Modding on the Spectrum

My ‘favourite neighbour’ has recently started making noise at night again. But I refrain from reporting it to the landlord. Instead, I write down the incidents and save them for the eventual mediation meeting. The letter in which I ask for the mediation meeting is ready. All I have to do is make a fair copy of the handwritten noise log, which I enclose with the letter. The neighbour does not have to agree to the meeting as it is voluntary. But I am at least showing my good will to settle this dispute.

Since two other neighbours have complained to the concierge about me a second time (because my reactions to the neighbour's noise were too loud), I've pulled myself together even more. If I notice that I'm getting louder again, I immediately try to calm down by saying ‘Quiet, quiet’ to myself and taking a deep breath. Then I try to distract myself with other things. Yesterday, for example, I sang a few songs (I watched music videos with lyrics and sang along), then watched a film and then played Skyrim on my laptop.

I think I've just found a new way to distance myself from the neighbour's behaviour: I use the formal form to address him instead of the casual one. When I did that, it felt like a switch had flipped in my head. The anger I felt before had evaporated in that moment. But after I was triggered several times a short time later by slamming doors, the anger resurfaced, but it had lost its intensity.

I've made further progress with the planning for the move. I've made an appointment with the painter. The landlord told me to paint certain things in my flat so that I could get suggestions for a new flat. Yes, it sounds shady, but I don't want to spoil things with the landlord. I just want to get out of this flat and (hopefully) find peace in a new one.

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[b]Finally getting some more sleep again[/b]
It was now the third night that I was NOT disturbed by door slamming and thuds :sn-13:. The first three days of this week I had only slept a total of about 4 hours. It was during this time that my last big freak out happened. Not long after, I begged my neighbour to please not slam the door at least at night and in the early hours of the morning. I told him that I didn't know what I would do if I couldn't sleep another night (this was not meant as a threat). On the night from Wednesday to Thursday I was able to sleep halfway, or to be more precise, I think I slept. I can't remember dreaming. But at least I was able to work without my eyes falling shut again and again.

[b]The neighbour's DIY and how I deal with it[/b]
Thursday around 11pm he started his DIY work. I initially interpreted the noises as slamming doors and shouted upstairs that he should please not slam the doors. I then heard him talking to someone. After that, I no longer heard these disturbing noises that night. I think he was working with a chisel, because something always fell to the floor after the thud (probably a piece of wood). Just now I heard him sawing.

Yesterday I deliberately stayed out late to get away from the noise at home. I made a spontaneous evening/night trip to the Molenturm, a small lighthouse in the harbour area of the city of Bremen in Germany. This hike did me good. I was able to sleep through the night without any problems until I was woken up by a slamming door at half past seven (but luckily I was no longer in a deep sleep at this point).

As long as he is busy with his DIY stuff, I have to wear earplugs at home in combination with headphones to be able to endure this. But as I don't want to do that all the time now, I'll go outside today as soon as I've got ready.

[b]Next step on my healing journey: improving my mental health by stimulating the [url=https://www.massgeneral.org/news/article/vagus-nerve]vagus nerve[/url][/b]
I am constantly searching the Internet for solutions to my current problems. Researching helps me to distract myself (but sometimes it distracts me too much, but that's another story :sn-11:). I recently came across an info dump on Reddit regarding [url=https://www.reddit.com/r/hsp/comments/1jg39t0/comment/mix6r5w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&rdt=44441]vagal tone and dysregulation[/url]. So if I improve my vagal tone by stimulating the vagus nerve, I can better manage my emotions and reduce stress. Exercises to stimulate the vagus nerve can be found [url=https://www.charliehealth.com/post/vagus-nerve-exercises]here[/url].


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Since yesterday's conversation with my mate, I've managed to respond to my neighbour's door slamming only verbally. I let my rational side speak (for the most part).

