How Insomnia Develops…

In the field of behavioral sleep medicine, we describe the evolution of insomnia by using a 3-P model.

The first P is PREDISPOSING factors. Think of these as things that “set you up” for

developing insomnia. There are likely some genetic factors that contribute to insomnia, but we also know that messages you get about sleep growing up have a strong influence on how you think about your sleep. If you heard your mother or father complaining about how difficult the day was going to be because they slept poorly, you might develop two distorted beliefs about sleep: that you are responsible for how much sleep you get and that the quality of the next day is dependent on the previous night of sleep.

The second P is a PRECIPITATING event. This can be some event that is either bad (a

divorce, losing a job, a hospitalization, the death of a loved one, a deployment, a

traumatic event) or something good (getting married, starting a new job, moving to a new town, retiring) that temporarily disrupts your sleep. Sleeping poorly during times of good or bad stress is COMPLETELY NORMAL and to be expected. As a society, we need to understand and normalize this experience.

It is what you do in response to that temporary disruption that we call the third

P…PERPETUATING FACTORS. These are things that you do to cope with sleep loss

that end up causing your short-term, acute insomnia to develop into long-term, chronic insomnia. Common perpetuating factors might include taking a sleeping pill every night (outsourcing sleep to a medication because you have lost trust in your body’s ability to sleep naturally), spending too much time in bed “trying to sleep”, excessive caffeine use, napping during the day and cancelling activities due to poor sleep. You might ask why cancelling a plan due to poor sleep is such a bad thing? The answer to that is that when you do this, you are making sleep the MOST IMPORTANT THING in your life, and you are increasing the pressure on yourself to sleep better that night. Just the act of doing this creates an expectation of sleeping better and sleep does not respond to well

to pressure!

In CBT for Insomnia, a therapist will take time to map out how your insomnia developed and make a personalized plan to improve your sleep. The good news is that even though chronic insomnia can take years to develop, it only takes about 6 to 8 weeks of dedicated effort to resolve it…completely. Learn more about this treatment at http://truesleeptherapy.com