UNITED STATES—Gosh, I’m going to let out a secret that I think everyone already knows, I don’t sleep well at night, even when I try. For months, and I mean months I have been trying to figure out what is causing my sleepless nights. Is it stress? Is it worry? Is it caffeine? Is my body wired too much? Or is it the thing that I didn’t think about, noise.
I don’t really consider myself a light sleeper, but I am starting to think I am a lighter sleeper than I ever expected. How do I know this? Well, first, I very rarely sleep past 5 hours on any given night. If I do sleep let’s say 8 to 10 hours, then something is really wrong. The answer being my body is knackered and I’m literally burnt out. That usually involves working like crazy hours and long work periods without much ‘me’ time in the process. That truly only happened during my undergraduate years in college where I still have no clue how I survived the mayhem I endured.
With that said, sleep is critical for a fully functional individual on a daily basis. When you are operating on minimal sleep it places you in a situation where you are slowly but surely running on empty. Let’s be honest, operating on empty is not good for anyone, it places you in a situation where you will crash and when you do there is nothing you can do.
As for me, I’m seeing sound becoming a big issue for me when I sleep. If I’m starting to drift into sleep, minor sounds can wake me up. The house alarm or bell, the sound of a dog barking, someone making noise late at night, cars speeding up the streets, the list goes on and on. I can be sleep, but I’ll immediately wake and try to put myself back to sleep, but it is too late. Once my sleep is disturbed it is very difficult for me to get back to sleep even though I try hard as hell to try to make it happen.
I think the dog is becoming a major issue because the noise is bothersome. He normally wouldn’t bark at night, but he’s doing it more and more and that barking is waking me up and not in the best light, not at all. So allowing the dog to sleep in the bedroom I might have to stop that. I like the dog sleeping in the room just because if there is something I don’t hear, the dog does hear it.
Guess I’m exposing a bit much, but I have difficulty sleeping on my right side because it is almost like I cannot hear at night. It has been an issue I’ve dealt with in the past and had a procedure to clear fluid from the ear, but I don’t think it is resolved. When I say not being able to hear properly at night if I sleep wrong, it’s no joke. I would not hear massively loud sounds and I think that is another reason I toss and turn because I want to be alert because I feel, I’m not alert because of hearing issue at times.
I know it sounds like venting, but it’s not, it is me truly trying to find a solution to getting quality sleep. It might be time for me to pull the trigger and see a sleep specialist to get to the root of the problem. Is sound really hurting me? Is there something else going on or is it all in my psyche? I don’t know, but the truth of the matter is I need a solution because my body is telling me enough is enough.
