Small noises by neighbours?

Post Reply New Topic

So, I'm wondering if this is merely an issue of personal sensitivity or whether this is indeed the case in the majority of the world's households (well, yours, the readers). I grew up in a flat underneath another flat, but I never heard the person above: as far as I remember the ceiling was concrete. Ever since I moved it's been one house after another with ceilings and floors that remind me more of cardboard boxes than anything solid.

Is it merely because I was better at filtering out stuff as a child? Do you mostly hear switches, things falling, people coughing and if the neighbours are on a floor above, their walking? (I could hear every step once, literally.)

I can even hear when my upstairs neighbour's phone's vibrating.

Maybe, but of course it could be due to the construction / sound proofing of the building you are in as well as how loud your neighbours are! The noises my neighbours make irritate the hell out of me. Always banging around, stomping, laughing, making stupid noises, coughing and *whistling* which does my head in. At one point I considered complaining to the landlord and even made a log of their noise-making but then realised they actually aren't that bad, it's just me being very sensitive.

chiastic_slide, yeah, sometimes I feel desperate because I realize these are small noises - everyone does them, mostly. It's not loud music in the middle of the night. Just now I had to pause a film I was watching because of these noises.

I think it's probably a combination of two things. Newer construction not being as good, and people not being as polite. I don't know what the apartments you lived in as a child were like, and I've heard that in the UK, lots of buildings are old, hence better soundproofed, but if you have moved into newer digs, I'd imagine that the level of soundproofing dropped drastically.

Also, once when I was 12, my mother, gandmother and I moved from our house into an apartment to get away from my grandfther who was on a binge and kind of abusive. I remember them telling me how important it is, when you live in apartments, to walk quieter than you do in a house. I was told that every action of yours may be heard by a neighbor and so as to not disturb them, we don't raise our voices, slam doors, or wear shes inside.

That could very well be the difference. I've lived in apartments in my 20's and 30's and people were truly loud, even though I wasn't. I think a lot of it is the lack of manners today, all around.

What I suggest you do is knock on your neighbors door and ask them if you are disturbing them with the noise. Do this to the noisey ones. Tell them that you are aware that the walls and floors are thin, and you know that sound carries and you ask them to please let you know if you disturb them. This gives them the hint that things are heard, but it's done in a nice way where they save face. They can quieten down without you telling them they annoy you. I wouldn't get the hint if somebody did that to me, but most NT's will. I've used that very strategy with a stomper before. She didn't know she walked heavy, and wouldn't have done it on purpose.

It's a shame they can make better soundproofing for cars but can't or won't install it in houses. I primarily stay in a house built in the 1950s with added on brick exterior. The room-to-room sound transfer is horrible. I've found that stuffing towels between the back of the furniture and the wall helps noticeably but not entirely enough. What I'd really like to find is some abandoned office cubicles and line the walls with them, and maybe not have to scream into a pillow during an episode at the same time

I can't live in an apartment unless it were to be one with extra heavy-duty soundproofing. I found this out the hard way. In one place, the kids bounced basketballs on the floor of the apartment above me and ran up and down the stairs loudly. In another, people would play loud rap music in the parking lot, but even a neighbor's television set barely heard through the wall was enough to send me complaining to the landlord or banging on their door. People who don't control their dog's barking really annoy me too. When I moved to another city, the problem was Mexican laborers throwing parties in the parking lot. As with the rap music, the stupidly simple repetitive bass drove me nuts.

So in one place I could have been killed by gangsta wannabes playing rap, and another by crowds of angry drunk Mexicans, but I had to complain even if it meant I would be shot or get beat up. I couldn't sit there or lie there with ear plugs in but not working and allow them to continue to assault me and physically HURT me without at least letting them know what they were doing. Some were nice about it (I tried to be as polite as possible), but some got really upset at me. Landlords and police learned to ignore me too, even though as I read the terms of the lease the neighbors were being out of line if anything they did was loud enough to disturb me. The main problem was (and is) IF I CAN HEAR IT, IT'S TOO LOUD! I've learned that when looking for a place to rent, I have to have someplace quiet.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 27 May 2012, 9:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Neighbours suck!

