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Comment by zachkatz | Hacker News Reader

If the problem is psychological trauma, wouldn’t therapy be the obvious solution?

The root cause is psychological, but it's manifested itself in physical changes. She's hyper-sensitive to certain sounds for example, which causes her to not be able to fall asleep, or to abruptly wake up. Mostly low frequency sounds, so hard to block.

But yeah, as I mention in a reply to a sibling comment, she's tried therapy for years without much progress, though recently making some progress on that front.

I know it really sucks and have struggled with it myself for a long time. Two things really worked for me.

Try these: https://www.loopearplugs.com/products/quiet

And at the same time have some calming barely perceptible background noise from a speaker somewhere in the room. White noise, brown noise, lofi, whatever works. Make sure the bedroom has blackout curtains and soft light.

As for cannabis, she doesn't have to smoke it. Appropriate edibles will knock her to sleep. Doesn't have to be a permanent thing either, breaking the cycle and getting good sleep for a few weeks is life changing and may be the start of a virtuous cycle instead.

I recommend both of you enjoy this video together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2iXQm4LJs

Good luck!

As someone who was diagnosed with severe ADHD 20 years ago, marijuana makes my brain far more active. If if I have an edible around 5pm, I won’t sleep until 1am (I normally go to sleep by 9/9:30). I constantly want to do things. For me, weed is an upper.

My wife and my girlfriend are both jealous of the effect it has on me. But I’m jealous on the sleep-inducing or calming effect it has on them.

Please don’t assume marijuana affects everyone equally. It may work, but if it doesn’t, your girlfriend will know immediately so you can stop trying it. Ask her how marijuana normally affects her before trying that.

Note I wrote appropriate edibles. There is a variety.

I leave it to you to research a bit further and perhaps try different kinds, with some trial and error you may get lucky yet.

Thanks, much appreciated.

Just saw they very recently approved some canabis oil drops for medicinal use here, so that might also be an option.

I am sensitive to low frequency sounds . The thing that seems to work for me is to play thunderstorm sounds, with isolating earphones. Because this sound has a high degree of randomness across the frequency spectrum, and its spectrum varies randomly over short timescales as well, external noise is masked even if it's still audible - because the brain can easily fit it into the thunderstorm pattern, and so doesn't get triggered by it.

Your milage may vary of course

you say that so flippantly

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