What happens with me is that I cannot get my mind to switch off. It races from one thought to another, and the conversation, if you can call it that, keeps going on. I am tired and have my eyes closed, but my mind is awake. In this mode, I can blank it out for a minute or so. But some stray thought will break in, and that's that.

But what I find surprising is that, I can feel a sudden and clearly demarcated change of state when all that 'talk' stops. Like some sudden exponential decay. Once that happens I know I will fall asleep in some ~10 more mins. It is this sudden and clearly perceptible change that intrigues me. If I can somehow hit that state then I know I will do fine. I dont know if anyone else have had this. However if some distraction/noise kicks me off that 'quiet' state, then the entire process has to start all over again. But this is very different from the case where a thought breaks into my difficultly enforced one minute lull that i spoke about earlier.

I can clearly identify which of the two states I am in. I have always wanted to study my EEG pattern to see if that is also reflected there.