Have Trouble Getting to Sleep at Night?

I’ve been corresponding with Denise, a reader of this site, and she recently wrote to say

I realized last week that I can no longer go to sleep with the tv or a movie going on all night, but I do need something distracting to help me get to sleep. So I decided to try to have music play quietly and put it on a timer. It works. I have been falling asleep easily and am not semi-aware of it all night as I was with the tv. The strange thing is that it’s been a week, it’s clearly in place and it’s a done deal. So why was that so easy? You know what they say in texts; “lol” and that’s exactly what I am doing. Ridiculous.

Background music or sound really is a very handy approach, especially if you’re easily distracted at night or have trouble falling asleep due to background noise. My entire family uses CDs of ocean sounds at night to help us fall asleep. For myself, I won’t try music because I’d be afraid of it getting burned into my brain; I have that problem regularly. Heck, I saw Les Miserables three weeks ago and still have some of the songs running through my head against my will sometimes. Fortunately I have some good techniques for getting rid of them, but those techniques only work in the moment, alas.

But back to the sleeping thing: if you have trouble getting to sleep, give that a whirl. You could even try simplynoise.com, a handy white noise site, on an iPod or smartphone.

For more tips on sleeping better, check out “18 Ways to Get a Good Night’s Sleep.”

Image by striatic