thinking about not sleeping keeps me awake

Hello.

Looking for a bit of advice if possible...

I have acute insomnia. It’s not as bad as many on here (although I haven’t read too many threads for a fear of letting all this get in to my head and making it worse).

I started having sleep issues when I was a student. The reasons for this was obvious and probably what you might expect...no body clock , alcohol, living in my bedroom etc...I would find it hard to get to sleep so sleep in later and later etc....

After uni I got a job in a gym where I would work one week starting at 6:45 am and the next starting at 3pm...again no body clock. However, for the past 3 years I’ve been working a 9-5er.

I know the reason for my inability to get to sleep...the reason is that I get stressed about not being able to sleep, this raises anxiety, this releases adrenalin and this will stop me sleeping. It normally starts when I have that odd night of poor sleep that everyone has every so often. I’m therefore tired the next day and put pressure on myself “I have to be able to sleep tonight as I had a poor night last night”. Of course, what happens is that I have another poor night.

I also seem to be able to talk myself into not sleeping. I.e. anytime I have to get up early due to work/holiday, or I sleep in a hotel etc I will find it harder to sleep.

My periods of sleeplessness are often short (<week), but occasionally (such as now) I have a period lasting over a week. I know it’s getting bad when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t drop back off to sleep (something I’ve always been okay at). For example, this morning, after dropping off around 3am, I woke up at 6am and then tossed and turned until 7...I normally don’t event get up till 7:30.

My issue is how do I help myself?

I already do a lot of things suggested...I exercise (but not too much), my bedroom is dark and cool. I don’t drink a lot of alcohol or drink any tea/coffee. I use a fan for white noise and I don’t watch TV/read in my bedroom.

I’ve tried a lot of techniques such as relaxation tapes and hypnosis, 7-11 deep breathing, counting backwards, some over the ccounter (in the UK) drugs etc but all this does is remind my why I’m doing this...it reminds me that I’m not sleeping which of course raises anxiety etc.

I’ve read a few books on it...a few suggest getting up after a period of not sleeping. The problem here is normally I’m comfortable in bed and have nothing to do when I get up for a period (you cant watch TV, what else do you do at 2am).

What I find is that I lay not awake but not asleep for long periods until my brain says “are we asleep?, ill just heck my opening my eyes... see...not asleep”.

So, unlike most on here I guess I’m pretty lucky, all I need is a little help to push me over the edge.
So, it there any other golden nugget of info that I’m missing?

Thanks for reading...good luck everyone.

*edited*