Insomnia therapy helps people adjust their sleep behaviors to get better sleep.

Insomnia is a common sleep disorder that can make it hard to fall asleep or hard to stay asleep. It can also cause you to wake up too early and not be able to get back to sleep. Insomnia therapy begins with education about the sleep problem and appropriate sleep hygiene measures. Our therapists ask most patients to maintain a sleep diary for 1-2 weeks before instituting insomnia therapy. This provides a clearer picture of the degree of sleep disturbance and allows development of a tailored treatment.

Strong evidence supports the use of nonpharmacologic interventions like family therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), for insomnia. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, mental health professionals now consider CBT the most appropriate treatment for patients with primary insomnia. CBT teaches you to to recognize and change beliefs that affect your ability to sleep. The use of this therapy is based on the fact that primary insomnia is associated with physiologic, emotional, and cognitive arousal and conditioning to arousal in bed.

Ultimately, sleep therapy through CBT teaches patients to recognize and change beliefs and behavior that affects sleep.