Short-term sleep problems are common. Most of us can relate to having nights where sleep just won't come. Here's some basic advice to cut down on those sleepless nights drastically.

1. Get out of bed at the same time each morning.

Your body needs sleep like it needs food and water. The longer you go without food and water, the more your body will crave it. Sleep works precisely the same way—the longer you are awake, the stronger your drive for sleep will get.


 by waking up at the same time each morning. Allowing yourself to be awake for long enough is the most crucial step to improving sleep.

2. Don't go to bed until you are sleepy, and get out if you can't sleep. Use the bed and bedroom for sleeping only.

When you toss and turn in bed and can't fall asleep, you get stressed and frustrated. Experience this enough, and there is a chance you start to associate the bed and bedroom with these emotions.

You can avoid this by making sure you are sleepy when you get to bed. If you have been trying to sleep for a while and find yourself getting frustrated, get out of bed and do something else before trying again.

Every minute you are awake, you build your sleep drive. If you nap, your drive becomes weaker, and it will be harder for you to fall asleep in the evening. Short naps under 20 minutes can be OK for some. Experiment with this and see what works for you.

Caffeine is excellent for waking you up in the morning, but if you drink coffee in the afternoon, your ability to fall asleep will be significantly reduced. This is caused by the way caffeine blocks a sleep-promoting hormone in your brain called Adenosine. People's sensitivity to caffeine varies, and some get rid of the caffeine faster than others.

Alcohol might help you fall asleep faster, but research has shown that alcohol affects your sleep quality by suppressing REM sleep. Alcohol also has the negative effect that it will make you sleep lighter and frequently wake you up.

When people really struggle with sleep and have done so for a while, 

. If you have already employed many of the steps described here with little success, the American Academy for Sleep Medicine, The American College of Physicians, and the European Sleep Research Society recommend cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). 

Check out our top 5 tips for getting the most out of your sleep and reducing short-term sleep problems.

5 Must-Know Sleep Wellness and Sleep Hygiene Tips | Dawn Health

5 Must-Know Tips for Better Sleep Hygiene and Wellness


For years, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been the gold standard for treating insomnia. CBT techniques for insomnia have been proven to work in numerous clinical trials and are more effective than medication.
The American Academy for Sleep Medicine, the American College of Physicians, and the European Sleep Research Society all recommend CBT for insomnia (CBT-I) as first-line treatment.

CBT is a form of therapy that was initially developed as a treatment for depression. The Cognitive in CBT refers to mental activity, such as thoughts, beliefs, memories, images or values. The behavioral part includes all the things we do on a daily basis. This can be things you do with others or things you do alone.
CBT saw it's beginning when the American psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck (and others) noticed a pattern of thinking that was common for many clients with depression. Not very impressed with the result of traditional therapies, they wanted to address these issues with a more straightforward and direct approach. And so Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was born.


A core principle in CBT is that our emotional reactions and behaviors are influenced by how we think about ourselves, others, and the world around us. Humans have a great capacity for thinking, but that requires time and energy. Most of the time, we take mental shortcuts and react to events that happen without giving them much thought. These shortcuts, or cognitive biases, often lead us to interpret and process information inaccurately.
If you ask two people to give a presentation on something they are both knowledgeable about, you might get two different reactions. One is hesitant and suggests someone else. The other immediately and enthusiastically agrees. It's the exact same situation. So why do they react so differently?


CBT explains that this difference in emotional reactions and behaviors comes from different ways of thinking about the situation. One thinks he might start to shake and others will notice. The other one thinks that this is a good opportunity to share his knowledge.

Changing what you do is often the most powerful way of changing how you think and feel about something. The behavioral part in CBT is about testing new behaviors and learning what happens when you gain new experiences.
If you always avoid giving presentations, you will never experience a successful one. Your negative thoughts about yourself in that situation will never change. A common unhelpful belief that people have when speaking to a crowd is that they will get anxious, start to shake, and the audience will see that as a sign of weakness.
To target the cognition that shaking is a sign of weakness, CBT uses something called a behavioral experiment. In these kinds of experiments, the goal is to get real experiences about what happens if you shake and if it's true that other people will react negatively to this. A typical behavioral experiment might be to videotape yourself talking in front of a crowd. When viewing the video afterward, try to notice the level of shaking and what reaction the group had to this. Most likely, you will see that your shaking was barely noticeable, and those who were listening didn't react at all.

