CBTi to Help Resolve Your Sleep Problems

You’re tired yet you can’t fall asleep. Or you can’t stay asleep. Maybe your mind starts racing as soon as you go to bed or you feel restless, as though you need to move around. Maybe you are so tired you have difficulty focusing at work or you’re irritated with everyone in the daytime. Your body feels heavy, your mind sluggish, your emotions on edge. Sometimes it feels like you’re living in a big bowl of thick maple syrup.

“What is wrong with me?” you ask. “I just need four nights of good, uninterrupted sleep!” you think (or scream at the wall). Yet you find yourself lying in bed, angry that you can’t go to sleep.

You’re not alone. Nearly 30% of adults in Canada struggle with a sleep disorder, or insomnia. Disrupted sleep can have both immediate and long-term effects on your mental and physical health. Yet you would prefer to not take sleeping pills. You are aware they have a range of side effects and become less and less effective overtime.

We can help you!

We provide treatment with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy specifically for insomnia. Known as CBTi, it is recommended as the first line of therapy by the American Academy of Steep Medicine and the European Sleep Research Society. CBTi is drug free, focussing on changing beliefs, behaviours, and habits that, albeit unwittingly, create sleep problems.

Doctor Gregg Jacobs, a leading insomnia specialist in the USA, found that people with long-term insomnia who were treated with CBTi were able to fall asleep in 20 minutes or less and with improved sleep quality. Their moods and daytime functioning improved. And the changes were long-term.

CBTI enables you to change your beliefs and attitudes about sleep and reduce negative thoughts and feelings like you’ve lost control of sleep. Although there are various types of insomnia and different stressors underlying it, CBTi enables you to develop productive sleep habits and approaches that enable you to sleep well.

Your CBTi therapist will combine four core elements as part of your 4 – 6-week program.

• Education about the psychology of sleep and the role of sleep
• inhibitors such as nicotine, alcohol, coffee, light, exercise, etc. in causing sleep problems or promoting healthy sleep.
• Relaxation techniques that help you relax your muscles and use sleep imagery to help you fall asleep.
• Behavioural therapy that helps you to develop effective sleep behaviours.
• Cognitive therapy that helps you eliminate negative thoughts about sleep and reduce worry about sleep.

Research shows that nearly 80% of people working with CBTi report significant sleep improvement, with most maintaining sleep benefits long term. CBTi is an effective, well-established therapy that outperforms drugs in improving sleep.

See our blog How to Beat Your Insomnia article for more information.

Call or email us now to set up for CBTi or ask your doctor to refer you to us.

Learn more about our insomnia and sleep therapy program.

Photo credit: Unsplash – Tatiana Rodriguez