My interest in this subject was sparked by an interview I saw on Good Morning America regarding the use of cognitive behavioral therapy in treating insomnia. For years, I have struggled to get a good nights sleep. I have tried many different solutions including sleeping pills and herbal formulas.
I did not read the book from cover to cover but read sections that seemed applicable to my situation. I read it with great anticipation based on the claim that cognitive behavioral therapy has proven to be even more successful at treating insomnia than other alternatives each of which seem to have some serious side effects.
I was not disappointed. While I cannot say that it was a miracle turn around, I would say I have been able to take my sleep situation from a 5 to an 8 in a short time simply by using some of the simple principles found in this book.
One of the things I had to come to grips with was that different people require different amounts of sleep. I will probably never be a person who gets or needs 8 hours of sleep. In fact if I can get 6 to 6.5 hours of restful sleep I am good to go. That took some of the pressure off of the situation.
I then began to use a technique that the author calls sleep restriction which is simple restricting my time in bed to the amount of sleep I need which is about 6 hours or so. I eliminated any napping during the day and began going to bed at 11. I used to go to bed at 10:30 or even 10 some nights thinking that if I was in bed longer I would get more sleep. It just did not work for me. The sleep restriction has. Actually, Dr. Silberman recommends restricting your sleep even more until you get a very restful sleep and then adding 15 minutes a night until you make it to your optimum time.
Another suggestion that has worked, is to simply get up if I wake up during the night and do something like read until I am sleepy again. The key to making this work is that you cannot look at the clock. I used to look at what time I woke up and went back to sleep and then the next day think about how much sleep I had lost.
I would love to be able to say that I am sleeping great every night and have experienced a miracle turn around. I have not but the improvement I have seen in less than a week is well worth the time to read the book.