The CBT triangle (putting it all together)

Therapy involves changing how you feel about something. Whether it is to achieve a goal or to stop being anxious or sad — it's all about changing emotions. Now, this is hard to do directly. We have little control over our emotions; they will pop up whether you like it or not. CBT aims to change how you feel about something through our thoughts (cognitions) and behaviors.

CBT has been used by thousands of therapists and millions of patients from all over the world since the 1960s. Since then, different CBT approaches have been developed for a wide range of problems, and research has repeatedly shown its effectiveness. It’s common to talk about CBT as a specific kind of therapy, but in reality there are many models of cognitive behavioral therapies.
One of these models is CBT for insomnia which this guide is about.

CBT helps with unhelpful thinking and behavior, but how it is used to treat insomnia isn’t obvious. To illustrate how insomnia is caused by cognitions and how CBT can help you sleep, let’s use two fictional people who represent two different ways of experiencing sleep. Meet George who has insomnia and Susan who doesn’t.

George has had insomnia for a long time. Over the years he’s had many sleepless nights, spent tossing and turning and waiting for sleep. George's insomnia has been getting worse lately and he frequently wakes up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. For the last couple of months, he hasn’t been getting more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep each night.

Susan has always been a good sleeper. She always falls asleep within fifteen minutes of going to bed and wakes up feeling refreshed. Susan doesn’t really think much about sleep, it’s just something that happens when she goes to bed.

Why does George have insomnia and not Susan?

What may not be obvious but separates George from Susan, is that they have very different beliefs about sleep. They experience precisely the same situation each night; they both go to bed and try to sleep. Their thoughts and feelings in this situation, are very different.
George worries that it's going to be another night of sleeplessness and that he will be dead tired at work the following day. He thinks about how a lack of sleep might damage his body and wonders if he will ever sleep well again. The minute his head hits the pillow, he's wide awake. His mind races and he starts feeling anxious and upset. He's exhausted but can't seem to fall asleep. After spending quite a bit of time unsuccessfully trying to sleep, he pulls out his phone and listens to a podcast to distract himself. He finally falls asleep a few hours before he has to get up for work.
Susan goes to bed and doesn't think much about it at all. She is fast asleep fifteen minutes after she turns off the lights.

George’s sleep problems started when the company he was working for experienced financial trouble and had to downsize. He worried about losing his job and not being able to afford rent. George found that he became preoccupied with thoughts of worry most of the day and even more as nighttime approached and it was time to sleep. He tried, as most do when facing problems in life, to think his way out of it. After a while, George noticed that his sleep was getting worse. It frequently took a long time to fall asleep, and he often woke up multiple times every night.
Fortunately, George didn’t lose his job. The company is now doing fine, and he doesn’t worry about it anymore, but he’s still struggling with sleep.
George’s story is typical when it comes to insomnia. It's common that some initial stressful life event sets it off, but the problems persist even when the stressor has resolved. It is notable that the event that causes insomnia in the first place varies, but when insomnia has been established, people begin to behave and think the same way.

CBT does not concern itself much with what initially caused George's insomnia. Instead, it focuses on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that maintain it. In George's case, we can see a pattern of him worrying a lot about sleep and the consequences of not getting enough. After a while, he starts to associate the bed with feelings of frustration and anxiety.
When George's thoughts constantly revolve around sleep and the consequences of him not getting enough, his mind will interpret this as a threat. The brain's threat detection system doesn't make the distinction between thinking about a threat or actually experiencing one. It does what it’s supposed to do and tells the body to get prepared for the threat.
When the brain signals the body to get ready, the body reacts immediately. It goes into a state of arousal where the main goal is to be prepared to handle anything. Arousal is, in many ways, a state that is the opposite of sleeping. Your heart beats a little faster, your breathing starts to increase in frequency. Pupils dilate, and you are more vigilant. Because the brain believes you are in danger, you go into a mild form of fight-or-flight mode where your senses are heightened, and muscles are ready to spring into action.
The most convincing and compelling way of learning that a previously held belief is false is experiencing the opposite. George has the view that he has to put in a lot of effort to get to sleep. A goal of CBT for insomnia is going to sleep without thinking or worrying too much about it. We want George to be more like Susan and experience falling asleep without effort, and as a result, learn that he can fall asleep easily without thinking too much about it. To help people get this valuable experience, CBT for insomnia uses something called sleep restriction.