The neighbour above me has his friends over. Of course the doors were slammed. I slammed them back and that's how it went. Shortly after I banged my fist on the table several times, the neighbour next door rang my doorbell and knocked on the door at the same time. She had had enough of my behaviour. I didn't open the door and let her rage. She complained about me to the other neighbours. She was right! I am completely out of line. The issue of a lack of emotional regulation is coming to the fore more and more. I finally have to do something about it. My boss reminded me again to try autogenic training recently (this has completely slipped my mind).

About half an hour after the neighbour rang the doorbell, my mate R. called. In the almost two hours we talked, I only reacted once with a short scream in response to the door slamming (I immediately apologised to him for this failure). He managed to calm me down enough and suggested that I go to the communal basement for a short period of peace and quiet. Now I'm sitting here in the basement writing this text. I'm about to go for a walk to clear my head. I feel too uneasy to sleep at the moment. Just before I went into the basement, the neighbours were much quieter and stopped slamming the door (I heard the squeak of the door instead). Was it perhaps because I also kept quiet for a while?

And yes, I will pull myself together over the next few days and resist the temptation to take further retaliatory measures. The reaction of the neighbour next door showed me that I had gone too far.

As far as preparing for the move is concerned, I have made further progress. A small success at least.

Edit:

I apologised to my neighbours this morning for my behaviour yesterday.

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I am now on my way to my mother's and will stay with her for a week and a half. When I return, I'll get down to further preparations for a future move (today's conversation with my boss gave me a piece of my mind).

I drew up a roadmap for the move yesterday with a friend. We also collected the requirements for the new apartment in a list. My mother told me on the phone today that she had coincidentally also thought about these requirements. My No. 1 requirement is definitely better soundproofing, followed by the greatest possible distance from busy roads and other things. I'm curious to see what results she came up with.

Edit:

I arrived at my destination about half an hour ago. I'm now going to watch a few videos on YouTube and then go to bed.

I have an appointment with my psychiatrist tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to address the anxieties that are contributing to my slow progress in preparing for the move.

Last night was exceptionally quiet. I don't know if it was because the neighbour is probably done with the noisy part of his DIY project or because I had pulled at his heartstrings, so to speak, the morning before. After he slammed the door again, I said to him, ‘Why are you torturing me? I see that as torture. What have I done to you?’. About 20 minutes later, I actually started crying loudly. Anyway, for almost two days now I've hardly heard the slamming of the door, and when it has been slammed, it hasn't been as loud as before. But I don't want to get my hopes up, because my hopes have been dashed too often.

Edit:

I knew it: the peace in the night was short-lived. Late that night, he started slamming the door again. He seems to be "addicted" to it. It's a good thing I'm going to my mum's on Thursday evening and will have some peace and quiet there at night.

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The night from 27 to 28 February and the morning of 28 February were very severe. There were a lot of very loud thuds. I could hear something being tinkered with. Then grinding noises. I heard him picking up another tool from the floor. Around half past seven in the morning it sounded like he was setting up the workpiece - it must be quite big. I told him to please do this kind of work at a time other than the middle of the night, that whenever I was about to fall asleep, I heard a thud so I couldn't sleep. After that he was quieter and I was able to sleep for about 1 hour.

No matter what I did, he didn't let himself be distracted from his work.

The following night was less severe. At around 4.40am, he banged the lid of the toilet very loudly. Shortly before that, he stamped on the floor several times (to wake me up?). This time I didn't react to his antics.

I didn't hear the DIY noises until after 10am (I heard a tool fall to the floor, among other things). When he slammed the door at a quarter to 11, I reminded him again that he should please not slam the door and that the door slamming was still loud despite earplugs and headphones. He then closed the door more quietly.

The last few days have made it all the more clear that I need to get my butt in gear when it comes to preparing for the future move (I've already done a few things, but some things I'm still putting off). I absolutely have to get out of this appartment. The longer I have to live there, the more my health suffers. My neighbour won't change fundamentally. There will always be moments that trigger me. I have no privacy because of the extremely thin walls. I really hope that the next appartment is better so that I can at least have some peace and quiet at night.

