Struggling with insomnia can feel like one of the worst nightmares you have to endure every night. The exhaustion spreads throughout your days, affecting your mood, productivity, relationships, and overall well-being. While taking sleep medications alone can offer short-term relief, they often don’t address the root cause. That’s where Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) comes in.
CBT for insomnia addresses insomnia from the root, unraveling the cause and offering holistic solutions to end the cycle. At the Center for Motivation and Change, we offer CBT-I as a proven, sustainable path to healing your sleep. Whether navigating change from substance use, trauma, anxiety, or feeling overwhelmed by life’s demands, CBT-I can help you retrain your mind and body to sleep soundly again, for the long term.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is an evidence-based form of therapy that helps one recognize and change unhelpful thought patterns and behaviors that interfere with sleep. It supports you in learning how to think and behave in ways that help your body rest naturally and consistently for the hours it needs. Unlike medications that may only manage symptoms for a short while, CBT-I targets the underlying psychological and behavioral causes of insomnia, offering a long-term, sustainable solution.
This sleep therapy is rooted in the same principles as general cognitive behavioral therapy: understanding how thoughts and behaviors influence our experiences, in the context of sleep. CBT for insomnia is considered the gold standard treatment for sleep by expert organizations such as the American College of Physicians and the Sleep Foundation.
As one of our evidence-based treatments at CMC, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia reflects our commitment to sustainable, meaningful change, not just short-term fixes. Our CBT-I specialists are trained to help you navigate the specific challenges that may be disrupting your sleep, whether related to stress, substance use, trauma, or other life transitions, so you can begin to reclaim rest in a lasting way.
Sleep Challenges CBT-I Helps With and Who Can Benefit
Sleep problems manifest in various ways. For some, it’s acute insomnia—trouble sleeping for a few days or weeks triggered by a major life stressor like grief. For others, it’s chronic insomnia—persistent sleep struggles that last for three months or more. Insomnia significantly affects daily performance. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia offers a proven way to help your body relearn how to sleep well again, gently and sustainably.
You might:
- Struggle to fall asleep, even when tired
- Wake up often throughout the night
- Wake up too early and can't get back to sleep
- Feel like your sleep is restless or shallow
- Rely on substances, screens, or habits to "force" sleep
- Feel like lying in bed is a trigger in itself
CBT-I can address each of these patterns and more. It helps even when you’re struggling with issues such as substance use, trauma, PTSD, anxiety, or depression, or have tried medications with little relief, and want a long-term, natural solution.
At CMC, CBT-I is tailored to your unique needs and challenges, integrated with other therapeutic work you're already doing.
How Does CBT-I Work?
CBT-I works by helping you become aware of the cycle of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are causing your insomnia, and giving you the tools to break that cycle for a restful, natural sleeping rhythm.
How can CBT-I help insomnia? The following are the strategies used:
Behavioral CBT-I Techniques: Resetting Sleep Habits
Many people unknowingly make their bodies resist sleep by scrolling, watching TV in bed, or turning in earlier in an attempt to force sleep. CBT for insomnia helps you gently unlearn those patterns and reestablish healthier sleeping strategies.
Behavioral CBT techniques for insomnia include:
- Stimulus Control
This sleep therapy helps your brain relearn that bed is for sleep, not worry, screens, or restlessness. It also involves getting up if you can’t sleep around 10 minutes in and returning only when sleepy. - Sleep Restriction Therapy
If you’ve been lying awake for hours, this technique limits your time in bed to match your actual sleep hours, thereby boosting your sleep drive. For example, if you’re in bed for 7 hours but only sleep 4, your time in bed would be reduced to 4 hours and 30 minutes. As your sleep improves, your time in bed gradually increases.
Grounded in research and highly personalized, our clinicians walk with you step by step as you rebuild habits that support your body’s natural sleep rhythms.
Cognitive Strategies: Shifting Thoughts that Disrupt Sleep
When struggling with insomnia, you might find yourself thinking thoughts like, “If I don’t sleep 8 hours, tomorrow will be a wreck”. These kinds of thoughts create anxiety around sleep, which can actually prevent you from sleeping restfully, or at all.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia uses thought restructuring to help you:
- Identify unhelpful beliefs about sleep
These might include dysfunctional thoughts such as rigid rules about how many hours of sleep you need, exaggerated fears about sleeplessness, or self-blame for sleep problems. - Challenge unhelpful thoughts and replace them with more realistic, productive ones
Instead of “I will be useless tomorrow if I don’t sleep 7 hours,” you might learn to say, “No matter how much I sleep tonight, I’ll make the best of tomorrow.”
At CMC, we help you explore these beliefs with compassion, creating space for thoughts that promote better sleep.
Sleep Education
You’ll learn what healthy sleep looks like—how it flows in cycles, how your internal clock works, and how habits, diet, exercise, and environment all play a role. Together with a CBT-I specialist, you’ll identify gradual, sustainable changes that support deep, restorative sleep.
Relaxation Techniques
To manage the stress involved in insomnia, CBT-I therapy includes science-backed ways to help your nervous system rest, like deep breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation techniques, guided imagery, and meditation.
We don’t hand you a generic checklist; we help you create a sleep-supportive plan and rhythm that makes sense for you.
Is CBT-I Effective?
According to the Sleep Foundation, CBT-I is more effective than medication in the long run, and it comes without the risks of dependency or side effects of medication.
Studies show that CBT-I therapy:
- Is as effective as sleep medications in the short term
- Is more effective than medication in sustaining long-term sleep improvements
- Helps 70-80% of people reduce or resolve insomnia symptoms
CBT for insomnia is also effective when insomnia is linked to mood disorders such as anxiety and depression, trauma, or those in substance use treatment. Even better, the skills you build in CBT-I continue to help maintain general well-being after treatment ends.
CBT-I at CMC: What to Expect
When you begin CBT-I therapy at CMC, we’ll start by understanding the full picture of your sleep challenges and your goals so that we can create a CBT-I plan that works for you. Your CBT-I specialist will collaborate with you to:
- Understand your sleep patterns, stressors, and goals
- Determine the specific cognitive and behavioral practices influencing your rest
- Create a tailored CBT-I therapy plan aligned with your improvement process
We offer CBT-I in individual therapy, as part of our integrated treatment approach. If you’re receiving care for anxiety, trauma, or substance use, CBT-I may be introduced alongside other modalities to support your whole-person recovery.
Speak with a Member of Our Intake Team
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia is a proven, personalized path to find your way back to rest.
Reach out to speak with a member of our Intake Team to understand your next steps. We’re here to listen, answer your questions, and help you move forward, one more restful night at a time.
CBT-I FAQ
CBT-I helps by addressing the root thought patterns and habits that support insomnia. Instead of merely masking the problem with medication, it empowers you with tools to rewire your brain for restful sleep.