Can I get an AMEN?

I hear things outside but I have a right to be mad because my neighbours are loud. They blast country music from the afternoon until midnight in their garage. There's currently a dog that wont stop barking and it's been going on for 2 hours. there's constantly teens driving around, blasting music and screaming. I'm in the worst bedroom for that.

Hell yeah. One of our neighbors threatened to call the police on us just because our dog got loose from our back yard.

HELLS YEAH - AAAAAAAMEN

King Julien Says: Maurice please tells to them noise makers that my peoples are annoyed; and only the king is allowed to annoy my peoples

AMEN x 3. I'm like Daniel Boone - when I see the smoke from my neighbor's smokestack, it's time to move on. I'm sensitive to noise too. I can hear a chopper flying in about 10 to 15 mins. before most other people.

Longshanks

I never got disturbed from small noises when I was a child. But I think that's quite normal for any child, most adults are more alert with things than children are, so obviously Aspies are going to be more hypersensitive as they get older.

I lived in the same practically all my life, and we have always had really quiet neighbours next door, right up until I was 17. Then we got some new neighbours moved in, and they are nice and much friendlier than the ones we had before, but they are louder. They seem to slam every door (I'm beginning to think they have about 150 doors in their house), and they are very loud people, like they're always talking loud and have a loud laugh and are always whooping in the garden. They have a little child, and he's typically loud. You always know when they're out in their garden.

I always hear doors slamming, but we all can, so I don't class that as a sensory issue with me. But I do get sensitive when people walk in the room above me. It really hurts, sometimes it makes me roll on the floor in agony, as though my eardrum is about to burst. People in my house don't seem to walk gently, they always seem to stomp or march. The only one who walks more gently is my dad. Perhaps it depends on the shape of a person's feet.

Our walls are thin too, and there's a special architectural feature - it's a terraced row....as usual they designed it with an air space between the upstairs floor and the downstairs ceiling, but the problem is, the walls between the individual houses also have that same gap, so there's a continuus gap under the floorboards upstairs that runs all the way down the street. Anybody know why the designers would do such a thing? Seems to me a lot easier to just build a wall....what did they build the upstairs wall on????

It's all very well to excuse the architects on the grounds that loud music systems didn't exist in 1895. They had pianos in those days, they could sing and shout.

I've seen tower blocks where they've had the cheek to build the dividing walls out of breeze blocks. You can almost hear what your neighbours are saying to each other. Somebody obviously didn't give a damn about providing decent homes.

I guess my hyper-hearing comes into this. I guess most people would just screen the noise out. I can't seem to do that....every noise they make shatters my concentration. Luckily the local council has a good callout service for noise monitoring, and they take action if their meters go over the legal limits.

When I have lived in very quite rural places, I could hear people walking from the road to the house.

I don't like apartment living, but when I d, I can hear way too much...

Noise from neighbours gives me such irrational volumes of anxiety, it's nuts. I live on the top floor of a townhouse. I only hear the occasional run up the stairs from either side, which doesn't bug me cuz it's a noise my brain has been conditioned for over many years of having a bedroom right by a staircase. (Traffic sounds also don't bother me for the same reason) The people downstairs are quiet-ish, but I hear their music occasionally and they have this one friend who comes over maybe once a month and doesn't seem to understand the concept of an indoor voice. He shouts when he talks, or at least it seems that way to me. If I can hear even the faintest murmur of voices I can't focus on anything and I get really jittery and anxious. Thankfully I have a pair of high quality noise cancelling headphones that I'll wear around the house and to bed. Before I had those, I could hardly fall asleep even when it was perfectly quiet cuz I'd make myself sick worrying, "What if they come home and the noise starts???!?! Agghh"

Lol I get so angry when I hear them that I want to throw eggs at their door or stomp around and scream, then I remind myself they actually aren't very loud at all and I'm pretty lucky they're quiet 90% of the time.

I live in the city and I love it, but god I hate the noise. I would love to live in the middle of a field without any other human being for miles.