General Discussion

@Queencryogen
Try sleeping in a different place, and make sure the room is cool. Maybe your bed is too uncomfortable or the temperature is not right and you don't realise it.
Try to make a routine. Get up earlier and go to bed earlier, even if you're not sleeping, turn all the lights off and rest your eyes.
You could try getting a dim orange light in your room, this helps calm the brain down.
Make sure you have nothing left to do before going to bed, and that you're not worried / excited / stressed about anything. Try to make yourself content and calm.
What helps get me dreaming is trying to imagine stories in my head.
Good luck <3

i have no idea if anyone else has said this, but my favorite trick is to work with my breathing - make every breath slower and longer and have a slightly larger gap between each, imitating how people breathe during sleep, which tricks my brain into being like "ok i guess its sleep time now" which is how i fall asleep so fast (i guarantee u i would not get to sleep as fast as i do if it werent for that).

also idk if it just comes with the breathing but i find it good to relax and let all ur muscles stop being tense - just chill and breathe like ur asleep
@queencryogen

@Queencryogen

What I do is just getting into a nice rhythm. If your rhythm is thrown off: Just pull through a night, stay awake all day and go to sleep at a normal time. Then try to go to sleep at the exact same time every day.
Otherwise you could also fall asleep like you normally, but you just set your alarm clock at the time you would normally want to wake up. So you fall asleep around, let's say, four in the mornin. Your alarm is set at 9, you sleep from four to nine. Not enough, normally, but that'll probably make sure you're tired again that evening when you do want to go to sleep.

Same as some others said: a breathing exercise. I learned one intended to reduce anxiety from a therapist, and it helps me shut up my brain and get to sleep.
Calming noises. ( For me it's rain, the ocean, crickets, frogs, owls, etc. Cause I grew up around those things.)

I remember having a similar problem a few years ago, every time I would lay down my brain seemed to say "Now's a good time to bring up all those stressful problems you have! Fix them now!" or started analyzing any mistakes I made during the day.
My parents also weren't much help, the advice i got was "just lay down and try and sleep will come".

what I eventually started doing was to daydream. I just invented a world, with a handful of characters and just sort of.... watched them live their lives? Now that I'm writing this I realize it sounds a little mad. i don't worry too much on who the characters are or what they're doing because honestly? I'll only forget them come morning anyways.
But instead of my brain focusing on little niggling problems or random ideas I preoccupy it on something that I feel is only a step or so away from dreamland.

Other than that, as other people have already stated some sort of exercise during the day, and reducing time on computers/ watching TV before bed defiantly helps.
That being said, if you really can't stay away from the computer then I recommend downloading a free program called f.lux it changes the colour of the light emitted from the screen to mimic the sunset. The theory basically being that the light at sunset encourages us to sleep. Normal screens emit light that're designed to look like the sun, thus encouraging us to stay awake. I've found it helps me feel more tired earlier in the evening.

Oh, and i forgot to add: be persistent.
Your body is used to thinking of nighttime as awake alert time, and daytime to sleepytime. It's going to take time and effort to change that. If you try one of the suggestions and it doesn;t work don't fret, and keep trying it. Stay positive and keep trying eventually your body will relearn when to sleep, if possible try to do the same routine every night, that way when you start the routine your body will eventually go "Hey! I know this, this mean it's time to sleep soon!"

Sorry for the text wall, hopefully it helped a little.
Anyways, good luck and sweet dreams!

Thank you so much everyone :D

@Queencryogen

I will not repeat the given tips already.
I have a niece with a autism adhd who had trouble getting to sleep aswell. Because her mind was to filled things.
What she started doing is closing her eyes and inmagine she was in a large archive. Every time a though fluttered around she would sort it in the right file in the archive and kept doing this till her mind was more at peace and she fell asleep.

What I do on occasion is looking at the inside of my eyelids. You will always see some movement in the darkness of them. I focus on the darkness and force it to form a tunnel which is black with a hint of color at the end of each segment and kept going on.
Just focusing on this boring task and pushing out all other thoughts till you pretty much bore yourself to sleep.

Keeping to a strict bio rythm by always going to bed on one time and up at the next will give your mind more structure alowing you to sleep faster.

Honestly the best thing for me when I can't sleep is melatonin. It's a natural compound produced by the body that basically tells it that its time to sleep, but you can get it in **** form over the counter for a few bucks. It should be safe, but you might want to research/ask a doctor before taking it.

I've got bad anxiety and adhd, and the friend who recommended it to me has adhd, and melatonin puts both of us out like a light. Tip, though: only take it if you have at least 8h to devote to sleep, or waking up will be excruciating. That's my experience, anyway.

[quote name="Immu" date=2015-08-18 16:13:03] Honestly the best thing for me when I can't sleep is melatonin. It's a natural compound produced by the body that basically tells it that its time to sleep, but you can get it in pill form over the counter for a few bucks. It should be safe, but you might want to research/ask a doctor before taking it. I've got bad anxiety and adhd, and the friend who recommended it to me has adhd, and melatonin puts both of us out like a light. Tip, though: only take it if you have at least 8h to devote to sleep, or waking up will be excruciating. That's my experience, anyway. [/quote] I take melatonin on days where I'll go from say, a midnight to 8am shift to a 8am to 4pm shift the next day. So I don't use it every day. But when I do, I find that it really relaxes me and that in the event I wake up to use the can, I can easily get back to sleep. I don't want to use it if I'm too anxious because I worry about possible abuse of it. But, I could see using it temporarily if I had insomnia. Long term, I'd see a doctor.