A friend shared his technique with me, and after adapting it to my needs, it works well. None of the other commonly mentioned techniques ever worked for me, because they ask for focus, which is the opposite of what my brain needs to fall asleep.

Here's his technique: pick a letter of the alphabet, and find as much words that start with this letter as you can. Once you can't find words anymore, pick the next letter. Doesn't work for me, my brain won't ever stop.

I noticed I have to visualize stuff in my head to fall asleep so my adaptation is to pick a single letter and a single word, and visualize it in my head, using it, manipulating it, experiencing it, whatever. For example: letter P, word Pineapple, imagine you're holding a pineapple, you feel the roughness of it's skin in your hands, you throw it in the air and catch it again, you take a knife and slice it on a wooden table on the beach, etc.. The dream kicks in seconds. Without external interruptions, after a few minutes I'm asleep (instead of rummaging for hours).

If you notice you're stuck in a loop/pattern (for me anything about text, like reading or writing, and voice, like listening and speaking, or stressful scenarios), just pick a new letter, pick a new word, visualize it.