When people who struggle with sleep hear about sleep restriction the first time, they immediately think it's counterintuitive. Why should you restrict your sleep when you want more of it?
To answer this question, we need to learn about sleep drive. Sleep drive is the force that makes you sleepy when you have been awake for a long time. To measure how strong your sleep drive is, the body uses a hormone called adenosine. The moment you wake up in the morning, the body starts producing adenosine. When the brain detects high enough levels, it starts shutting off wake-promoting areas in the brain, and you get sleepy. The longer you stay awake, the more adenosine the body produces, and your sleep drive increases.

The name sleep restriction is a bit misleading, and it could just as well have been called time-in-bed restriction or sleep consolidation. Sleep restriction is, in essence, spending less time in bed to increase the sleep drive. When starting with sleep restriction, you determine how much sleep you have been getting in total for the last week. If you have been getting an average of about 7 hours of sleep each night, you get an initial 7 hour window of time to sleep. This means that if you have to get up at 8 am each morning, you shouldn't try to sleep before 1 am. The 7 hours between 1 am and 8 am is called your sleep window. Whether you sleep or not in your window is not important, at least in the beginning. What is important is that you do not sleep outside of your sleep window.

It's important to note that sleep restriction isn't meant as something you should do for the rest of your life. It also gets a little easier as you progress. Your sleep window will increase when you stop spending so much time trying to sleep.
As previously mentioned, behavioral changes that lead to new experiences are amongst the most powerful methods for bringing about change in cognitions. By restricting your time in bed and building your sleep drive, you will strengthen the forces that make you sleep, so they are stronger than the forces that keep you awake. Sleep restriction aims to get you to experience what it's like to sleep without worrying about it. You gain confidence in your body's ability to go to sleep on its own without you having to think about it all.

Many people who suffer from insomnia report that they have a much easier time falling asleep on their couch, for example, than in their bed. This can be explained with something called classical conditioning, which we are all receptive to.
Conditioning is a form of learning by associating one thing to another. An example of being conditioned is when you hear a particular song and the song makes you happy because you associate the song with a good time.
When we have regular problems falling asleep and or staying asleep, we begin to associate the bed and trying to sleep with negative emotions. We get frustrated, angry, sad and anxious about not sleeping. We toss and turn, and despite being tired, we can't get to sleep. The bed and bedroom can become a stimulus that we associate with negative feelings.
CBT for insomnia uses stimulus control to break the negative association between trying to sleep and negative feelings. A common way to employ stimulus control is by having a set of guidelines or rules for sleep.

Some examples of rules for stimulus control:

The bed should only be used for sleeping (and sex).

Don't stay in bed outside of your sleep window.

If you can't sleep, get out of bed for a while and try again later.

"Avoid caffeine, take a shower, have a bedtime routine, get to bed at the same time each night."

 Sounds familiar? Chances are high that you have heard advice like this before if you've been having trouble sleeping.

A common misconception about CBT for insomnia is that it's advice about sleep that you have heard before. Sleep hygiene recommendations like the above ones aren't necessarily harmful on their own and can be beneficial in some situations. There is, however, little evidence that sleep hygiene alone helps people with insomnia.

A problem with sleep hygiene advice is that it gives you the impression that sleep is something you can control if you try harder. If this were the case, insomnia probably wouldn’t exist.

CBT for insomnia involves making behavioral changes too, but with a very different intent. Here the interventions are designed to help you experience sleep without any effort.

Additional tools used in CBT for insomnia

Sleep restriction coupled with guidelines for stimulus control is by far the most important aspect of CBT for insomnia. There are also other techniques that may play a part.

We have a tendency to take shortcuts in our thinking. Taking shortcuts and thinking fast is mostly a good thing. If we had to think things through and make an effort to be conscious of every thought, in every situation, we wouldn't have much time for anything else.

However, there are times when thinking fast, and jumping to conclusions can become unhelpful. Thoughts are influenced by how we feel and the things we have experienced in the past. We are susceptible to something called cognitive biases – which is just another word for the different shortcuts we tend to take. There are a lot of different cognitive biases, but they all make our thoughts stray further from reality and distort how we see the world. A classic example is confirmation bias – the tendency to filter information and only notice what confirms what we already believe to be true.

