Stop breathing as I fall asleep when using cpap

I'm unable to fall asleep while using cpap because at the moment of sleep onset my breathing gets very slow and very shallow, or stops entirely. Then I wake up to breathe. It's not due to obstructive apnea as the machine reports a clear airway at the time of occurrence (in sleepyhead). After several hours of this I just give up and take the mask off and turn the machine off.

I'm at a loss as to how to fix this. Can I somehow train myself to keep breathing as I fall asleep? Should I concentrate extra hard on breathing? Maybe I could listen to a recording reminding me to breath or something. I'm so frustrated because I was really hopeful that getting the cpap was going to help my sleep, but now it's worse than ever.

Please don't tell me to use google, or the search function, obviously I already tried that, I've seen on the internet that lots of people have this kind of issue but I haven't found a solution that works for me.

I can see why you are frustrated. Can you get to sleep when you don't use a CPAP? What are the set pressures of your machine? Are you using a ramp up of the pressures or? I assume you were diagnosed with apnea after doing a sleep test? If so, what was your diagnosed AHI? What % of the AHI was central apnea? Is your CPAP reducing your AHI? Also, what specific manufacturer and model of a machine are you using? Sorry for all the questions, but I am just trying to understand the situation a little better before making any suggestions.

My thinking is that if these central events that don't let you get to sleep occur when you are not using the machine, then it is probably not an issue with the machine. If it only happens when you are using the machine, then there may be some options to fix it. It will depend on what machine you have and how it is set up.