INsomnia & Sleep Problems
What is insomnia?
At its core, insomnia is one or all of the following: an inability to fall asleep, difficulty staying asleep, waking up too early, and/or not sleeping enough hours each night to feel restored.
Insomnia may also include any of the follow symptoms:
an increase in anxiety, depression, or irritability
problems related to paying attention or remembering items (words, names, appointments, etc.)
difficulty feeling motivated or concentrating on every day tasks
feeling tired and/or sleepy through the day
an uptick in accidents, injuries or mistakes
increased worry about not sleeping in the future
What causes insomnia?
Acute insomnia is often short-term and easily linked to an event or stressor in your life. For example, if you have a big presentation coming up at work, the week before the event you may find yourself tossing and turning and sleeping only a few hours each night.
With chronic insomnia, on the other hand, it is often harder to understand and very difficult to pinpoint a singular cause. It may have begun with a stressor or event that made it difficult to sleep, yet once that stress has passed, you may find yourself still unable to fall asleep. This can be due to a combination of factors, including sleep anxiety (i.e., fear or worry about going to bed), underlying mental health concerns (e.g., depression, anxiety), lifestyle habits (e.g., napping too much, chronic stress, alcohol use, caffeine use), an irregular schedule (e.g., due to travel, waking up late on the weekends, shift work), chronic pain or illnesses, pregnancy, the postpartum period, medications, family dynamics (including young children), and/or ongoing life stress.
How does integrative therapy help with insomnia and other sleep problems?
Although it may be hard to pinpoint one specific cause of chronic insomnia, treatment tends to follow a similar path regardless of the underlying reasons. At SGS Practices, we use a combination of treatments that tend to include: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), hypnotherapy, and relaxation techniques. Once the behavioral aspects are better controlled, then we will use interpersonal therapy, mindfulness, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to better understand how the insomnia came to be and how to prevent relapses in the future.
By combining these modalities, SGS Practices is able to improve both the quality and the quantity of sleep. You’ll learn tools that can also be applied to other areas of your life, which is why the treatment tends to be effective long-term and help the majority of patients decrease or even stop using medication to manage their sleep.
If you are struggling with insomnia or any other sleep problems, please get in touch by email to schedule an appointment or learn more about how we can help.