This next section is dedicated to your thoughts and how they impact your sleep. You may recall from chapter 3 that there are numerous factors that can tip the scale from restorative sleep to nonrestorative sleep. In these next three chapters, we focus on how your thoughts weigh in on this scale.
The first two chapters in this section, chapters 10 and 11, will teach you two cognitive strategies used in traditional CBT-I. These strategies are change-based interventions. Change-based strategies teach you how to change the content and the timing of your thoughts. In chapter 10 we focus on what you are thinking. We review how negative thought patterns interfere with your sleep. We also provide a tool for managing these negative cognitions. In chapter 11 we will help you change when you are thinking, so a busy mind does not keep you up at night.
In chapter 12, we teach you two additional cognitive skills: mindfulness and cognitive defusion. These are acceptance-based interventions that depart from the change model in chapters 10 and 11. Acceptance-based interventions focus on the way your mind responds to your thoughts, as opposed to altering the thoughts themselves. These skills are not a part of traditional CBT-I. We borrow them from acceptance and commitment therapy in order to optimize CBT-I.
You are welcome to read these chapters in sequence and make use of all of the strategies. If you prefer to focus your efforts on just one or two strategies, look back at the work you did in chapter 5 and on worksheet 5.1. Which strategies seemed most relevant? With which did you say you would start? Go ahead and skip to that chapter now.