This may work for non-neurotic people but laying still in bed is when the demons in my mind come out to play and remind me of all of my problems.
I once read that sleep therapists sometimes give people with bad sleeping problems the opposite advice: keep your eyes slightly open and try to stay awake. Not in the sense that you should put on loud music, put lucifers between your eyelids, etc. But just lie down and don't try to fall asleep. It often works, because people let go of the goal to calm down and get asleep (which makes it hard to do exactly that), once you let go, your body does what it wants to do, calm down and sleep.
A similar approach works very well for me: just stop caring. Ensure that you are on a regular schedule for going to bed and waking up (so that you biological clock doesn't get confused), don't drink alcohol (bad sleep quality), don't do anything exciting the hours before going to bed (heated discussions on HN), and write down stuff that bothers you before going to bed. Let your body do the rest. If you are awake for some more time, then just interpret it as: my body isn't tired yet, I am just going to enjoy the cosiness of my bed.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor/therapist.
Disclaimer: I have only had insomnia episodes that have lasted up to a month or so, so more chronic episodes can be different.
http://www.angryflower.com/221.html
Instead of trying to focus on nothing at all, the standard trick to get around this problem is to focus on something extremely boring, such as your own breathing. The traditional "counting sheep" method of sleep induction could be considered a variant of this.
1) I turn on an audio book that I love and know well with a 30 minute sleep timer. Recently this is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It doesn’t keep me awake because I already know the story well. But it keeps my mind occupied enough to avoid the rumination. Podcasts don’t work for me because it’s new material.
2) Guided Yoga Nidra in bed. This involves a long sequence of instructions to notice and relax individual areas of the body. Thumb, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinkie finger, front of the hand, back of the hand, wrist, and so on. This keeps the mind occupied and also helps release tension.
Science / nature podcasts work really well. I avoid true crime, social issues, politics, tech, or work topics. The Ologies podcast is amazing.
There’s even a podcast called Nothing Really Happens designed to help insomniacs sleep.
Ill put on long form pods so I dont have to mess with anything until I fall asleep.
Here is one thing that happens very often to me. I have always been a rather lucid dreamer, vivid dreamer, and I have had dream story lines last literally decades in my dreams. I have had dreams where I have a story take place - then that story will continue like a year or two later, and I recall how they connect.
Anyway - Ill be listening to a podcast, and then every DreamNPC will be talking to me but whats coming out of their mouths, are the voices from the podcast. i.e. One dream, I was rescuing my daughter from a car crash and taking her to the hospital, and everyone at the hospital was insisting on taking my daughter to mars. And I was running to get her out of the hospital and away from all the people in there trying to take her to Mars... (I was listening to a long form pod of colonizing mars/getting to mars etc... and thats what all the NPCs were spewing to me.
Also - there are several triggers that alert me to the fact that I am dreaming:
I attempt to use my phone in any capacity - its impossible to press digits - and eventually my phone will crumble/disintegrate in my hand - and this alerts me that I am in a dream and I am aware of it.
If I attempt to read numbers - such as those on a price tag for an item in a store. Once I realize how hard it is to read any numbers - I am aware I a dreaming.
If I am trying to clean up a mess - I cannot pick things up, and I wobble-around as if I am black-out drunk and keep falling over and dropping the things I am trying to clean up - then I realize its a dream.
Also, I have several 'dream houses' and 'dream neighborhoods' that I am familiar with in my dreams - and when I see them/am in them again, I know I am dreaming. But sometimes, the dreams are so intense, that when I wake up I can still be confused thinking that some aspects of the dream actually happened, and it takes me a moment to register that these things were from the dream, not wokeness :-)
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There have been times where I realize I am dreaming, then I force myself to 'wake-up' and I believe that I am woken up, but then one of the above triggers happens, and I realize I am still in the dream.. sometimes multiple times in the same dream - this one is scary though, because this happens when all my surroundings in the dream are the same as my real-life surroundings, and so it takes one of the triggers for me to recognize that I am actually dreaming...
Also, I have had dreams that I can recall from when I was a kid, then I have an experience in real-life - and then I can remember the dream from when I experienced it as a kid... (like a weird deja-vu dream-wormhole.)
I love dreaming -and I have a terrible general memory for daily mundane things - but I can vividly remember my dreams.
I used to be the same. But I find it just keeps me up more because there is so much potential for it to become interesting...even the most boring pods. Now I remove my bed from the bedroom and if anything I use a Calm sleep story.
A few things really helped me. The first was meditation because it allows you to become mindful of your feelings and recognize what you’re feeling. This mindfulness makes it much easier to practice emotional regulation, which is essential for self soothing. And finally ER allowed me to learn to love myself and separate myself from my bad past experiences and mistakes.
Journaling about your demons and past cringe or dramatic or bad experiences in extreme detail also helps a lot. Bonus for journaling in a way that is compassionate to yourself