There are different types of writing exercises that are likely to be helpful for different types of suffering.

Relaxing your attempts at control of your internal experience and relating to your thoughts, feelings, and sensations with compassion and courage is a learnable skill.

Just like you can't force yourself to have good mental health, you can't force yourself to fall asleep. You can create the conditions that make good mental health more likely and you can also create conditions that make sleep more likely.

A good plan for making good mental health more likely includes both planning for increasing or maintaining your functioning and managing your distress more effectively.