What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)?
Insomnia can take over your life--many daytime hours spent fatigued and foggy-headed and nighttime hours tossing and turning in frustration if not avoiding your bed completely. Or maybe sleep only comes with a medication or substance that comes with unpleasant side effects or long term risks. Cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is an effective strategy to improve sleep and reduce or eliminate medications. It uses science-based strategies and your body's own sleep drives to get you sleeping and feeling better.
For many individuals CBT-I requires only 3-6 appointments over 2-4 months to be effective. This process usually involves shifting sleep scheduling (often temporarily), changes to evening and nighttime routines, increasing knowledge about the biological and psychological processes of sleep, learning relaxation strategies, and sometimes adjusting circadian timing.
What about nightmares or anxiety that gets worse when I try to sleep?
Nightmares and sleep anxiety can plague your nights, but they do not have to. Using effective cognitive-behavioral strategies of desensitization, relaxation, and conditioning, anxiety, panic, and nightmares at night can be greatly reduced or even eliminated.
How can behavioral strategies help me use my CPAP or BiPAP machine more?
Sleep apnea is usually well treated by appropriate continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) or bi-directional positive airway pressure (BiPAP) machines. However, these devices can sometimes be uncomfortable to use or even put on. If you experience significant anxiety from and struggle to be adherent to your recommended use of CPAP/BiPAP, you may benefit from desensitization and other behavioral strategies to increase your use and help your overall health and wellbeing.