lying in bed quietly trying to fall asleep is terrible. My brain doesn't stop, it's like a pitching machine that's gone rouge and I'm the batter stuck in the cage.
Whenever I'm finally about to fall asleep, I notice myself falling asleep and become fully awake, because my brain goes "Yes! I'm falling asleep! Hurrah!"
Every time :angery:
I used to think I had insomnia since childhood until I was about 21. I tried so many things over the years to varying degrees of success but the problem persisted - I couldn't quiet my mind unless I was exhausted. That led to many nights gaming or binging Netflix till late, and also smoking weed or taking valerian root to help me sleep (both actually pretty effective but not good for health and I always woke up groggy). Anyway what I'm saying is been there, done that, actually doing it rn.
What changed is when I was trying out meditation. Hear me out here bc I'm not just gonna say "learn to meditate". I got headspace for free with Spotify and gave it a go. While following along to the beginner parts I noticed myself being very sleepy. One of the first things it takes you through is breathing. Proper breathing alone helps a lot - you should be breathing with your diaphragm, idk the science behind it but pretty sure that's how you breathe when you sleep and it sends certain signals to your brain (signals like 'yo it sleep time'). Mouth or nose is fine, but best not to do both. Long in, long out and deep. You know it's diaphragmatic when the sound of your breathing comes from around the back of your throat rather than your nose/mouth.
While that will help, it doesn't solve the problem of quieting the mind. I'm all but diagnosed with ADHD, so turning the think off is impossible unless I'm focusing, which you generally don't want to be doing when falling asleep. Well turns out there's probably a reason for the 'counting sheep to fall asleep' cliché. Headspace told me to count my breaths - in 1, out 2, in 3, out 4 etc - up to 10, then start again. This gives you something to focus on while not being stimulating enough to encourage thought tangents. If you notice yourself thinking about something else, bring it back to the numbers. If you count over 10 like I do, bring it back to 1-10. Start again if you need to. Just keep repeating this, and keep the deep, diaphragmatic breathing in mind and you should (ymmv of course) nod off to sleep fairly easy. It gets easier with practice too. I sleep like a log most nights these days.
Otherwise, perhaps you could try a 4/4 split? It works for a lot of people since we're more geared to that than one lot of 8 hours.