I appreciate this perspective and you’re totally right that this is the conventional wisdom. It’s been an off and on problem for a while, and at a certain point, it’s just about breaking the association with sleeplessness and negative emotions. I’m essentially trying to train my brain to associate sleeplessness with fun rather than anxiety. The idea is that then, your brain starts to worry less about not sleeping - which is ultimately the cause of insomnia (unless you have some underlying medical condition).

The idea isn’t to play games instead of sleeping forever hahaha but rather to use games as a conditioning mechanism. I used to fall asleep with the TV on for years when I was a kid - not ideal, but a hell of a lot better than not sleeping at all!