I have touble falling asleep and when I get to sleep, I have trouble staying asleep. It takes me 1 to 2 hours to get to sleep. When sleeping, I wake up every half hour to hour. I either don't dream or don't remember my dreams. Once in a great while, I will remember a dream and it is usually a dream that I am at work. Yuck!
I am a rotating shift worker, so I work one week on 12 hour day shifts, have days off, then work 12 hour night shifts, have days off and then back to days. It is a very, very sleep screwing up schedule. I know this is a huge factor in my sleep. But, even before I went to this shift work, I had the same sleep issues.
It seems that the more tired I am, the less I can relax and sleep too. I may go two to three weeks and the I Crash and Burn! I may sleep for 12 hours and then wake up feeling like I have been run over by a bus!
I hear people mention that they had a terrible nights sleep, that they woke up 2 times in the night! I, politely concole them and think to myself,..."YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" I would love to only wake up twice a night.
"Sleep like a baby",..."Sleep like a rock",...how would it be??? 
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I'm afraid I rely on drugs to achieve two of the three goals of sleep and may give Melatonin a try for the third, that being the length of sleep.
I was seriously bothered by waking up 8-10 times a night a long time ago and after years of living with it, I mentioned to my doctor who prescribed a small dose of Amitriptyline, 25mg. This worked wonders in keeping me asleep, once asleep. That might take an hour and a half, and since I usually only had eight hours between shifts, every other day, it still took precious time away.
Anxiety, yes. Constantly going over what had happened in the previous shift. Looking for answers, a better way to handle, or have handled things.
The last two years, if I have trouble falling asleep, I use a small dose of Ambien CR. Within ten minutes, usually, I am out. I found the larger too strong, rather interesting effects though.
I like listening to ambient sounds, some of them, for the pure enjoyment and I'm sure it helps relax me, some seem very esoteric though. :)
Thanks very much for all of those links!
It sounds like you and I have similar sleep issues. It takes me at least an hour or two to fall asleep and when I sleep, I wake up every half hour to hour. I'm not a worrier, per say. I spend my time thinking about getting everything done and making sure I don't forget things.
Thanks for the info. on the med's you are taking to help you. I am going look into those you have mentioned.
P.S. I love Monk's chanting. I find them relaxing. Good luck on catching those ZZZ"s!
You're welcome, Rena. I have a good idea of how you feel, except for the strange attraction to chanting monks. :)
There are so many studies about how the constant changing of shift work is harmful to our bodies, but they keep doing it! I could never sleep more than four hours a day during my week of midnight shifts and that made for a zombie-like thought process and perhaps, appearance. I could rarely go back to sleep after waking up.
I have to be honest and say that the Amitriptyline didn't help much on those shifts, except the three or four hours of sleep being non-stop.
I know what you mean about catching up on sleep when you finally crashed, I still felt terrible after getting six or seven hours. Good luck to you too!
Aha! I should have known you were a fellow shift worker! You are so right about the zombie thing too.