Personalised relaxation practice to improve sleep and functioning in patients with CFS and depression: study protocol, 2018, Vollmer-Conna et al

@Trish I'm sorry you have this. I know several who can't wear plugs because they can hear their heart pounding.

 

Mozart and white noise would both drive me insane if I was trying to fall asleep. Someone singing or reading an audio book would have the same effect. I've discovered the name for what I suffer from is misophonia, which I've had since I was a teenager. The only thing I can listen to when I want to fall asleep is natural sounds - babbling brooks, wind, ocean waves, thunder, a fire crackling, although I prefer absolute silence. You can make up your own sounds here, download them and play them :

http://naturesoundsfor.me/

And of course Youtube has thousands of recordings of natural sounds in videos that go on for many, many hours.

 

I wear earplugs to sleep since my wife started snoring. I have tinnitus too, but it doesn't stop me falling asleep. My current earplugs are so good that I can't hear my alarm clock, but it wakes my wife up and she gives me a push so that's ok and serves her right for snoring. If she's not there because she had to get up earlier, I wake up half an hour later than I set my alarm clock and have to rush around like an idiot, which is a terrible way to start the day.

 

Years ago, my GP gave me a relaxation tape to listen to every afternoon. I tried this diligently in those innocent days but had to stop as it made me much worse. If I lay down and listened to it, I was unable to get out of bed for the rest of the day. She was completely bemused and took it as evidence that I just did not want to get better.

Much later I read the hummingbird's article on adrenalin and I realised that I was living on adrenalin (or whatever is happening that we describe that way) and the relaxation was bringing me down to my natural level. All taht overdoing things led me to being severely affected.

Instead of being a cure relaxation tapes could be used as a biomedical test

 

Not a bad read