CBT-I is the world’s most effective, evidence-based treatment for insomnia—and the cornerstone of our work at Skilled Sleep. It systematically retrains your brain and body to fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and restore a healthy sleep–wake rhythm. CBT-I is structured, practical, and produces measurable improvements, often within a few weeks. Key components include:

• Sleep Efficiency Training
A powerful technique that helps reset your body clock and strengthen your natural sleep drive. We temporarily tighten the sleep window, then expand it as your sleep becomes deeper and more consistent.

• Stimulus Control
This rewires the connection between your bed and sleep. We remove habits that keep the brain “switched on” at night and rebuild strong cues that signal safety, rest, and switching off.

• Cognitive Strategies
We help you identify and shift unhelpful thoughts that fuel nighttime anxiety — such as worrying about not sleeping, clock-watching, or expecting the “perfect sleep.” These tools reduce mental overarousal and settle the mind.

• Relaxation and Nervous System Down-Regulation
We use evidence-based techniques such as diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and grounding strategies to help calm an overactive system and prepare the body for rest.

• Sleep Hygiene (Targeted, Not Generic Checklists)
Rather than overwhelming you with long lists, we focus on a small number of high-impact habits that you need to change that directly influence your sleep drive and circadian rhythm.

• Behavioural Experiments & Relapse Prevention
We help you understand what maintains insomnia, test new strategies, and build long-term confidence so that short-term setbacks don’t turn into chronic patterns again.

Many sleep problems are tangled up with stress, worry, or a busy mind. ACT teaches skills to manage racing thoughts, reduce the struggle with wakefulness, and build healthier, values-driven routines that support restorative sleep.

Sometimes sleep problems are shaped by deeper, long-standing emotional themes or coping styles. Schema therapy helps us understand and gently shift these patterns so your nervous system can finally settle. For many people, chronic insomnia connects to themes such as loneliness or isolation, lack of nurturance, hypervigilance and vulnerability, a strong need for control, fear of failure, or high, unrelenting standards. Schema therapy gives us a compassionate, insight-oriented framework to explore these patterns and develop healthier emotional responses. By working with these themes—not against them—we help you cultivate a calmer internal world, reduce nighttime hyperarousal, and build a more secure foundation for consistent, restorative sleep.

For younger children, our work focuses on parent coaching to support both sleep and anxiety in a developmentally sensitive way. We use gentle, collaborative, and compassionate strategies—never “cry it out.” Together, we help you understand what’s driving your child’s struggles and build a step-by-step plan that strengthens their self-settling skills, reduces nighttime fears or separation worries, and creates a calmer, more predictable bedtime routine. You’ll learn practical tools you can use every night, with an approach designed to support your child’s confidence, emotional safety, and long-term resilience.