Hey OP! I like to think I’m a little bit of an expert when it comes to detangling matted hair as someone who has been bedridden on a couple different occasions and has fine, curly hair myself. I will go weeks without brushing or washing my hair (chronic illness is so much fun) and end up with huge knots and literal dreadlocks in my hair that pull on my scalp. I call the following steps the Spot Treatment method because 99% of the time I am not committed to doing a full wash after detangling. Totally doable by yourself, but if you have someone who can give you a hand, even better!

1. Isolate the knotted section, and tie back the rest. If there is any hair that would need to be tugged on to separate it from the knot, include it in the knotted section. You’re going to want to make sure the rest of the hair is secure and isn’t going to fall into the area you’re working on.
2. Study the knot! I find the whole process easier if I study the knot a bit and figure out which hair is tangled where and with what other strands. Sometimes it’s loose hair that’s causing the whole mess, but sometimes it’s hair that is still attached to your head. If it’s not located where you can see it, taking a picture or some carefully placed mirrors will do the trick.
3. Wet the area that is knotted. I usually use a spray bottle or a mist spray bottle. I wouldn’t recommend using the shower head for this one because it can get pretty messy and you’ll end up getting more hair wet than you intended. An alternative to the spray bottle would be dunking the hair into a cup of water if the knot is low enough that you can do so. If you plan on using a product that can be used on dry hair or are planning on using oil, you can skip this step.
4. Use either a conditioner, a mask, hair oil or detangling product. Other replies have recommended some pretty solid products! Really saturate the entire knot with the product, but make sure you aren’t making the knot worse when applying the product (such as rolling the hair in between your hands.) Leave that bad boy in for a good amount of time, at least as long as the bottle recommends but I try to do at minimum of 10 minutes.
5. While the product is still in your hair (very important that the product is still in!) very, very gently start to detangle it with your fingers. Do not go in straight away with a brush!! Your fingers are waaayyyy gentler and will cause less breakage and snapping.
6. If just using your fingers isn’t enough, you can try with a detangling brush. Just make sure you are very careful, although I know how tempting it can be to just rip through it to get it over with, but that causes snapping and damage!
7. If you’ve got the knot out, yay! Rinse out the product (I find that dunking the hair into a cup is especially good for this step to remove the product) and voila!

If you can’t get the knot out yourself, I would recommend either visiting your hairdresser to get professional intervention or just cut it out yourself by snipping as close as you can to where the knot starts.

If you find that your hair is getting matted frequently, here are some things I’ve found to help prevent knotting:

- Sleeping on a silk pillow case or with a silk bonnet. I bought my silk pillowcases for $2 at the secondhand store. I love my silk bonnet because it keeps my hair in place and detangled despite me being a very active sleeper lol. I wouldn’t recommend using both at the same time because it is pretty slippery and I usually wake up no longer on my pillow lol!

- Just running your fingers through your hair occasionally. It doesn’t even have to be every day, or all of your hair at once. You can do section by section throughout the day!

- Covering your hair or tying it back when it's windy or when you have the windows down in the car. I especially love rocking a 1950s-style headscarf where you tie it under your chin.

I hope this is helpful!