It is estimated that 10% of American adults have insomnia symptoms that interfere with their daytime functioning. Insomnia is a sleep disorder which impacts a person’s ability to fall asleep and or stay asleep. If it takes you more than 30 minutes to fall asleep, you are awake for more than 30 minutes in the middle of the night, and/or are waking up at least 30 minutes before your desired wake time, you may have insomnia. While we all have occasional nights of insomnia, if the condition is more frequent and chronic, treatment may be indicated.
Research most strongly supports Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) for treating insomnia. It is a purely behavioral treatment and consists of two components: sleep restriction and stimulus control. Sleep restriction refers to the process of temporarily shrinking someone’s sleep window to align with how much their body is able to sleep at the beginning of treatment. This ensures that people will be awake for longer periods and build their sleep drive (their ability to sleep) more strongly. Napping and spending too much time in bed are no nos! Once people’s ability to sleep increases, they gradually expand their sleep window with the support and guidance of their therapist.
Stimulus control uses the principle of classical conditioning to help improve people’s sleep. When people have developed insomnia, their beds have become associated with wakefulness, frustration, anxiety or other activities (i.e. reading, watching TV, studying, using their phones). By restricting these activities in bed, the bed can become reassociated or paired with sleep. When sleep restriction and stimulus control are done simultaneously, people are able to improve their sleep efficiency (or the percentage of time in bed that someone is asleep). Over time, people’s beds become associated with sleep and their sleep related worries decrease. At Modern Anxiety Solutions, we are excited to offer CBT-I as a treatment option for people suffering from insomnia. It often can be completed in as little as 8 sessions and people may start to see results very early on!
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