Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/08/review-boses-noise-masking.html
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Is that a typo‽
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Nope. Only way to describe what my brain does. Even on medication, I’m still always waiting for something terrible to happen. Being hyper alert sucks.
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My dad is a bit like this, though not quite as heightened as you describe. He’s thankfully mellowed out over the years but I have accidentally woken him up and he’d panic asking if something was wrong. I also have dealt with recurring nightmares of people outside trying to break in or just lurking in a menacing way outside, and I did accidentally scare the shit out of a friend in the middle of the night… they walked in as I was sleeping and I screamed at them to get the fuck out not recognizing who they were.
I feel for you not getting good sleep :c seems like a lot to deal with.
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as you get older you start worrying more and more…if you are a parent, or have a pregnant wife or sick family member or aging parent… I’m not sure how you ever sleep soundly.
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I read review of these elsewhere and the comments were full of people saying “what about burglars, house fires, earthquakes, home invaders, fire alarms, spaceships…?”
You at least have a clinical diagnosis (and it sucks not being able to sleep - my partner has that problem, so I am extremely sympathetic), but this article makes me realize how many other people have this heightened awareness of perceived danger. I guess you could say it’s borderline or incipient PTSD brought on by modern society
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Our brains are amazing things that sometimes truly suck.
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I feel your pain. I too have a brain that conspires against me… 
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Sometimes i just wish we had a “sleep” button
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I, too, read that as literal and was very concerned for a minute.
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If I need to block out background noises in orde to get to sleep, I use regular triple-flanged silicon earplugs that cost a few £/$ a pair. To hell with spending $250 on something that needs charging in order to function. They reduce sound to industrial standards, which means a noise reduction of around 30Db, and that means blocking my g/f’s snoring almost entirely, which is all I generally need. Although I’ve used them when camping during a very windy week when the wind in the trees and hedges behind my tent, plus the sound of the waves on the shingle beach half a mile away was impossible to sleep through.
My cheap earplugs worked perfectly.
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Brainwave apps can help. I have a bunch but recently took a closer look at “Relax Melodies”. You can turn on and off numerous natural sound patterns and set relative volumes for each, individually or via a mixer. The pay version has several hz levels to facilitate sleep and dream states (non-pay has a few, but sleep isn’t one of them) via “Isochronic Tones”. Even without any of the tones enabled, it’s pretty good through regular earbuds.
Ironically, one of the sounds that works for me is that of waves on the shingle beach half a mile away from you.
I wonder if these might have a comparative advantage for some people because of the added sound, rather than the sound isolation alone. I live next to a busy road and have a fair amount of light leakage into my bedroom. Yet for all the problems I have getting to sleep as a result, I find that the sensory deprivation caused by the typical blindfold-and-earplugs combo is not relaxing at all. This, to the point where I’ve thought about packing a nightlight and white-noise machine with me when I travel, because I often find hotel rooms uncomfortably dark and quiet. I would love a solution that blocked out traffic noises and replaced them with something subtle and calming, which is what this seems to accomplish.
Would I love it enough to spend $250 on it? Not unless I could also use it for podcasts.
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Maybe wait for the holidays or something of the sort, i presume they’d go on sale at some point, if this is the kind of thing that you’d genuinely like to use 
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