I'm addicted to falling asleep listening to YouTube

[AnxiousFlowerpot]

This started about 5 years ago. I started watching YouTube on my tablet in bed before going to sleep. Now I can't not watch a video before falling asleep. I wake up multiple times in the night and have to listen to a video (I use earphones and don't look at the screen) otherwise I just lie there and my mind starts worrying about stuff. I usually listen to something like a documentary and fall asleep again. I can't seem to stop doing it. Wtf is wrong with me.

But doesn't your OH hear the sound from your pillow and moan about it waking him up? DH cannot hear my headband earphones at all.

I listen to murder podcasts.. usually fall asleep then re-listen on my daily walk 😂

I use an app called Insight Timer. It’s free and has a whole heap of meditation stuff available. I find mainly women with gentle Aussie or Kiwi accents the best. I usually opt for Yoga Nidra…which is a gentle body scan with a whole heap of soothing preamble before anything happens.

I listen to the podcast 'Nothing much happens' bedtime stories. It's true, nothing much happens and I have never got to the end of the first tale! The author/narrator is American - her voice is gentle and soothing.

Also if you need a power nap, Alicia Fairclough (Australian) does a brilliant 30 minute deep sleep hypnosis amongst lots of others. I've never got to the end of that one either. I wake up when she counts me back in and off I go - all refreshed...

I'm another one that wakes up if it stops! I do wish Audible had a 'loop' facility so I could run books together, because it means I will only download books that run for longer than I want to be asleep (usually 8 hours), which limits my listening and means I've heard the beginning of LOADS of books, but rarely the end.

I can't sleep without someone talking in my ear and have one of the sleep bands too... have tried to wean myself off it but nope!

The Calm app is pretty good - love the sleep stories, especially fond of Matthew McConaghey and Harry Styles soothing me off to sleep 😊

@Ohyeahwaitaminute I use this app too, it's my go-to every night. I love Yoga Nidra and listen to Ally Boothroyd (think she's Canadian) or Pura Rasa, can I ask who you like? I'm always on the look-out for lovely new voices!

Use it to your advantage and listen to positive things like hypnosis

@MyMachineAndMe @Vroomfondleswaistcoat it has a timer but I don't use the timer as it would also wake me up if it stops. If you have it on no timer it would just play until you turned it off, so it's ok for all night.

It doesn't use a lot of my battery. You can also turn the phone screen off so there is no light in the room. Another thing you can do is have it playing on your phone while you use your phone for other things. Considering its a free app I think it's great.

I WANT it to go on all night, that's the problem. I wake up when it stops. So if I'm listening to a book that's, say, six hours long, I either wake up and restart it nearer the beginning or I'm woken up six hours after I fell asleep. Which means I can only listen to books eight hours or more long if I want an unbroken night's sleep. Which rules out a lot of books.

Audibles doesn't wake you up when it stops because it fades away very slowly, rather an abrupt stop.

Nope, you can't hear it unless your head is directly on the pillow that it's underneath. It's brilliant!

@constantreader
My faves are these- all in the Sleep section- Jennifer Piercy and Davidj along with The Still Point. Also Zoe Knadrat (hmm. Not sure I have her surname correct!)
Thanks for your suggestions too.

@Ohyeahwaitaminute thank you! Listened (well for a few minutes before drifting off!) to Jennifer Percy last night, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Think you'll like Ally Boothroyd as she's very similar 😴

For all of you that like listening to audiobooks to fall asleep, I highly recommend A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce on BBC Sounds. It is read by Andrew Scott and his voice is so lovely to fall asleep to

OMG I've found my people! I have to listen to interviews or depositions on YouTube before I fall asleep. A really interesting series called 'Infinatehistoryproject MIT' is sooo good. Lots of interesting interviews from MIT professors and how they came to be where they are/were.

I fall asleep to to soporific tones of Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter every night and have done for at least ten years.

I put YouTube on with headphones but usually it's to keep me awake while I'm doing my reading and writing for my Oxford journal.

Sometimes it's music songs combined with different TV shows, other times it's comedy shoes, or different street foods etc

*shows

I'm loving this thread. I have been doing this for years!

Anymore great things to listen to on YouTube?

Headband earphones- this is getting better and better. Never heard of them before - genius!

I have 12 hour brown noise on you tube to sleep to. Has anyone else tried it?

I struggle to fall asleep if the TV is on. I manage ok on holiday because we tend to do city breaks so we're normally tired.

Thankfully DH sleeps in another bedroom. But sometimes if I wake in the night I put a sleep meditation on my Alexa so I've got voice noise to fall back asleep to.

I'd love to try and get out of the habit.

What's wrong with listening to stuff in bed? I think it's wonderful, like someone telling you a story and then I regress to childhood bedtimes!

My go to are Borrow Box free audiobooks from the library. The app has a sleep timer too. An hour is usually fine for me to go into oblivion. I can browse all sorts of genres and new releases, then immediately borrow or reserve. Brilliant.

Then it's podcasts, but they must be at least 40 minutes to an hour and they can be hard to find sometimes. But Casefile, They walk among us, and True Crime enthusiast are the three bedtime ones for me. One narrator, no jokey talk, just pure crime stories. Might seem gory and odd, but I am fascinated by the way murderers minds work and why.

Enjoy your bedtime noises folks.

I absolutely love listening to stuff in bed. I don't see anything wrong with it either. It really stops me thinking about my to-do list or cringing about that thing I said 12 years ago at 3am.

I'll also just leave this link here. I could not be without these. My husband can't hear a thing and i don't get sore ears.

www.sleepphones.co.uk