> When I have trouble sleeping, of all the things I've tried, counting backwards from 200 (visualizing each number as I count) works the best, after blanking my mind.

Thanks, I'll remember this one for next time. The visualisation tracks from YouTube were a bit annoying, I turned it off. I tried visualising going to sleep on the beach, with warm, soft sand, so I can go to sleep in my sleep, it sort of worked a little. The best one was I started a garden project and was thinking about how to place pavers, something about the repetition and a pattern and a problem to solve.

Well I guess there are two problems; #1 was getting to sleep in the first place, #2 was just as I was actually drifting off I'd get scared of the "falling" asleep feeling which I had become overly aware of and it was jerking me awake.
The good news is the memory is fading with time! I'm not jerking awake from worrying about an OBE as I go to sleep anymore! I could almost rationalise it away as some strange dream and forget the whole thing, but I'm not sure it was. Now it's just problem #1 getting to sleep in the first place, which is fine, I'm going to try more exercise and less time on the phone.

I'll put a list of things I tried here for anyone else:
- sleep in a different place, on the couch - #1 best thing
- leave the light on - #2 best, strangely useful when you'd think an eye mask would block out the light anyway
- time passing and memory fades
- stay up late or until usual time - I was so tired I was trying to go to bed early to catch up sleep. Staying up later so you pass straight out worked better even though I had less sleep overall.
- more exercise and get physically tired
- learning about what the vortex could have been and that it's not going to suck me into a nightmare world randomly during the day
- tell it to go away - I think having the intention of not going in one of those vortexes again might have helped, like you're only going to witness it if you allow it to
- try visualising something - variable luck with this because the effort of visualising stuff would break down just before the "falling" feeling or maybe I'm just not that good at it
- don't pay attention to any strange lights/dots/patterns you see with your eyes closed. Visualising/dreams appears in a different place in your mind and that's what you want for going to sleep - I recently learned that I have something called "visual snow", but I only really notice it in the dark or if I'm looking for it.
- do something fun and positive just before bed
- ashwagandha supplement - not sure how to tell if it's working
- fall asleep listening to my husband's chest

Reading about this spirituality and supernatural stuff kind of gives me the creeps, especially reading about ghosts and entities, and it brought up these childhood nightmares. I wonder if I became a non-believer mostly from a desire that I want none of it to exist, but then I got curious aaaand then I found out - be careful what you wish for. I thought I'd do something fun just before bed to block it out, so I picked this game "West of Loathing" which was sitting there untouched, thinking it was a comedy western. Turned out it was a comedy western with a necromancer and the dead have risen! Demonic cows are on the loose! But it was really funny and just lightened up my mood about the subject. It was the perfect thing that I needed, but not what I expected.