Why won't any WBTB/WILD type techniques work for me?

Alrighy so I have been trying FIlD and SSILD a lot in the past two weeks which both involve WBTB and I haven’t even had a shred of success with either of them. I have read all these success stories about people getting 9 out of 10 dreams lucid with FILD and people talking about how well SSILD works, yet I haven’t even gotten a tid bit of luck with them. I think my main problem is not that I’m doing these incorrectly, but that my brain is acting up in the actual “Back to Bed” part. I have another post here explaining my intense frustration with this.

Its basically like I wake up to my alarm 4-5 hours after I go to sleep and I swear to you, any other time my entire life that my alarm goes off at 6 in the morning, I would be asleep faster than Usain Bolt! But now, I wake up, and no matter what time it is, i just can’t get to sleep whenever I try the techniques! I’ll be doing the finger tapping or the Sense thing for a good while but I just can’t for the life of me get tired, so I get discouraged.

Then I close my eyes, and it still feels like I will never get to sleep because of how alert I am, but I always fall back to sleep, I just don’t know when it is or how long it takes. I just wake up later and can’t remember when or how I got to sleep. Thats sorta why I switched to SSILD, because its more like conditioning your brain. It is extremely frustrating because I used to have lucid dreams years ago so I know I can do it, I’m just sorta getting back into it now. Can someone please give me some advice!

What is working for you? What techniques have you had success with, and what have you experienced?

I’ve only ever had DILD’s in the past. I never really had the willpower to try a technique that I had to wake up for until lately. Heck, I never even used a Dream Journal but still had success. Now that I’ve started with the more advanced techniques and using a DJ, I have had almost worse results.

Most likely you’re becoming too mentally active and that’s keeping you from falling asleep. I have a lot of the same problems; I can fall asleep in half a moment until I do something more active. I have more luck going right back to sleep and with things that require the least amount of thought and movement. VILD works for me a lot because I daydream a lot as I go to sleep. I also do better with MILD/DEILD/autosuggestion at that time of night.

Different techniques work in different ways for different people. If something isn’t working for you, change it up.

I don’t know if you already have this in mind, but one of the best things is to stick to one method at a time (could do more if they are similar in practice). A lot of beginners have a lot of trouble with lucid dreaming because they try too many methods at once, or only try a method for a week before giving up and starting a different one. Stick with it for at least a month before ruling it out as a fail.
So that’s the first thing.

The other thing is that not all methods will work for everyone. Perhaps WBTB just isn’t for you? Sounds like you would benefit more from doing RCs and MILD.