The cure for insomnia rests in three main techniques that help to relieve mental, emotional and physical causes of chronic sleeplessness.
The cure for insomnia part 1: cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT
This method is used to change your thoughts and feelings about sleep. It is especially important for people with both chronic insomnia and sleep anxiety, but everyone can benefit from it. Learning how to use CBT is a valuable skill that will serve you well in many situations, problems and challenges of life.
The best sleep centers and sleep doctors will use CBT as an integral part of their treatment. If you end up seeking medical treatment for primary insomnia, make sure the program includes at least some type of cognitive behavioral therapy.
Learn more about CBT in this article.
The cure for insomnia part 2: relaxation and letting-go techniques
These can be mainly physical techniques, or primarily mental techniques, or both.
For example, progressive muscular relaxation is primarily a physical thing - you start at your toes and work your way up to your head, releasing muscular tension from each part of your body as you go. Breathing exercises also begin with the physical effort of inhaling.
Letting-go techniques are both physical and mental. They are what you might call a full mind-body technique.
First you allow feelings and emotions to come up... then you notice how they "show up" in your body (usually as tension, tightness or heaviness in your chest, neck and abdomen) and then you let these feelings go.
This technique alone can be very powerful. But it does take practice.
Visualization techniques are primarily mental or mind-centered. Using your mind's eye and your ability to dream and fantasize, you "transport" yourself to a sleep-friendly place.
This technique can be a good way to deal with conditioned insomnia, when you have built up negative associations with going to bed.
The cure for insomnia part 3: behavioral and environmental techniques
This is where we tackle the behavioral aspects of insomnia, such as sleep hygiene, diet, exercise, sleep schedule, pre-sleep routine, and so on. This is also where we tackle such bedroom causes of insomnia, such as noise, temperature, air quality, mattress quality and other discomforts that interfere with a good night's sleep.
The insomnia self-help tutorial contains all of these techniques and more. It is designed to take you from chronic insomniac to blissful sleeper, but it is up to you to practice the techniques and find the right combination that fits your own unique personality. While chronic insomnia is universal, no two insomniacs are exactly alike.
This is why it's so important to keep a sleep diary and write down everything that you experience during your sleepless nights. Don't skip over this part because it's the key to the door that unlocks the cure for insomnia - the one that's customized just for you.
To begin the self-help tutorial and your own cure for insomnia, click here.
To return to the Behavioral Causes of Insomnia home page, click here.