The Sleep Workbook: Easy Strategies to Break the Anxiety-Insomnia Cycle

A few of the helpful strategies to improve sleep:

Working Through Anxious Thoughts

In order to change our thoughts, we must first identify those thoughts that cause discomfort and lower our self-confidence. Once we have identified them, we can begin the step-by-step process of challenging and altering them through reason, which may sometimes conflict with our core beliefs. This is a powerful coping skill and can help you deal with intrusive thoughts.

• Become Aware of Your Thoughts
• Identify Negative/Inaccurate Thinking
• Reshape Negative/Inaccurate Thinking
• Reread and Re-rate Your Thoughts

CBT-I: There is Help for Insomnia

Our behaviors around sleep have the potential of helping us get to sleep and stay asleep at night. These behaviors will also involve our daytime activities. When we make sleep a priority, we learn to balance those things that can reduce our ability to get to sleep and stay asleep with those activities that can promote good sleep. CBT-I works with the following factors.

• Sleep Hygiene
• Sleep Restriction
• Stimulus Control
• Sleep-Interfering Arousal/Activation
• Food and Substances
• Biological Clock

Committing to Change

One of the most common roadblocks to managing anxiety and insomnia is failure to admit your sleep need to yourself. It can take some time for your brain to adjust to the idea that you need less sleep than you’ve set as your goal. It seems very logical to conclude that being sleepy means you’re not getting enough sleep. But spending too much time in bed interrupts your sleep because you exhaust your sleep drive. The daytime symptoms of spending too much time in bed are the same as the symptoms of not spending enough time in bed (tiredness, sleepiness, lack of motivation). You’ll get better results if you adjust according to your sleep need.