To help us slow down and put ourselves in a position to actually do something about these biases and skewed thinking, we can use something called cognitive restructuring. This technique involves identifying thoughts in a situation, what emotions follow these thoughts, and how strong these emotions are. By writing them down as sentences, we force our minds to slow down enough to catch our biased way of thinking.

We have already learned that worrying about sleep is a factor that sustains insomnia. But for many with insomnia, worry isn't just limited to sleep, and a general approach for handling worry might be beneficial.

Like sleep, worry can't really be controlled. You can't stop thoughts from popping up in your head. But you can change how you react to them.

Changing how you respond to thoughts can be a strange concept, but you already react to some thoughts differently than others. You have thousands of thoughts every day. Some you don't pay much attention to, and some you dwell on. We all tend to think some thoughts are more important than others and require attention. But they are all essentially the same thing – just thoughts.

Usually, we don't notice ourselves responding to worry, and most of the time, this just happens automatically. To pause and start making active choices when it comes to individual thoughts, we need to train our ability to take a birds-eye perspective on our thoughts. Typically mindfulness is used for this, but also specific attention training exercises where you, for example, train on switching your attention with sounds.

The idea is that you need to become aware of worry to do something about it. There are several ways you can respond to worry - the most straightforward way to start is by postponing worry. This works by noticing thoughts of worry during the day and writing them down. Instead of engaging with these thoughts right away, you practice delaying the response to a planned "worry time."

In your worry time, you go through your list of worries during the day and decide how you want to respond. If the worry is something you can do something about, you use the time to make a plan. If it's the kind of worry that you can't do something about (most of them are). Well, then you don't do anything about it. You just let them be there without engaging with them.

What is CBT-I? Learn all about cognitive behavioral therapy, how it treats insomnia, CBT triangle, and more with Dawn’s guide to CBT for insomnia.

What is CBT-I? How does it work? Learn all about cognitive behavioral therapy, how it treats insomnia, the CBT triangle, and more with Dawn’s guide to CBT for insomnia.

CBT for Insomnia Manual: A Complete Guide to CBT-I | Dawn Health

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)

Researchers use a method called polysomnography to measure the quality, duration, and patterns of people's sleep. The word polysomnography derives from three roots: the Greek word "poly," which means many, the Latin word "Somnus," which means sleep. And the Greek word "graph," which means to write.

When sleep researchers do sleep studies using polysomnography, they measure the brain activity, eye movement, heart rate, oxygen levels, and muscle activity of sleepers. This complex data collection enables sleep researchers to determine precisely when someone falls asleep and wakes up and tracks their cyclical journey through the different sleep stages.

From time to time, sleep researchers encounter a conflict between polysomnography data and a patient's self-reported sleep. The patient swears he's been awake most of the night, but data from the polysomnogram shows that he's been asleep the whole time. Or the patient complains about not falling asleep, but the data tells a different story. While this may sound contradictory, the patient is not lying, and the polysomnography machine is not malfunctioning. This discrepancy between subjective perception and objective measurement of sleep is a known phenomenon called paradoxical insomnia (or sleep state misperception).

Patients with paradoxical insomnia often underestimate their actual sleep time and genuinely believe they have slept very little or not at all. However, these patients remain fully functional and do not experience a reduction in functional performance the day after having reported poor or limited sleep. So, the paradox is actually visible in their day-to-day functioning. They do not display the cognitive impairment that would go hand-in-hand with the levels of sleep deprivation they report.

It's theorized that paradoxical insomnia has a strong correlation with a type of anxiety that is rooted in a fear of not sleeping enough. When you constantly worry about sleep and the consequences of sleep deprivation, the brain interprets this worry as something dangerous and, in response, activates your arousal system. When you finally nod off, your sleep is light because your mind is still active, and your alertness levels are high. You remain in a state of hypervigilance, despite being asleep. The light sleep, induced by hypervigilance, is then misinterpreted as wakefulness.

Paradoxical insomnia can be treated effectively with 

cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I

). CBT-I is recommended as the first-line treatment for insomnia by the American Academy for Sleep Medicine and the European Sleep Research Society. CBT-I works because it gradually changes the way you think and feel about sleep. It helps you understand the paradox between perception and observation and improves your ability to discriminate between appearance and reality. This self-awareness gradually reduces anxiety about sleeplessness and resolves the paradox at a cognitive and emotional level. 

