Treatment for Insomnia and Sleep Difficulties
Is Insomnia or Lack of Sleep Disrupting Your Life?
- Do you find yourself falling asleep on the couch to only feel wide awake when you go to bed?
- Are you tossing and turning all night and finding it takes forever to fall asleep?
- Do you find it hard to turn your mind off at night, having non-stop worries and thoughts?
- Are you constantly waking up tired, wondering if you will ever get enough sleep?
- Do you often feel drowsy or fall asleep during the day?
- Are you falling asleep to only keep waking up at night, unable to fall back asleep?
- Do you wish you didn't need medication to help you with your sleep?
CBT for Insomnia is a sleep cognitive behavioural treatment that helps people to learn how to improve sleep quality and duration. It does this by teaching people how to:
- Combat negative sleep thoughts (which increase stress and tension at bedtime)
- Reduce night-time worry, and
- How to engage in sleep-enhancing behaviours
These sleep skills are grounded in research and are taught over the course of 6-8 weeks. The skills taught are lifetime skills! Which means if sleep difficulties ever occur in the future (e.g., after a difficult life transition, during jet lag, seasonal time changes, etc), you can use these skills again to ensure sleep issues don't resurface or become a long-term problem.
Treatment for Insomnia and Sleep Difficulties
To treat insomnia and sleep difficulties, our therapists are trained in CBT-I, which stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.
CBT-I is effective for primary and secondary/comorbid insomnia and milder forms of chronic sleep difficulties. It is a short-term treatment with long-term results and focuses on what clients can do in the “now” to alleviate their sleep difficulties.
Instead of sleeping medication, CBT-I helps clients overcome insomnia with safe, effective treatment.
The underlying causes of insomnia – thoughts, and behaviors – are learned and can be unlearned.
Our sleep therapists assess each client’s sleep problems and design appropriate treatments that focus on changing negative sleep thoughts and behaviours.
CBT-I TEACHES CLIENTS TO:
- Overcome underlying causes of sleep problems
- Master thoughts and behaviours that generate sleep problems
- Develop habits that promote sound sleep
CBT-I Treatment Process / Service:
- An initial individual assessment
- 5 individual 50-minute sessions (more 1-1 interaction/feedback, flexibility in scheduling sessions) or
- 5 group-based 2-hour classes over six weeks (more cost-effective, offers social support, reinforcement and modeling)
Treatment Includes:
- Sleep physiology education
- Stimulus control
- Sleep deprivation (strategies to rebalance the sleep-wake cycle)
- Relaxation techniques
- Biofeedback
- Sleep hygiene
- Sleep habit modification
What the Research Says:
Over 25 years of research at Harvard Medical School, University of Massachusetts, the Mayo Clinic, and more indicates that CBT-I leads to sustained improvements in primary or secondary/ comorbid insomnia.
CBT-I is physiologically, behaviourally, and quantitatively based. It has no known negative side effects.
Who Will benefit from CBT-I?
- People with long-term problems getting to sleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early and unable to fall asleep again.
- People experiencing a negative impact from insomnia on daytime functioning, physical and mental health.
Why is CBT-I Beneficial:
- Addresses underlying causes of insomnia.
- Eliminates the need for medications that cause serious side-effects, provide limited short-term effectiveness, and the return of symptoms when discontinued.
- Fosters long-term behavioural change.
- Can serve as a segue to CBT treatments for other needs.
- Is covered by most health insurance plans.
What Does CBT-I Not Address?
CBT-I does not directly address but can help alleviate, comorbid conditions such as anxiety, depression, trauma, and chronic pain.
If after treating your insomnia or sleep difficulties, other life concerns become a priority to focus on, this can be discussed with your CBT-I therapist and an internal referral process can occur so you can be connected with another PsychSolutions therapist who specializes in the areas of concerns you have.
