Learn to Sleep Better with CBT for Insomnia (CBTi)

Do you ever lie awake at night tossing and turning, worrying that you’ll never fall asleep? One night of bad sleep every once in a while isn’t that big a deal. But when it happens all the time, insomnia can have a huge impact on our quality of life. And our thoughts in bed are often one of the biggest things that keep us awake.

Sometimes we’re dwelling on things that happen during the day or worrying about things we need to do tomorrow. But often the thoughts that keep us awake are about sleep itself, like why aren’t I asleep yet? What’s wrong with me? What if I never fall asleep? It’s natural to start worrying when we’re having trouble sleeping, but it’s counterproductive. These thoughts stress us out and keep us alert, which makes it even harder to fall asleep. In this video, we’ll learn how to respond to our thoughts about sleep in ways that help us relax and make it easier to fall asleep.

Now, not all of our sleep problems are the result of our thoughts. But no matter the cause, insomnia improves when we’re able to modify or let go of the thoughts that are helping keep us awake. Most of the thoughts that interfere with our sleep contain some truth, but they’re usually oversimplified or exaggerated rather than an accurate reflection of how sleep actually works.

For example, we often hear we need 8 hours of sleep a night. And when we’re having trouble sleeping, this can lead to thoughts like, “This is terrible. I need my 8 hours. If I don’t get it, I won’t be able to manage tomorrow. I’m not getting enough sleep. This is so bad for my health.

It’s true that getting enough sleep is important, but not everyone needs 8 hours. Many people do find with seven or even 6 and 1/2. Even going a few nights without our ideal amount of sleep every now and then isn’t going to have long-term consequences. Our bodies are very good at recovering from short-term sleep loss. Often sleeping deeper and more efficiently in the nights that follow to make up for it. And lying in bed worrying about how much sleep we’re getting keeps us more alert and makes it harder to sleep.

Sometimes it’s enough to just be mindful of these types of thoughts. Simply noticing and acknowledging them. I’m worrying about my sleep. And then as best we can just letting them go. But if we can’t let them go or the thoughts keep coming back, we can help to adjust them to make them more accurate and reassuring.

It’s okay if I don’t get enough sleep tonight or even for a few nights. my body will make up for it. Letting go of negative thoughts about sleep or reframing them to make them less stressful makes it more likely we’ll be able to sleep.

Or for example, we might start worrying, if I don’t fall asleep soon, I won’t be able to function tomorrow. It’s true that we might find some things more difficult and not operate at our absolute best. But the effect on our cognitive abilities of one or even a few nights of poor sleep is usually smaller than we expect.

And it’s very common to sleep poorly before a big day or important event. It happens to worldclass athletes before a competition, performers before a big show or opening night, speakers before important presentations, astronauts before a mission, and so on. And most people are able to perform at the level they need despite not getting an ideal amount of sleep. So whatever we have to do tomorrow will likely manage just fine even on very little sleep.

So, we modify our thought to something like even if I can’t fall asleep soon, tomorrow will be okay.

Or if we don’t believe that, we can practice acceptance.

I’m not sleeping well tonight and I don’t know how tomorrow will go. But worrying about it isn’t going to help. So, I’ll just make do with whatever sleep I get. Modifying our thoughts like this can seem more manageable during an occasional bad night of sleep and feel much more difficult with chronic insomnia, where our negative thoughts about sleep can feel more convincing and harder to change. But no matter how poor our sleep is, lying in bed worrying or being upset about it is only going to make things worse. And the more we’re able to let these worries and negative thoughts go, the more our sleep will improve.

Or we might be lying in bed thinking, “I’ll be miserable if I don’t get enough sleep.

Lack of sleep can impact our mood. And in the short term, this is usually the way it affects us the most, more so than our ability to function, but there isn’t a simple cause and effect relationship between poor sleep and feeling bad the next day. When there’s an acceptable reason for the sleep loss, it often has less impact on how we feel. If we’re tired from caring for a newborn or being out late with friends, it can feel like an acceptable trade-off. We might be physically tired but still in a decent mood because of why we lost sleep. But if we start the day thinking, I can’t stand being tired, today is going to be horrible. We probably will be miserable. How we think about a bad night’s sleep the next day can influence our mood even more than the number of hours we slept.

So instead of dwelling on a poor night’s sleep, we accept it and move on. I slept terribly last night and I’m so tired today, but there’s nothing I can do about that now and I should be able to manage. And hopefully this means it’ll be easier for me to sleep tonight.

With insomnia, it’s common to think about sleep a lot or even obsess over it, which does make us feel bad during the day and can make it harder to sleep at night. So, it’s important to notice when we start fixating on sleep and either just let these thoughts go or modify them to make them more accurate and reassuring. We might have thoughts like, “What am I going to do? I didn’t sleep at all last night. What if I can’t sleep tonight? I haven’t slept in days.”

While it’s possible to get no sleep at all, people with insomnia often underestimate how much they sleep. We usually get at least some short periods of light, fragmented sleep. It’s not as restorative as deep continuous sleep, but it still helps our brains function and reduces extreme fatigue. It’s also very unlikely to go several nights in a row without any sleep.

So, we can tell ourselves something like, “It feels like I didn’t sleep at all last night, but I probably got at least some light sleep, and that’ll help me get through the day.”

And we can often have thoughts like, “I’ve been lying awake for an hour. I’m never going to fall asleep.” But even when it takes longer than we want, we usually do fall asleep eventually because of what’s called the homeostatic sleep drive. The longer we’re awake, the stronger the body’s natural pressure to sleep becomes. So as the night goes on and sleep pressure builds, it becomes increasingly likely that we will fall asleep.

So the best thing we can do is just accept that we haven’t slept yet and don’t know when we will because sleep will happen on its own time and worrying about it or trying to force it only keeps us awake.

Or we look at the clock and think it’s only 4:00 a.m. and I’m wide awake. I need to be up in a few hours and I’ll never get back to sleep.

We’re often very alert when we first wake up, especially from a dream. But if we haven’t gotten enough sleep for the night, drowsiness usually follows not long after. And if we do stay awake, it generally means we’ve gotten enough sleep that we’re no longer extremely tired, even if it’s less sleep than ideal.

I’d like to get some more sleep, but even if I don’t, I’ll be able to function today. And this calmer perspective makes it more likely that we do fall back asleep.

But it’s not just our thoughts about sleep that can keep us awake. We can get stuck in our heads replaying what happened during the day or worrying about tomorrow. So it’s important we clear our minds before going to bed.

So early in the evening, we take some time to go over any thoughts that are weighing on our minds, writing them down, and then asking ourselves, is there anything I can do about this now?

And if there is, we do it so we don’t have to think about it anymore, which might just mean making a plan for tomorrow. And if there’s nothing more we can do, we acknowledge this. And then we set these thoughts aside and spend some time relaxing.

Then once we’re in bed, if these thoughts keep coming up, we remind ourselves we’ve already done what we can today. There’s nothing more to do about it tonight, and we can deal with anything that still needs our attention tomorrow.

So, how we respond to our thoughts has a big impact on how we sleep. By noticing and acknowledging negative thoughts about sleep, letting them go or looking at things from a calmer, more accurate perspective, we reduce the stress that keeps us awake and make it much more likely that we’re able to sleep.