Who is the author of End the Insomnia Struggle?

The authors of End the Insomnia Struggle are Colleen Ehrnstrom and Alisha L. Brosse.

Health & Nutrition

End the Insomnia Struggle Book Summary - End the Insomnia Struggle Book explained in key points

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End the Insomnia Struggle summary

Name: End the Insomnia Struggle
Rating: 4 (119 reviews)
Author: Colleen Ehrnstrom and Alisha L. Brosse

Colleen Ehrnstrom Alisha L. Brosse

A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Get to Sleep and Stay Asleep

4 (119 ratings)

14 mins

Brief summary

End the Insomnia Struggle by Colleen Ehrnstrom and Alisha L. Brosse is a comprehensive guide that provides evidence-based strategies, cognitive-behavioral techniques, and relaxation exercises to help you effectively manage insomnia and improve your sleep quality.

Topics

Sleep Neuroscience Mental Health

Table of Contents

End the Insomnia Struggle
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Discover techniques for a good night’s sleep.

When you go to bed at night, do you fall asleep instantly and then wake up eight hours later, refreshed and ready to take on the world? Or do you struggle to get good-quality shut-eye?

If you often experience difficulties sleeping, staying asleep or getting the kind of restorative sleep you need to function well during the daytime, you might suffer from insomnia. Perhaps you have already reached out to friends and family hoping to find the golden advice that’ll help you get rid of this exasperating condition.

If you have yet to do so, or if the help you’ve received so far hasn’t been effective, now might be the time to try out Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) – a treatment focused on affecting the physiological parameters of your sleep through behavioral and cognitive strategies. These blinks contain a wealth of advice based on this approach.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

how you can get your sleep drive to work as it should;
why you should set a wake-up time and stick to it regardless of when you fall asleep; and
how modifying the way you think about sleep will affect your ability to get to sleep.

Maintaining healthy sleep patterns is a team effort between two distinct biological processes.

Insomnia is a complex topic, so before we set off on a journey to understand it, let’s take a closer look at the biological processes that regulate sleep. One of the key forces in this regard is known as the sleep drive, which regulates our sleeping and waking hours.

The sleep drive is essential in sending the body to sleep when necessary, making it crucial to our very survival. Simply put, it increases with every minute we spend awake, eventually becoming so strong that it tells us to get some shut-eye.

Another key sleep-regulating biological process is the internal body clock. This biological timer helps maintain a cyclical rhythm based on night and day, which regulates our sleep.

It accomplishes this incredible feat by adjusting the temperature of the body, impacting the nervous system and producing the sleep-related hormones cortisol and melatonin. In doing so, it’s supported by external forces like sunrise and sunset.

Back in the 1960s, German scientist Rütger Wever demonstrated how the internal body clock works by isolating study participants in a windowless basement. At a certain point, their internal body clocks fell out of sync, showing that humans rely on their environment to maintain their natural sleep rhythms.

So, the sleep drive and the internal body clock are both essential, but to function properly these two mechanisms need to work in close collaboration; if one falls out of sync, it’ll easily wreak havoc on the other.

If your internal body clock gets thrown off, maybe from working in a windowless office, it’s only a matter of time before your sleep drive starts to suffer as well. After all, it won’t receive the proper environmental cues it needs to produce a rhythmic craving for sleep.

It’s a lot to take in, but now that we’ve got those basic facts down, we’re all set to take a closer look at insomnia – and, more specifically, how to overcome it.

There’s no set treatment for insomnia, but keeping track of your sleep helps.

If you’re like most people with insomnia or other sleep-related issues, you’ve likely asked for help and been met with an endless and diverse list of remedies and advice. This is actually quite normal; the fact is, there’s no hard set of rules for dealing with insomnia.

So, while plenty of people will say, “just cut back on coffee!” or “get more fresh air,” none of these simple approaches will fix all cases of insomnia. After all, every person is unique, and there’s no one-size-fits-all treatment.

Your bed should be used for nothing but sleep, and it’s important to get up if you’re having trouble dozing off.

As you just learned, if you had to sum up stimulus control therapy in a couple of words, they would be “bed = sleep.” That means your bed is for sleeping and sleeping alone – well, with one important exception: you can use it for sex, too.

But how exactly do you realize this goal of giving your bed such a limited role?

Only get back into bed when sleepiness returns and stick to your designated sleep schedule.

Now you know to get out of bed if you can’t sleep – but it’s also important to stay out of your bed until the urge to sleep really hits. After all, it’s essential to maintain a strong connection between your bed and sleep, and staying away from your mattress when you’re not tired is the only way to do so.

So, if you wake up at night, no matter how many times it happens, you need to follow this same practice. Or, if you get back into bed and, 20 minutes later are still awake, you should get up and return to one of the boring and relaxing activities mentioned in the previous blink.

Your thoughts can be your worst enemy when fighting insomnia, but a creative approach can help you overcome them.

Each hour, the average human has hundreds, even thousands of thoughts. This is certainly impressive, but when it comes to alleviating insomnia, some thoughts just mess everything up.

That’s where cognitive restructuring or CR comes in. This strategy helps you identify the distorted and unhelpful thoughts that prevent you from sleeping. In this context, a distorted thought is one that has some truth to it but has been altered slightly.

Protect your sleep from worries by putting them off for another time.

What do you imagine confident sleepers think about when going to bed? Well, they probably don’t think about very much.

However, if you’re the kind of person that is full of worry at bedtime, you might benefit from designated worry time or DWT. This cognitive strategy works to alter not what you worry about, but when and where your worries occur.

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What is End the Insomnia Struggle about?

End the Insomnia Struggle (2016) is a guide to getting a good night’s sleep. These blinks are full of practical advice on how to handle sleeplessness. They explain, among other things, how to track your sleep problems, understand the science of insomnia and apply a variety of strategies that’ll help you get the rest you need.

End the Insomnia Struggle Review

End the Insomnia Struggle (2016) is a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to overcome the challenges of insomnia and get a good night's sleep. Here's why this book is definitely worth reading:

It provides practical strategies and techniques that can be easily implemented to improve sleep quality and overcome insomnia.
The book offers a holistic approach to sleep problems, addressing both the physical and psychological aspects of insomnia.
With its accessible language and relatable examples, the book keeps readers engaged and motivated to take action towards better sleep.

Who should read End the Insomnia Struggle?

Sleepless souls
Psychologists and physicians
Students of human cognition

About the Author

Colleen Ehrnstrom has a PhD in psychology, who currently works at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs in Denver, Colorado where she specializes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as well as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Alisha L. Brosse also holds a PhD in psychology and is a licensed clinical psychologist who likewise specializes in ACT and CBT. She serves as an associate director of the Robert D. Sutherland Center for the Evaluation and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder at the University of Colorado.

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