Beat Insomnia with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Guide for Cancer Patients
by Martin Reed Patient Advocate
For cancer patients, that most precious escape – sleep – is often elusive. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, up to 75 percent of cancer patients experience sleep disturbances, including insomnia. Sleeping pills may help over the short-term, but they also come with side-effects or interfere with existing drug regimens.
Therefore, the ability to fall asleep naturally, without the need for drugs, is preferable. For those who cannot or will not take sleep-inducing drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be a safe, natural, and highly effective alternative.** Why is sleep so important?**
Sleep and healing go hand in hand. The ability of the body and brain to rest and recharge is needed to calm the mind and maintain, or regain, health.
Sleep boosts the immune system and is linked to reductions in depression, which increases quality of life. Lack of sleep causes daytime fatigue and may even make it harder to withstand pain and discomfort.
Causes of sleep disruption in cancer patients
Cancer can muddy sleep’s waters in many ways. Typical causes of insomnia in cancer patients can include:
Emotions such as worry, anxiety and fear
Side effects from specific medications
Side effects from the disease, such as pain and inflammation
Side effects from treatment, including hot flashes, incontinence and nausea
Deregulation of natural circadian rhythms and REM sleep by radiation treatment
How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps
CBT is highly effective in both the general population and among cancer patients and works by targeting and altering negative sleep thoughts and behaviors. It takes time to master the various components of CBT but for those willing to do the work, it’s a long-lasting, highly effective protocol.
CBT techniques include:
Cognitive Restructuring
Many insomnia sufferers have incorrect thoughts and assumptions about sleep; For example, the myth that we all need 8 hours of sleep. CBT will help correct these misperceptions, which often helps reduce the amount of pressure insomnia sufferers place on themselves to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Sleep Restriction Therapy
Many people who don't get as much sleep as they'd like spend far too much time in bed. They think that by spending more time in bed (and therefore, allotting more time for sleep), they'll get more sleep.
Unfortunately, the opposite is usually true. By spending too much time in bed, insomnia sufferers end up adding to their sleep anxiety and teach their brains to associate the bed with wakefulness and frustration rather than sleep. CBT programs will look at the amount of time you're spending in bed to see if sleep restriction will be beneficial.
Stimulus Control Therapy
People can break sleep-busting habits by using the bedroom only for sleeping, eliminating nocturnal clock-watching and getting out of bed if they can't fall asleep within around half an hour.
Many people remove clocks from their bedroom completely, to avoid the panic and frustration stemming from clock-watching when sleep won’t come. The goal of stimulus control therapy is to teach the mind to associate the bed with sleep and nothing else.
Practicing good sleep hygiene
This can be accomplished by creating and sticking to a relaxing (and consistent) bedtime routine, reducing late-night stimulation like watching television and maintaining optimum temperature, light and noise control.
Cancer patients can learn CBT through a sleep specialist or psychologist, or use apps or CDs as self-guiding tools.
Acquiring proficiency in CBT techniques does take time and effort but it is often well worth the commitment since the positive effects of CBT have been proven to last over the long-term.
Martin is the creator of Insomnia Land’s free online sleep training for insomnia. If you suffer from a lack of sleep, his course is there to help. Over 4,000 insomniacs have completed his course and 97 percent of graduates say they would recommend it to a friend.
Source:
Fiorentino, Lavinia, and Sonia Ancoli-Israel. "Sleep Dysfunction in Patients with Cancer." Current Treatment Options in Neurology. September 2007. Accessed February 19, 2016.