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I spent two hours in bed just trying to relax, partly with music through my headphones, partly without. The neighbour continued to make noise, of course. At 10.15 pm, I'd had enough of his antics and slammed the door of my wall unit really loudly, causing the objects inside to shake. I only did this once. There was dead silence for a moment. After that, I heard him, but the noises he was making weren't as loud as before.

This could become a new strategy: first lull the neighbour into a sense of security and then ‘strike’ briefly and loudly. I won't do this in the middle of the sleeping hours (the loud slamming of the the door of the wall unit was at the beginning of the sleeping hours) and I will be using this strategy only now and then (and only when he's making noise), otherwise I'll turn the other neighbours against me even more*.

* The neighbour next door suddenly started knocking loudly several times in succession at around 11 pm yesterday. I didn't know who it was at first. When I complained, I heard her laughing. I spoke to my mum about it. My mother said that the neighbour didn't have the right to just mimic me (more specifically my tantrums that I've had in the past). If it happened again, my mother would have a word with the neighbour.

That's why I was all the more restrained today when it came to my reaction to the noise from the neighbour above me: until now, I had briefly banged on the table a few times out of frustration when I was trying to concentrate on my work (I was working from home today as an exception). In the evening, I had kindly reminded him again not to slam the door (to emphasise my request and as a demonstration, I had quietly closed all my doors beforehand). Finally, the incident with the door of the wall unit followed.

As far as sleep is concerned, I try to stop forcing it and let it come to me. Last night, I was able to sleep more, but I don't know how much more, because I didn't look at the clock this time, because constantly looking at the clock puts you under additional stress.

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I slept about an hour today (more than the night before at least). I think my current sleep problems are because I'm trying too hard to fight the noise from the neighbour at night. The beta-blocker probably also plays a role because it can have a negative effect on the body's melatonin production. I will therefore not take the beta-blocker today (at least not just before going to bed) and try to fight less against the noise (I have tried doing nothing at all - this has had little to no effect on his behaviour).

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Because of the hypervigilance and hyperarousal, my psychiatrist prescribed me the beta-blocker propranolol, which I take when needed. The extreme anger reactions have stopped since I started taking the medication. As far as the problems falling asleep are concerned, I think the beta-blocker helps at least a little (I generally find it difficult to assess such things). When I take it, I combine it with melatonin, as I have read that it can lower melatonin levels ([url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10335905/]source[/url]). Fittingly, I just found this article about [url=https://www.couricenter.com/articles/sleep-science-unveiled-the-beta-blocker-melatonin-connection-by-michele-couri-md-facog-abihm/]The Beta Blocker-Melatonin Connection[/url].

And what does the neighbor do? A few days before I went to my mother's place (again), another incident occurred. After I complained about his stomping and then a few other things (I was really getting into it), he tried to stop my flow of speech by hitting something against something several times, pausing briefly and repeating this. After the third repetition, I shouted upstairs that I would call the police if he continued. Shortly afterwards there was silence. That was the first time I threatened him with the police. The days following this incident were quieter. The night after my return was also quieter. I only had to ask him once if he could please keep it down.

Last night I was woken up by stomping and in the bathroom I babbled very quietly that I hate being woken up. I don't know if he heard that. About an hour later I heard something crash to the floor, which he repeated again at a later time. Was it a coincidence or intentional?

This morning, after another banging, I made a bit of fun of him. I know this is rather counterproductive, but I guess it's still better than getting angry. At the end of my monologue, I said that he should prove to me that he can be a nice neighbor, that this is his challenge. Just before 10pm, he had been loud for a moment. It sounded more like everyday noise, which is unfortunately amplified by the thin walls. For about an hour now, I've only heard his door squeak and other quieter noises from time to time - I don't mind this so much because I can block it out with my headphones. I'm concerned about the noises that I can't block out with the earplug/headphone combination when I want to sleep. Anyway, I'm curious to see how the rest of the night unfolds... Just before I was about to submit this post, I heard another banging... sigh... I haven't done anything about it yet. Now I will primarily prepare for bedtime (including taking my medication).

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Edit:

I haven't slept at all.