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Hello everyone, I am also a new paid member. From my understanding, the more measures you take to try to go to sleep or to force yourself to go to sleep when it just isn’t your time to sleep yet or when your sleep drive just isn’t high enough, the more elusive it becomes. Sleep is a completely natural ability of the body and mind in unison. Sleep is almost completely free from any man-made interference, yes you can take pills or supplements, but these only act to throw your body’s sleep cycle off balance and perpetuates the insomnia by making you fall asleep at inconsistent times. The key here is consistency, you need to get asleep reasonably quickly for a long enough length of time for the mind to begin recognizing the cues you are nudging it to, via the “sleep window” which is set to fit your schedule or lifestyle. If your anxiety levels are so high which makes sleep hard, you can eventually overcome that by increasing your sleep drive via “bedtime restriction”. The key is to maintain this sleep drive enough for the next night to fall asleep quickly again, you must establish this pattern consistently, over time, the mind “learns” to fall asleep again confidently, thereby reducing sleep-associated anxiety so that it takes less sleep drive to fall asleep. That is really the essence of the CBT-I program.
