Erratic sleeping and a busy mind (newbie)

[SomethingCryptic]

I've been reading posts on here for a little while with a goal of writing my first post some time, so here goes.

I've been having quite a few issues with my sleep lately. I've never been great at sleep. It used to take me ages to switch off and actually get to sleep, but I would always sleep right through the night when I did.

More recently it has been the other way round. I've finally found what seems to work for me to get to sleep in under 30mins, but now I keep waking up in the night. Often I'm able to get back to sleep again after a little while, but sometimes it's like my mind just switches back on, even if it's in the middle of the night. I just start going round and round on all the bad things in my life or things that bothered me a while ago and I thought I had gotten past.

I've been doing a bit of research into how to have healthy sleeping habits (bought and eye mask, aiming for the same start and end time, no screens of caffeine too close to bed time) but it doesn't seem to be working for me (admittedly I've not been trying these things for very long).

Occasionally my mind is so busy, that after an hour of being unable to calm it in bed I end up getting up and journaling / just writing down all of my thoughts until it feels "quiet". This is usually effective, but I feel like it takes up a lot of time that I could be sleeping instead.

Does anyone else get this? Was there anything that helped or was a real breakthrough for you?