Behavioural changes

“After we’ve tackled your belief system, what we need to do is look at the science of sleep,” Romiszewski says. “The science of sleep tells us that depriving yourself of bed time – your ‘sleep opportunity’ – actually improves your quality of sleep.

“So, while people think they should spend more time in bed if they’re struggling to sleep – lying in, going to bed early, napping during the day or even trying to steal time from your day for rest by cancelling activities or avoiding doing things – that’s actually going to lead to a problem with sleeping, because it makes it hard for your body to understand the difference between sleep and awareness.

“So, instead of trying to get people to spend more time in bed, we do the exact opposite – something called sleep restriction or sleep scheduling therapy. Essentially, it involves stripping you away from you bed time. It’s a very mathematical process and we do it over several weeks during which we slowly, incrementally add more time to your sleep opportunity once we see sleep quality increase, to restore your sleep drive.”

What is CBTi? And how does it work to treat insomnia?