Like many people here, I've been through a long period of suffering from insomnia and tried a large number of approaches to cure it. From what I can tell, there are essentially two main causes, which can be interrelated:<p>1) Physiological. Things like low levels of magnesium, muscle pain, noise, temperature, light, circadian disruption, etc.<p>2) Psychological. Anything that leads to being anxious about not sleeping.<p>Both can manifest either as sleep onset insomnia (getting to sleep) or sleep maintenance insomnia (waking up in the night).<p>But here's the thing: sleep anxiety trumps all other causes of insomnia in terms of its power to prevent you going to sleep. Nobody ever felt a quiet nap coming on while running away from a lion.<p>Not everyone who suffers from insomnia also experiences sleep anxiety (at least at first). Those people are probably only one step from a cure because they can usually find a physiological cause (hence the number of comments here about magnesium or regular sleep/rise times, for example).<p>But grasping this fundamental point about sleep anxiety is extremely important. Regardless of whether you need more magnesium, less clocks in the bedroom, or to sleep naked etc., if you're anxious when you're trying to go to sleep then it's instantly game over.<p>So it follows that anything that increases anxiety about getting or maintaining sleep should be avoided, even if the underlying cause is something else. For example, CBT-I's prescription of getting out of bed after 15-20 minutes of wakefulness was counter-productive for me. It made me even more anxious about going to sleep after that. So too was sleep restriction. Waiting for what seemed like an eternity every night before being allowed to get into bed at 1:00am left me a nervous wreck. Better instead to go to bed at 11:00, stay in bed and work on something that alleviates any anxiety (I used mindfulness meditation).<p>So, if you suffer from sleep anxiety, prioritising strategies to reduce anxiety at night should be your number one aim. Everyone seems to find their own way in this. Mine was to follow the principles of ACT-I, but others may need different methods.<p><a href="https://contextualscience.org/acceptance_and_commitment_therapy_for_insomnia_act" rel="nofollow">https://contextualscience.org/acceptance_and_commitment_ther...</a>