Get started treating your paradoxical insomnia with 

Do you struggle with paradoxical insomnia or want to know more about it? Discover the causes and treatment for paradoxical insomnia and its link to anxiety.

Paradoxical Insomnia | Paradoxical Insomnia Treatment | Dawn Health

Paradoxical insomnia at a glance: Causes, Treatment, and Anxiety

I'd done everything right, yet it was 2 am and I still couldn't sleep. I had meditated for 30 minutes before I went to bed. I even took a couple of melatonin pills right after to be sure. Yet, here I was wide awake dreading how exhausted I would be the next day at work.

My problem wasn't unique. In America, one in every 10 adults will experience poor sleep consistently. It takes just one poor night of sleep to devolve into long term sleeping problems. This is because the majority of sleeping problems stem from anxiety and worry. 

The more you worry about not getting enough sleep, the worse your sleep gets

For me, my sleeping issues began right out of college. I had started a job as a software engineer and I was starting to feel the pressure. I had a couple of big deadlines coming up and I found myself tossing and turning unable to sleep one night. My mind kept racing, thinking about all the work I had until I finally fell asleep.

I thought that was it — an abnormal night, but then it happened again. This time, my outlook changed. I started worrying about how not getting enough sleep would affect my day. I looked up basic sleep hygiene tips online and decided to go to bed extra early to make sure I made up for lost sleep. This ended up backfiring and it took a few hours before I could finally sleep.

At this point, my sleeping struggles started becoming more regular. I downloaded a couple of meditation apps in the hopes that meditating and listening to soothing sounds would help me sleep better. I even resorted to over the counter sleeping aids on nights when it took me too long to fall asleep. 

The results were mixed — I'd fall asleep faster but over time I'd revert back to having poor sleep

I finally caved and decided to try prescription medication. I had read a lot about them and was very reluctant because of their long term side effects. On a visit to my doctor, I asked her if she could prescribe me something to help me sleep. She said she said she could, but it wasn't going to be medication. Instead, she put in a referral to a CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia) therapist.

CBT-I is an evidence-based (proven in clinical trials) technique used to treat sleep problems. 

Two driving forces induce sleep — sleep drive & mental arousal

. Your sleep drive is how sleepy/tired you feel when going to bed. Your mental arousal is the racing thoughts and alertness you feel when you go to bed. When your sleep drive is high and your arousal levels are low; it is easier to fall asleep. CBT-I prescribes a sleep schedule that ensures you have a high sleep drive. It also teaches you techniques to worry less and reduce your arousal.

CBT-I is extremely effective in treating sleeping problems

. Clinical trials have shown that 80% of people that follow a good CBT-I program will have normal sleep by the end. The results are also permanent, unlike sleeping aids which are effective only as long as you are taking them.

There were three main rules that I had to follow -

1. I could only sleep within the sleep window my therapist prescribed. This ensured that I only went to bed when my sleep drive was high.

2. Every time I couldn't sleep, I had to make sure I didn't stay in bed for over 20 minutes. This way, I would subconsciously re-train my mind to not associate my bed with wakefulness.

3. No day time naps and no caffeine after 2pm.

I was sleeping around 5 hours at the time, so we set a 6 hour window within which I could sleep (1am - 7am in my case). I kept a log of how long it took me to sleep, how long I was awake in the middle of the night and how long I slept. This data was recorded to the closest 15th minute and is self reported. At the end of each week, my therapist would alter my sleep schedule based on the previous week's data. 

 Time awake is the time it took me to fall asleep + my night time awakenings.


Week 1: At the end of week 1, I was sleeping about the same as I was before. My time awake at night though had fallen by an hour. I was falling asleep faster and I was having less interrupted sleep. We decided to stick to the same sleep schedule for week 2.

Week 2: At the end of this week, my sleep had increased and I was consistently awake for less than an hour. We decided to expand my window by 15 minutes for week 3.

Week 3: We followed the same rules and either expanded or kept the same sleeping window for the next few weeks.

Week 10: 

At the end of the 10 week program, I was sleeping over 7 hours a night

. More importantly, I wasn't spending my days worrying about my sleep.



. The sleep schedules are hard to follow and the results aren't instantaneous. It takes time and effort but the reward of permanently improved sleep is well worth it. Let me know if you do decide to try it and if it helps you improve your sleep. Here's to hoping you get better sleep soon.

