Knock Out The Noise

Do you leave a radio or television running when you go to bed? Do you need noise to distract you so you can fall asleep? I used to. I never used to be able to sleep in complete silence and darkness. It wasn’t the darkness or what was in it that scared me. I wasn’t afraid of the silence. I was afraid of myself.

If you have background noise it’s a distraction so you don’t have to listen to yourself. Your thoughts are squelched and smothered so you can’t hear them. The noise is there to silence your own inner noise.

There was fear in my darkness but not fear of the darkness. I wasn’t afraid of the monsters in the darkness. I think I might have actually welcomed them because they would have distracted me from what I was really afraid of. Instead, I was afraid of the voice in my head – that inner self that was always telling me what was wrong with me. The inner noise was the demon I needed to kill.

In the silence, I would lay awake at night and the events of the day would play out again in my head. I would re-think and overthink anything and everything that had happened that day. Conversations played out in my head and I thought of different things I should have said. I chastised myself for saying some of the things that I said. As I reenacted the day’s actions I felt guilt or shame or embarrassment all over again. There were other, better, ways of saying and doing what I did.

Falling asleep to a TV or radio eliminated that background noise in my head. It silenced that inner critic who loved to tell me how worthless and stupid I am. Instead my head was filled with mindless chatter or shallow lyrics of songs.

As I’ve been working on myself and learning about me, I’m learning not to run away from that critic. I’m learning better ways to deal with him. And I’ve learned not to second guess my words and actions of a day. If I could do it all over again, there’s no question I would still do the same, since I wouldn’t know any different at the time. So all I can do is take responsibility for the actions of the day and learn from the experience.

Now, I welcome the silence when I fall asleep. I’m learning how to talk back to that critic. He’s not very fond of having someone argue with him. And so the background noise is no longer necessary for me. I find that I sleep much better and more soundly. And I’m feeling better about myself.

Do you still need the background noise? Or are you comfortable spending time in silence with yourself? It might be time to listen and see what you have to say to yourself and change it as necessary to be the strong person you know you are.