For several years now I’ve lived in loud apartments, where I can often hear conversations or music late into the night.
I often solve this problem by wearing earplugs. However, I don’t want to sleep with earplugs every night, and so I’ve made a number of attempts to adjust to the noise without earplugs, either going “cold-turkey” for as long as I can stand, or by progressively increasing my exposure to night-time noise.
Despite several years of attempts, I don’t think I’ve habituated at all. What gives?
Other information that might be relevant:
I adjust fine to noise during the day, and to other stimulus at night.
I have no mental illness.
“Information-less” noise is fine, (for example, traffic or the hum of an appliance). Problem noises involve voices or music, or things like video games.
Since you are already fine with white noise, you should try using white noise to drown out the music or voices. A quick search of white noise on the internet lead me to simplynoise where you can stream white noise over the internet. If not, then try a phone app.
I don’t need such a thing for sleeping, but I find SimplyNoise gives a satisfactory sound having a much steeper fall-off with frequency than white noise (flat spectrum of energy vs. frequency) or pink noise (3dB fall-off per octave), both of which sound unpleasantly harsh to me. They also have a few soundscapes (thunderstorm, river, etc.). The app is not free, but cheap, and there are also pay-what-you-want mp3 download files.
How can I learn to sleep in a noisy environment?
For several years now I’ve lived in loud apartments, where I can often hear conversations or music late into the night.
I often solve this problem by wearing earplugs. However, I don’t want to sleep with earplugs every night, and so I’ve made a number of attempts to adjust to the noise without earplugs, either going “cold-turkey” for as long as I can stand, or by progressively increasing my exposure to night-time noise.
Despite several years of attempts, I don’t think I’ve habituated at all. What gives?
Other information that might be relevant:
I adjust fine to noise during the day, and to other stimulus at night.
I have no mental illness.
“Information-less” noise is fine, (for example, traffic or the hum of an appliance). Problem noises involve voices or music, or things like video games.
Since you are already fine with white noise, you should try using white noise to drown out the music or voices. A quick search of white noise on the internet lead me to simplynoise where you can stream white noise over the internet. If not, then try a phone app.
I don’t need such a thing for sleeping, but I find SimplyNoise gives a satisfactory sound having a much steeper fall-off with frequency than white noise (flat spectrum of energy vs. frequency) or pink noise (3dB fall-off per octave), both of which sound unpleasantly harsh to me. They also have a few soundscapes (thunderstorm, river, etc.). The app is not free, but cheap, and there are also pay-what-you-want mp3 download files.