Does this sound familiar?
- You dread bedtime because you know what’s coming.
- You’re wide awake at 3 a.m. doing arithmetic on how many hours are left.
- You’ve tried melatonin, magnesium, sleep apps, and a new mattress.
- You sleep fine on vacation and badly at home, and that makes no sense to you.
- Pills help, and you’d rather not need them.
How I work with this
Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is the first-line treatment recommended by sleep medicine, and it works for most people in six to eight sessions. It isn’t “sleep hygiene.” It’s a structured program that retrains your body clock and your relationship with your bed: a consistent schedule, a short period of deliberately restricted time in bed, getting up when you can’t sleep, and changing the thoughts that keep you alert. It’s demanding for two or three weeks and then it holds.
I also treat the insomnia that rides alongside anxiety, grief, perimenopause, and chronic pain, which is most insomnia. We work on both.
What a first session is like
We go through your sleep history in detail and you start a simple sleep diary. By the second session you’ll have a plan with specific times.
This may not be the right fit if
You snore loudly, stop breathing in your sleep, or fall asleep during the day without meaning to. Those need a sleep study first. I’ll tell you if I think that’s the case.