Veronica Smith couldn’t sleep. As a freshman in college, she found herself tossing and turning all night, every night. “I would feel just drained, low energy, hard time concentrating,” she tells SELF. “I felt like I could sleep for days if I had the chance.”
Over the next few years, she completed her undergraduate degree, headed to grad school, and started her career. Throughout it all, the insomnia continued. She tried everything to fix it: sleeping pills, acupuncture, meditation, cutting out caffeine, speaking with various sleep specialists, and even getting a stellate ganglion block, an injection recommended for veterans who have insomnia and PTSD. Nothing worked as a long-term solution. But in June 2025, her therapist asked her if she had tried cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia, commonly referred to as CBT-I. Smith hadn’t.
While she was initially skeptical of the treatment—an evidence-based psychotherapy approach widely considered to be the gold standard for treating insomnia, involving a six-to-eight week program of regular therapy, daily exercises, and routine shifts—she ultimately decided to try it, pairing it with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy at the suggestion of her therapist. It worked.
“It was a miracle,” she says. “I’m a disciplined person. I’m a type-A person. I do routines and all of the things. But this really helped.”
For many of us, the concept of sleep training conjures images of parents attempting to teach their infants to self-soothe: Ferber, “fading,” the “chair method” are just a few that terms might ring a bell. But those aren’t the only ways to teach someone better sleep. Adults—like Smith—are increasingly turning to CBT-I, where instead of focusing on just one aspect of someone’s sleeping issues, such as anxiety around getting shut-eye or lack of a quality bedtime routine, they take a more holistic approach.
What does adult sleep training entail?
On social media, sleep-obsessed influencers will suggest a litany of hacks to try for better shut-eye. But when it comes to CBT-I, the protocol is straightforward.
The five components of CBT-I (sleep hygiene, relaxation or stress reduction, stimulus control therapy, sleep restriction, and cognitive therapy) address unproductive behaviors that people learn over time to cope with their insomnia, says Meredith Broderick, MD, a neurologist and board-certified sleep and behavioral sleep medicine specialist. These behaviors, or adaptations, may include spending a lot of time in bed, not scheduling certain activities due to a fear of not sleeping, or resting a lot during the day, Dr. Broderick says. (However, note that none of these behaviors actually fix insomnia.)
