PomPom said:
What I used to do when I couldn't sleep was just repeat in my mind over and over, "Go to sleep, PomPom" very quickly. Id try to minimize stray thoughts and only focus on those fast moving words. Now I can just kinda slip into that unfocused state after I weened myself off of even thinking of the words I had been repeating. That unfocused state helps, although the practice is best with just focusing on the words. Hear, don't listen.
I do exactly this. When I have trouble sleeping, I focus on thinking only of sleep. Eventually, I just drift off. It works perfectly 99% of the time.
This is a bit off-topic, but bear with me. Who knows, something I say here might help you discover a way to solve that itching problem.
There's actually science behind this. When your thoughts are everywhere when you're trying to sleep, it's because your mind believes those thoughts are important. When your mind thinks something is important, it brings it up for consideration.
Remember that you are not just one, single, whole being, but a being made up of a number of smaller systems, which are made up of billions upon billions of smaller, more specialized beings. Even if your conscious mind may want to sleep, the rest of your systems might have other ideas.
What you need to do in order to stop these rampant thoughts is to convince your mind that they are NOT important, at least not at the moment.
One reason your mind has these thoughts is to keep focus on them, lest you forget to handle them. As such, one way to sleep when experiencing these thoughts is to write them down. If you write them down, your mind realizes that it doesn't have to think about them anymore in order to not forget, because you made a physical record of the thought that you can return to after you sleep, thus allowing it to focus on sleeping instead.
Another way to convince your mind that they're not important is to forcefully focus on just the concept of sleeping. If you consciously force yourself to focus solely on sleeping, the rest of your mind will inevitably realize that you're prioritizing sleep over those other thoughts and let up. The conscious mind is the overall decision maker - it came to be in order to handle decisions that required time and critical thought - as such, if the conscious mind adamantly says "sleep", then the rest of the mind will eventually cave in and follow suit.
PomPom said:
When meditating, the point is to focus on nothing. Usually the beginner works on only paying attention to their breathing. Everytime the mind strays you breathe deeper and focus on that breath.
The interesting part with me and meditation is that I have an extremely hyperactive mind. My stream of thoughts literally cannot be interrupted. It is impossible for me to think of nothing and focus on that nothing. Every time I try, my natural curiosity in psychology gets in the way as I start to study the very state of my own mind. Rather, the only way I can enter a state of meditation is to give a quality to that nothing.
For example, rather than think of "an empty, white abyss" as my nothing, I'll give it a texture, such that it becomes an "empty, white abyss that is rough to the touch", and then imagine running my hand over its surface. Or I might watch it change shape in my head. That "empty, white abyss" might end up turning into a cube, then a sphere, then a cone, and I'll just end up focusing on imagining the shifts between the shapes.
In other words, rather than think of nothing, I have to bombard my mind with sensory information, real or imagined. Doing so and focusing solely on this sensory information gives order and structure to my thoughts, allowing me to enter a sort of meditative trance. If I use outside sensory stimulation for this, it can end up literally making me feel like I'm part of the environment around me. It's a lot like you imagine the cliche concept of "one with nature" to feel.