why does it become so much harder to fall asleep when you’re thinking of falling asleep?

Question

I notice that while I’m trying to fall asleep if I think about sleeping in general or think of it as a “time skip” it takes me much much longer to fall asleep. Why is that? Is it just me?

In: Other

Answer 1

I think there’s 2 plausible explanations here;
1. You start to worry which gets your blood pumping and pulls you out of a relaxed state (“Oh no, i’ve got to get up at 6:00 i need to sleep now or i’ll be exhausted)

Or my second guess, you might be linking it backwards.

Perhaps it doesn’t get difficult to fall asleep when you think about falling asleep but instead you think about falling asleep when already have difficulty falling asleep?

Could also be that you think about it so intensively that you focus too hard to let your mind wander off and away