To be honest, I would try a melatonin supplement first. It helps alot.

melatonin does nothing to me. Like it makes me sleepy but i still cannot fall asleep, making it desperating.

MeRT therapy seems promising, but it's around 300 bucks per session.

Yeah, I have noticed it's super expensive. But if it solves my problems... I don't mind taking lots of commissions to pay it :3

I hope it works for you then.

I have no knowledge of those kinds of therapies but I am a high functioning autistic (Asperger) myself and I also sometimes deal with insomnia. Runaway thoughts definitely is the main reason for it so over the years I have learned a few ways of clearing my mind so that I can relax and eventually fall asleep.

At first I tried melatonin pills but they were only effective when my mind wasn’t a buzzing mess. Then I tried meditation which was effective but it took a long time for me to get it right. So I tried to teach myself that instead of being stressed over my inability to fall asleep, which only made my problem worse, I tried to do things that would put my mind at ease.

In my case it was playing a fun repetitive game and listening to either an audiobook or a YouTube video I like. I have a playlist that still helps me a lot. I can’t guarantee that any of this will be helpful to you but if stress, anxiety and buzzing thoughts are your main issue then my advice would be trying to ask yourself why you have those thoughts even when you think you already know the answer.

If it’s a hard problem you can’t stop thinking about, remind yourself that letting it go for now doesn’t mean that you are ignoring it. If it’s because you are feeling stressed or anxious, remind yourself that you are safe and that nothing bad will happen because you relax and let your guard down. Sorry that I can’t answer the question you were asking but I hope this will be of some use at last.

I've heard positive things about TMS in treating medication-resistant depression, but nothing has yet convinced me that MeRT is anything more than a sham. Unfortunately as you said it seems to be a lot of paid opinions which makes it difficult to actually find good information.

I have to say I don't know anything about the therapies but thank you for making the journal. My ex has a lot of similar mental health problems with severe traumas. I'm going to tell her about these therapies to find out if she knows about them and then we can find if they exist around here.
Hope you'll get help too for your problems.

TMS seems to be useful in major depressive disorder but I don't know about autism. Where I work, we use it to treat chronic pain. It doesn't work on every patients but it does work for some, and side-effects are minor (compared to chemicals treatments).
Have you tried Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to learn about your mecanisms, to live better with them ?
Also, there is no "normal person", don't aim at this or you'll never really be happy with the result of anything you'll try.
Anyway, hope you feel better !

"Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" that's what I have been trying, it has helped a lot xp
And I know and I'm aware that there is no "normal person", I just want to sleep normally tho.

Psychedelic therapy may be another thing to look into. There have been promising results.

Well, in studies rTMS seems to show improvements for depression and insomnia.
If you haven't had one done already, a sleep study would probably be beneficial.

I don't know if this is still relevant to you, but I am autistic and have depression, anxiety, and insomnia, and I did TMS for about 20 sessions in February for depression. TMS is a fairly unpleasant experience, so if getting to a clinic is inconvenient, or if the experience with staff is poor, it will be very hard to convince yourself to keep going. I had both of those issues and ended treatment early. Ending early means my outcomes might be less comparable to yours, but for what it's worth: the clinic said I had completed enough of the normal treatment that they would not permit me to resume or restart later.

I had a mild improvement in my depression symptoms during treatment and shortly after. Given the complete ineffectiveness of antidepressants, that was a remarkable experience for me. However, it very much did not feel worth the USD1200 it cost me. During treatment, staff emphasized that to get lasting results from TMS, you need to capitalize on the short term improvements to make lifestyle changes. I tried but wasn't successful. I did not notice any change to sleep, executive function, or emotional regulation.

for treatment-resistant insomnia, I recommend researching the possibility of non-24. That seems to be the source of my insomnia. I know the option isn't available to most people, but I opted to make lifestyle changes to comply with my natural circadian rhythm being ~24.5 hours (that extra .5 is as stubborn as it is small), and I had an immediate and tremendous improvement to sleep after years of nothing working.

Yeah, I tried 20 sessions of TMS and I didn't really feel changes, plus it was super expensive. Depression, anxiety and insomnia are the same, and it was even more stressing experience because i had to travel to another city that has a pretty bad ambient :/. So, i feel like giving up and just assume I will always feel like that.