Limited professional help for insomniacs

Hi. I'm 50, male Asian.
I've been suffering from insomnia for about 3 months now. I know that compared to most of you here, my time with insomnia is still relatively short. However, I feel it getting worse. I have started keeping sleep journals about a month ago. Now, I'm averaging between 4 to 5hrs of sleep every night, there are nights that I don't get any sleep at all.

I have both sleep onset and sleep maintenance issues. I used to be a really good sleeper; my wife claims that I would fall asleep within minutes every night. How I long for those days. I guess my main issue now is the fear of not being able to sleep due to all kinds of health concerns if I don't get that 7hrs of sleep, no thanks to all the fearmongering posts in the internet. I could be really sleepy and already dozing off on the sofa while watching a wind-down tv show just before bed, but just when I hit the pillows, I suddenly become alert and wide awake. It's frustrating sometimes... the irony that the harder I try, the more difficult it is to fall asleep.

Another key difficulty I have is the lack of professional help in my area. I have gone to a GP (General Practitioner) who referred me to a government hospital under the sleep medicine department. To my surprise, the appointment is scheduled for 6 months from now. Private practices are really expensive here. It frightens me to imagine myself going through another 6 months of this while waiting for professional help. This is already affecting my life negatively and my heart goes out to those of you who have been suffering for years.

Anyway, while waiting for the appointment, I have done loads of research. I have learned about sleep hygiene, sleep restrictions, and stimulus control, under the umbrella of CBT-i. I've started to self-help myself with these methods since about a week ago. I see some promising results in the first few days, but then a bout of bad nights came and that badly affected my confidence.

For me, the hardest part to implement is stimulus control. Whenever I couldn't get to sleep within 20mins or so on the bed, I am conflicted between going out to another room, or continue to stay in bed hoping that sleep will come soon. I know the right thing to do (in this method) is to get out of bed and do something non-exciting till I feel sleepy again. The thing is, I can't really identify sleepiness anymore. There's a blur line between being tired and being sleepy. I feel that if I spend too much time outside, I might miss my sleep opportunity in my limited sleep window (thanks to sleep restriction...)

On a positive note, my sleep efficiency is improving since I self-helped with the CBT-i methodologies. I did hear that things may get worse before it becomes better. I sure hope it is true. Fingers crossed.

Another thing that I have been doing is to find a peer support group within my community. No luck there. It would be good to know that I am not suffering alone. And that, in my wakeful night moments that I have a few people that I can talk to who understands how this feels. Maybe trade sleep journals, discuss strategies of what works and what doesn't, encourage each other when we get bad nights, and celebrate when we get a good run of decent ones.

Thank you for reading.