If you'd like to know more about CBTI and other behavioral therapy techniques to improve sleep, check out our 

Having trouble falling asleep and developing anxiety about falling asleep? Follow Rahul’s journey to better sleep and how he ended up sleeping 7 hours a night.

How to Fix Your Sleep: An Anxious Sleeper’s Guide to Better Sleep | Dawn Health

Learning how to fix your sleep isn't easy, but it's possible

What is the Definition of Psychophysiological Insomnia?

 is a type of chronic insomnia characterized by difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep due to heightened bodily and cognitive arousal.

A person that struggles with psychophysiological insomnia will have a tendency to worry about their sleep and how a lack of sleep will affect their day. Over time this becomes a vicious cycle, causing a heightened state of arousal which again causes difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep. In other words, worrying about sleep prevents them from sleeping. Each sleepless night only makes the situation worse.

Broadly, insomnia is classified into two types –

. Primary insomnia refers to insomnia that does not relate to a physical or mental health disorder. Psychophysiological insomnia is a form of primary insomnia where negative emotions and unhelpful coping strategies drive insomnia.

On the other hand, secondary insomnia is caused by tangible, identifiable conditions such as depression, sleep apnea, or chronic pain, which keep people awake at night.

Primary insomnia might not be linked to physical disease or medication, but it is still brought on by various factors. Many of these factors have a psychophysiological origin and are rooted in anxiety about the consequences of sleeplessness. In other words, fear of not being able to sleep frequently drives primary insomnia.

How do I know if I am suffering from psychophysiological insomnia?

Do you go to bed at night feeling tired and sleepy, only to feel like a deer in the headlights when your head hits the pillow—alert, awake, alarmed? Tend to fall asleep anywhere but in your bed? Or, do you tend to doze off any time but your bedtime? Do your morning conversations revolve around how bad or good your night has been? And is your psychological state mainly determined by how well or poorly you slept? If you recognize yourself in these descriptions, there is a high probability you are experiencing psychophysiological insomnia.

The first step to overcoming psychophysiological insomnia is to understand it. When people with psychophysiological insomnia go to bed and attempt to sleep, they experience something akin to performance anxiety; the same performance anxiety people get when they walk onto a floodlit stage or have their first job interview. Okay, maybe not that bad, but close.

Because primary insomniacs often spend a great deal of the day worrying about the consequences of not getting sleep, they get stage fright when the time comes. The brain and body assume that bedtime is "showtime," and the pressure to perform activates the arousal system. The brain interprets the bed or bedtime as a threat and puts the body on high alert instead of letting it slip into forgetfulness.

Turn off the "stage lights," and all this goes away. This is why primary insomniacs have no trouble sleeping away from their bed.

Fortunately, psychophysiological insomnia is curable. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for psychophysiological insomnia. Initially developed to treat depression, it was eventually adapted to help people change habits and thinking patterns when it comes to sleep, which essentially is the driving force of psychophysiological insomnia.

For years, CBT for insomnia (CBT-i) has been the gold standard for treating insomnia and has been proven to work in numerous clinical trials. It empowers people to identify and change unhelpful thinking and habits. It reframes their perception of sleep, reduces the time they spend fretting about sleep, interrupts the iterative sleep obsession sequence, and gradually breaks the insomnia cycle.

Cure Your Psychophysiological Insomnia Today!

to cure your psychophysiological insomnia, reach out to us 

1. What is the definition of psychophysiological insomnia?

Psychophysiological insomnia is a form of primary insomnia resulting from constantly worrying about sleep. In other words, a dysfunctional thinking pattern leads to difficulty sleeping.

2. Can you cure psychophysiological insomnia?

Yes. Since psychophysiological insomnia results from bodily arousal caused by unhelpful habits and thinking patterns, it can be cured. In fact, CBT for insomnia (CBT-I) has time and again helped patients cure psychophysiological insomnia once and for all.

Yes. Insomnia can be due to any factor, psychological or physical, that prevents you from sleeping. Anxiety and worry can prevent you from sleeping just as much as loud music or bright lights.

4. What are the major physiological causes of insomnia?

There are many physiological causes of insomnia. The major ones include:

Poor sleeping habits (such as taking caffeine before bed, using screens in bed, etc.)

What is psychophysiological insomnia? Learn the definition, what causes it and how you can treat it with Dawn Health’s evidence-based CBT-I.