those thag just fade into the background