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.