Sleeping is our body’s best method of restoring itself, which is as integral as breathing. The thing about sleep is that its therapeutic process is highly dependent on the quality of sleep you get.
Individuals suffering from sleep disorders or those with difficulty going to sleep often look into different methods to improve their sleep quality.
This article looks at how CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy compares with other established methods to make you sleep better. If you’re interested in what CBT can do in people’s sleep and time in bed, read on!
The Root of Sleeping Problems – Insomnia
Insomnia, or the inability of a person to fall asleep, is the most common sleeping disorder experienced by adults. Manifesting in different degrees, Chronic Insomnia may last for a few days, and with some people – stay for months.
Different triggers usually cause sleeping disorders – for example, negative thoughts and other mental health problems, lack of a bedtime routine, and even your diet and lifestyle.
One of the other causes of Insomnia is a general lack of good sleeping habits, poor allocation of daytime/nighttime schedules, or having too many activities before bedtime. Did you know that exercise can increase your body’s core temperature, negatively affecting your sleep drive!
How Is Chronic Insomnia Usually Managed?
Traditionally, doctors would prescribe therapeutic drugs for patients showing insomnia symptoms. An approach involving sleep medication is only usually preferred as a short-term treatment plan. However, research on the efficacy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia treatment is gaining traction.
Physicians are more conservative in prescribing sleeping pills to avoid the risk of patient abuse and dependency. That’s why evidence-based interventions that don’t require chemical assistance to help you get in more naps and, ultimately, fix your sleep schedule are the dream.
Generally speaking, while sleep medication is very useful in addressing the inability to sleep, it does not resolve the root cause of a patient’s Insomnia.
What Is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (Cbt-I)?
Cognitive-behavioural therapy for Insomnia is an established method of addressing the underlying causes of your inability to sleep.
People living with Insomnia typically have developed habits and patterns during their waking hours that inevitably affect their ability to fall asleep.
CBT-I aims to reconfigure your behaviour during waking hours to experience better sleep at night.
The general idea is that good sleep habits translate into good sleep quality – when changes in practices occur, sleeping becomes much more manageable.
Cbt-I as the First Line of Defence
Practitioners in the medical field tend to be conservative in their approach to treating and managing sleep problems.
While a route involves the intake of sleep medicine or pills and aides, insomniacs cannot correct their sleep patterns without depending on their medication.
CBT-I is designed for a chronic insomniac to modify daytime habits as a first-line treatment for sleep deprivation.
Sleep specialists would usually assess the sleep patterns, whether through a series of conversations, a sleep diary, or in some cases, having the patient spend nights inside a sleep laboratory.
The conversations between sleep specialists and patients involve assessing daytime activities, sleep onset, and the overall feeling they get from poor sleep quality.
How does Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia work?
After an assessment from your sleep specialist, a series of CBT-I techniques such as the following are recommended:
Stimulus Control Therapy
Also called stimulus control instructions, the CBT-I method looks into the sleeping habits and pinpoints the practices that prohibit a patient from having good, healthy sleep.
It adjusts your behaviour to react to the bedroom as a stimulus for sleep. You are to avoid the bedroom for times of the day when you do not intend to sleep.
The deprivation of a bedroom forces the brain to associate the presence of a bed as a stimulus exclusive to sleeping.
Sleep Restriction Therapy
The idea of sleep restriction is to restrict the amount of time you spend in bed to be close to your total sleep time.
Many people living with chronic Insomnia tend to spend a lot of waking hours in bed before falling asleep. With sleep restriction, an insomniac is only permitted to be in bed when they are fully aware that they can fall asleep anytime.
Doing so will align your headspace into thinking less about how to fall asleep and allows you to do so when you are in bed.
Relaxation Training
A simple form of cognitive therapy is something that almost everybody can do. Relaxation training is as straightforward as it sounds; you train your body to calm down and generally feel relaxed.
Typical relaxation techniques involve muscle relaxation, alleviating muscle tension, breathing exercises, meditation, and quiet times.
Although it sounds simplistic, relaxation training has shown clinically significant results as a method of insomnia treatment.
Sleep Hygiene
Sleep hygiene factors in essential lifestyle habits that inhibit a person from getting better sleep quality. Sleep hygiene may involve the reduction of caffeine intake during the daytime, especially when close to your sleeping hours.
Likewise, healthy exercise is recommended for individuals during the daytime to improve sleep hygiene. Though a moderate amount of alcohol can help individuals fall asleep, it is not suitable for a night of quality sleep. Alcohol has side effects that disrupt your normal circadian rhythm instead of improving your sleep quality.
Not only is sleep hygiene an effective cognitive-behavioural therapy, but it also promotes good personal health care.
Biofeedback
As the name describes, factoring in your physiological markers is a good way for you to analyse how you sleep and adjust your behaviours accordingly.
The most common metric for biofeedback is measuring your heart rate and muscle tension. During your sleep specialist visit, they may prescribe devices for you to take home and use as you go to sleep.
Other markers, such as brain waves, blood pressure, and body temperature, can be measured in a sleep lab environment.
For a patient with Insomnia, knowledge of this biofeedback allows you to change activities to acquire the optimal biological markers for sleep.
Improving Your Sleeping Environment
It may sound simple, but having an environment designed with sleeping in mind has been seen as an effective treatment method for chronic Insomnia.
Similar to stimulus training, the associations of a relaxed, dark, quiet environment with sleep can help the brain switch to a more relaxed mood akin to sleeping.
Final thoughts on CBT-I
Cognitive-behavioural therapy for Insomnia is an effective first-line action for those suffering from sleep disorders. It is a clinically proven way of recalibrating your daytime habits to address sleep problems.
Likewise, CBT-I has minimal risk as a treatment method and has no adverse side effects for the sleep-deprived patient.
If you are suffering from Insomnia or poor sleep quality, CBT-I is a highly recommended first step in resolving the causes of your sleeplessness.