I have been there, when I was younger. Indeed I think maybe age alone is to some extent a moderating influence. Usually I don't have an issue now -- I have learned to breathe and sort of "find" restfulness somehow I can't really explain.

I don't personally believe that the idea in the blog post -- exerting willpower to lie still in bed -- is actually a strategy, anyway.

But when I am super-anxious, which does happen, I instead take a completely different approach, which is that sleep is less important than being rested.

I decouple the two. That is, I focus not on going to bed, but resting in some comfortable place, because I think there are fewer sort of "back of the mind" objections to that. It's far less commitment.

When I was staying in my father's large, by-then-empty house 18 months back I could not settle at all to go to sleep.

After only one night I got a sense of why: the size of the place and the location of the bedroom was unsettling and felt insecure.

But there's a room near the front door, not very warm, but it had the comfiest chair in the house, for some reason. I sat in that chair with the heaviest blankets I could find, in the dark. In my clothes, still -- no "getting ready for bed" ritual to speak of. Just rest, knowing that I wasn't trying to sleep.

And then at three or four in the morning, after some snoozing, with the alarm set, I would go up to the bedroom with as few lights on as possible, and get more conventionally ready for bed before the nagging thoughts could raise any objections, and I would swiftly fall asleep knowing that the sun would come p in a couple of hours.

It was enough sleep to survive, and completely enough rest, for the two or three months I was there.

Turns out my Dad used to do exactly the same thing, in exactly the same chair.

So if you'll forgive some more advice, in your shoes this is what I would try: give up on sleep. Focus only on low-stakes, low-effort rest. Perhaps sleep will sort itself out in that context.