CBT-i

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is a well evidenced psychological treatment for people who have difficulty sleeping. CBT-I is based on the principle that our thoughts feelings and behaviours are all interconnected.      

Sleep suits this way of thinking about things because there is a very direct relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours when it comes to difficulty sleeping. Difficulty sleeping is caused by a combination of biological, psychological, and environmental factors that is unique to each person.

Humans are masters of adaption so when something goes wrong (like not sleeping for a night or two) we start to work very hard at coming up with strategies to fix the problem and often these strategies end up contributing to the sleep problem and making the situation worse and creating a chronic problem, long after the initial causes of not sleeping have passed.

CBT-I targets the behaviours, thoughts and feelings that the sleep difficulty, enabling the person to get back to sleeping well.