Insomnia Psychotherapy (CBT-I)

Quality sleep is a foundational to overall health and well-being, impacting every aspect of physical, mental, and emotional functioning. In an ever more demanding modern environment marked by constant connectivity and multiple competing demands for your time, sleep often suffers. It becomes nearly impossible to be present in daily life - let alone achieve your life goals - with chronic insomnia. 

I utilize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), which is an evidenced based, structured, but still flexible protocol specifically designed to help individuals improve sleep quality and also quantity. The first part of the process will be an assessment for whether you have insomnia or another sleep related disorder, and if indeed insomnia, we would proceed with a time-limited 5-10 session protocol that covers psychoeducation about insomnia and sleep, developing tracking tools to self-monitor sleep/wake patterns, and then implementing both cognitive behavioral interventions to improve sleep efficiency and sleep quantity. In addition to cognitive and behavioral tools from the CBT-I framework, I integrate my background in mindfulness and Somatic Experiencing in order to give you a more robust set of tools for awareness of bodily states (e.g. tired vs. sleepy) as well as relaxation and stress reduction approaches which promote falling or returning to sleep after middle of the night wake-ups.

Relative to traditional psychotherapy, CBT-I is more: 

1. Time-limited - there is a limit to the number of sessions, which are typically 5-10 sessions.

2. Behaviorally focused - much of the session time is spent on daily activities, habits, and actions and there is less focus on emotional processing, although there is still a degree of it.

3. Directive - I will make specific suggestions and recommendations, but the work is always a collaboration between client and therapist.

4. Technology assisted - We will use computer and/or phone based tools to track and measure sleep metrics.

Occasionally, clients who have a need might transition into longer-term clients and continue to work with me on other areas in psychotherapy.