Your Insomnia Is a Daytime Problem
Most people who struggle with sleep spend a lot of energy experimenting with their nighttime routine; the white noise machine, the sleep mask, the melatonin gummy. And while some of that can help, the bigger truth is that what you do during the day matters just as much, if not more, than what you do at night. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is actually built around this idea.
The following are my summaries of therapy interventions for insomnia that are scientifically validated. These strategies are daytime strategies as much as they are bedtime ones. Take what works for your life, your schedule, your reality. Leave what doesn't.
Stimulus Control Your brain is an association machine. If you're doing a lot of living in your bed (scrolling, watching TV, reading true crime) your brain stops registering the bed as a sleep cue. The goal is to reserve your bed for sleep and sex only. For nighttime readers, that might mean moving to a recliner and only coming to bed when you're genuinely about to nod off. For a lot of people, this also means getting the TV out of the bedroom entirely.
Screens. Aim to go screen-free within two hours of bedtime, and honestly, the earlier you go analog in your evening the better. It's worth genuinely asking yourself: what am I actually doing on my phone after 7 PM that's improving my real life? Most of the time, the answer is not much. A quieter, more analog evening tends to be a more enriching one anyway.
Eating. Along the same lines, eating close to bedtime activates your digestive system at exactly the wrong time. As always, if you're managing medications or a health condition, follow your doctor's guidance over anything a therapist writes on the internet.
Physical Activity. Think of sleep and physical activity like a pendulum. The higher you swing it during the day with movement and exertion, the further it swings back toward deep, restful sleep at night. A lot of our jobs and lifestyles are pretty sedentary, and it's easy to mistake being awake all day for having been active. They're not the same thing. Even modest increases in daily movement can make a meaningful difference in how your body winds down at night.
Don't Nap. Think of your sleep drive like a balloon you're inflating all day long. Every time you nap, you let a little air out. The goal is to arrive at bedtime with that balloon fully inflated, so exhausted that sleep just happens. Napping, even short ones, can bleed off enough of that pressure that falling asleep at night becomes a struggle again.
Substances. This one tends to be the hardest sell, and honestly, it takes the most time to sit with before people are willing to experiment. The main culprits are caffeine, alcohol, and cannabis. All three are sneaky in different ways.
Caffeine has a half-life of around 8 hours in most people's bodies, and in some people it's closer to 10 to 12. So if you're cutting off caffeine at noon and still wondering why you can't sleep, your body chemistry might mean you should've stopped at 9 AM. Most people don't know this about themselves until they actually go without it for a stretch.
Alcohol is a depressant, so it feels like a sleep aid, and clients will argue with their therapists. It may help you fall asleep, but it significantly disrupts REM sleep quality. Cannabis works similarly. Clients who use it regularly often report waking in the middle of the night and not feeling rested, and there's solid research on its impact on REM patterns. Taking a break, even a short one, often produces noticeable changes in sleep quality.
If you are having enduring episodes of insomnia I cannot stress enough how helpful it can be to take a break from substances entirely to better understand the implications of use on sleep. Tobacco, your boyfriend's Adderall, CBD, whatever you're up to, it's not my business, just take a break until you know yourself better. I swear, I'm not a DARE officer, just a therapist with CBT-I training...
Routine. This one I bring up with some hesitation, because I know how impractical it sounds for most people's actual lives. But it would be disrespectful to the research not to mention it. Going to sleep and waking at the same time every day including weekends gives your body a natural, steady rhythm that supports better sleep over time. In a world of shift work, unpredictable work hours, and a hundred competing demands, this is genuinely hard. Do what you can with it.
I am not particularly observant of this rule. However, if my sleep becomes challenged, I become more rigidly observant of all the rules, including waking early on weekends for the sake of routine. For me, sleep is integral to my wellbeing.
Start somewhere. Sleep is one of those things that doesn't announce itself as a problem until everything else starts falling apart. If you're reading this, you probably already know something's off. The good news is that these strategies work; not overnight, and not all at once, but they work. Pick one, try it for a week, and see what shifts. Your brain is more trainable than you think.
❤Kas
