Everyday Mindfulness

Help give me hope...

I'm struggling with neighbour noise issues at the moment, in particular, vibration of my floor when they walk about downstairs and/or use their water/heating (unfortunately I cannot get the landlord to communicate with me to solve, what could be, a simple problem, at least as far as the heating goes).

So the scenario is that I'm being woken around 4 - 6 am everyday. I need to sleep until at least 7am because I don't get to bed until midnight or 1am due to work. I enjoy my work, it's not stressful and I don't have any problems with sleep usually, but at the moment I can't go back to sleep once woken and so I'm getting about 3 - 4 hours a night.

As I can't immediately solve this problem I'm wondering if you can give me some hope. Would mindfulness help me to learn to sleep through the vibration of my bed? Or help me get back to sleep? I know there isn't really a purpose to practicing mindfulness, is that correct, so perhaps I shouldn't be asking this, lol. It's not really awful vibration, if someone is awake it would be very noticeable but unlikely to bother them, but I think it would wake most people up if they're asleep and it starts. As for my neighbour walking around and that causing floor movement, I'm not sure I can do much about that.

I would really value your expertise and input and am willing to put in the practice, and I'm looking for hope that I will actually be able to sleep through this. Part of the problem is that I get angry with it as it is every single morning. Thanks for reading.

Hi.
I'm not sure I'd recommend taking up mindfulness in order to address this one issue.
I'd be more inclined to recommend a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Bose do a great selection but they are on the pricey side.
All best,
Jon

Thanks JonW

I suppose I should have mentioned that I have an interest in mindfulness generally, separate from this issue. I wish to work with myself in this way because I'm also trying to understand how much of the issue is me. There really is a vibration, it's definitely real, definitely can be felt (rather than heard, so earplugs and noise cancelling earphones I'm not sure about, though perhaps they could influence the perception still).......but at the same time, as I live alone, I'm not sure if I've just developed 'a thing about it.' As it can't be immediately solved I thought I could try working on myself for a couple of months and see if the issue still bothers me, seeing as I can't find a solution to the problem.

I have tried mindful breathing, which I think helps. It's when the angry thoughts kick in, then I wake up rapidly and can't go back to sleep. So wondering if I should work on myself (though perhaps you feel that practicing mindfulness in an aggravating setting might not be useful for a reason?)

Thanks for your time.

Hi Amethyst, welcome,

This must be a difficult situation for you. I am a light sleeper and my husband snores (not as much since using nose strips ). When he does I feel tension rise in me and disappointment, I try to accept those feelings and observe them (whilst giving him a little nudge). I find that if I start doing a slow body scan it really helps and sometimes I nod off before I've even moved on from my left foot! (I begin with the left big toe).

I don't know if this would help with your issues or not. Sometimes if the snoring is persistent and I'm exhausted it's difficult to focus on the body scan, all I can do is accept and start again.

Hope that helps

Thanks!

I will read up on the body scan. I need to work on acceptance too. Anger and irritability don't help, they just wake me up. But I realise mindfulness is also about accepting whatever happens. I'm just tired of wandering around like a zombie during the days. Although I'm sure the vibration would wake others, I have no proof and also, because it's been going on so long I don't know if I'm just waking up because I've sensitised myself to it as well.

Have you been bothered by noise in your previous abodes? Or is this a completely new scenario?
Jon

Hi Amethyst,

Welcome to the site. I agree with Jon; try practical solutions first. Mindfulness isn't meant as a practice to accept everything. Mindfulness learns us to accept what cannot be changed. However, there are lots of things you could do in this case: You could talk nicely to your neighbors, you could talk nicely to your landlord. If that doesn't work, you could become more assertive with them (maybe even legal actions), or a mediator maybe. Or you could move. You could buy a waterbed; which would muffle the vibrations. I could probably think of lots of other things. Try to be mindful about a practical solution.

Mindfulness could be useful to accept the situation as it is for now. But it is not meant to make you passive. By the way, mindfulness probably wouldn't help you from waking up because of vibrations (depending on how light a sleeper you are now), but it could help you fall back to sleep.

I would first go for the practical solutions, also since Mindfulness takes a lot of practice (years). If you're still interested in Mindfulness, you could practice that too, but for a different purpose.

Good luck!
Peter

I have found that mindfulness helps me with all of life's difficult situations. It has completely changed the way that I process life. I can call it nothing other than a miracle, really.

Like the others say though: it's not something that happens quickly. You don't meditate a few times and suddenly everything has changed. You meditate consistently, and slowly, almost invisibly, you begin to change. That's my experience of it anyway.

Amethyst wrote:Would mindfulness help me to learn to sleep through the vibration of my bed? Or help me get back to sleep?

...Part of the problem is that I get angry with it as it is every single morning.

Hi Amethyst

It is unlikely that mindfulness will help you sleep, but it may help with dealing with your feelings of anger that occur when you are woken up:

First, bring your attention to the thoughts that are connected to this anger, watching them as they come and go in your mind.
Then, bring your attention to the physical feelings in your body. Notice the type of sensations that come up, where they are located and whether they change or disappear as you focus on them.
Finally, return your attention to your breath and rest there a while.

While this practice may help in the moment when you are woken up, being mindful does not prevent you from taking action to stop, so I suggest you also follow some of the practical suggestions already made above.

Best wishes,

Vicky

Thanks everyone

Yes it is a brand new problem, of the last 8 months. I've lived here ten years. I've never experienced this anywhere before. It's very odd. In terms of practical solutions, I absolutely agree that I must try those first, it's just a case of timing, I rarely see my neighbours due to the hours people work, etc.

My plan is when I see them, to ask if I can get them to switch on their heating and see if it is what is causing the vibration. That's the next step.

For now, I think as I said I've wanted to practice mindfulness already and if anything this problem of mine is a gift in that it prompted me to find this site. But I agree that I should be practicing it for it's own sake.

Re the problem, I've bought rubber matting and placed underneath the bed, this was only two days ago so we'll see, but I think it's helping. I'm intrigued by a water bed, I thought I'd need an air bed, lol, but I can't stand the plastic smell of them.

I'm curious about how my state of mind can affect whether I fully wake up when the vibration starts, or turn over and go back to sleep. When it first started there were two kids living downstairs and they wouldn't speak to me, so the whole thing blew up in my mind...wondering what they were doing to cause it, that they might be hiding something, etc, but then a new person moved in and she's done her best to help, as a result I think it's become obvious to me that no matter how annoying it is, it's not being done by anyone on purpose and is something to do with heating or piping in the walls/floor. Just that change in beliefs helped. I said I'd speak to her again when I've recorded it for a while on paper and got a better idea of what it might be, so that time is probably soon.

Meanwhile I've found this great place and I definitely want to learn more. And if mindfulness can help with getting back to sleep when disturbed, that's good too, I don't really have any problem going to sleep at first.

Thanks for your responses.