Sleep & Insomnia Therapy in Chicago
When you’re not sleeping well, it can start to affect almost everything—your mood, focus, energy, relationships, and ability to feel like yourself. And the harder you try to sleep, the more frustrating and stressful bedtime can become.
Whether you’re struggling to fall asleep, waking throughout the night, lying awake with a racing mind, dreading bedtime, or dealing with recurring nightmares, therapy can help you understand what may be keeping the cycle going and develop new ways to approach sleep.
At Balanced Awakening, we offer Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), a structured, evidence-based approach to treating insomnia, as well as therapy for nightmares and other sleep-related concerns. Sleep-focused therapy can be relatively short-term and targeted, whether it’s your primary reason for coming to therapy or focused work alongside an ongoing therapist.
Meet Our Sleep & Insomnia Therapists
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Lucy Stock, MA
When Sleep Stops Feeling Restorative
Sleep is supposed to be something your body knows how to do automatically. But when you’ve been struggling with sleep for a while, bedtime can start to feel like something you have to work at.
You may feel exhausted all day and then suddenly wide awake when your head hits the pillow. Maybe you fall asleep easily but wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep. You might find yourself watching the clock, calculating how many hours you have left, worrying about how you’ll function tomorrow, or changing your routines in increasingly complicated ways just to try to get a decent night’s rest.
Over time, worrying about sleep can become part of what makes sleeping harder. Your bed can start to feel associated with frustration, anxiety, and being awake rather than rest.
The good news is that chronic sleep difficulties aren’t something you simply have to learn to live with. CBT-I helps identify the patterns that may be keeping insomnia going and uses targeted behavioral and cognitive strategies to help rebuild a healthier relationship with sleep.
Does Any of This Feel Familiar?
Sleep problems can look different from person to person. You may recognize yourself in one—or several—of these experiences.
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Exhausted, But Wide Awake
You feel tired throughout the day, but when it’s finally time to sleep, your mind or body seems to wake up. You may lie in bed wondering why you can’t sleep when you know you’re exhausted.
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Waking Up During the Night
You fall asleep without much trouble but wake during the night and struggle to get back to sleep. The longer you’re awake, the more frustrated or worried you become about how you’ll feel tomorrow.
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Worrying About Sleep
Bedtime itself has started to create anxiety. You may watch the clock, calculate how many hours of sleep you have left, or worry that another bad night will ruin the next day.
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Never Feeling Truly Rested
Even after spending enough time in bed, you wake up feeling tired or unrefreshed. Poor sleep may be affecting your concentration, mood, energy, patience, or ability to feel fully present during the day.
What Is CBT-I?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is a structured, evidence-based treatment specifically designed for insomnia. Rather than focusing only on relaxation or general “sleep hygiene,” CBT-I looks at the thoughts, behaviors, routines, and patterns that can unintentionally keep sleep difficulties going.
When sleep has been difficult for a while, it’s natural to start trying harder to make sleep happen. You might go to bed earlier, stay in bed longer, sleep in after a difficult night, nap when you can, cancel plans because you’re exhausted, or spend more and more time worrying about whether you’ll sleep.
These strategies make sense when you’re desperate for rest—but some can unintentionally make it harder for your body to develop a consistent, reliable pattern of sleep.
CBT-I helps you understand your individual sleep patterns and make targeted changes designed to strengthen your natural sleep system and reduce the anxiety and frustration that can build around sleep.
What Does CBT-I Involve?
CBT-I is more structured than traditional open-ended talk therapy. You and your therapist will look closely at your sleep patterns and the factors that may be contributing to insomnia, then use specific strategies to help your sleep become more consistent and restorative.
Treatment may include:
Tracking your sleep patterns to better understand what is happening throughout the night.
Strengthening the connection between your bed and sleep rather than wakefulness, worry, or frustration.
Adjusting sleep and wake routines to support your body’s natural drive for sleep.
Working with thoughts and anxiety about sleep, including the pressure to get a “perfect” night’s rest.
Identifying habits or environmental factors that may be interfering with sleep.
Developing strategies for setbacks so that one difficult night doesn’t turn into another cycle of sleep anxiety.
A Focused, Short-Term Approach to Sleep
Unlike many forms of psychotherapy, CBT-I is designed to be a relatively brief and focused treatment. Rather than exploring every area of your life, sessions center specifically on understanding and changing the patterns affecting your sleep.
That can make CBT-I a good fit if sleep is your primary reason for seeking therapy, but it can also be used as focused, adjunctive treatment if you already have a therapist and want specialized support for insomnia.
Your exact course of treatment will depend on your individual sleep concerns and progress, and your therapist will work with you to determine what makes sense for you.
What If Nightmares Are Disrupting Your Sleep?
Nightmares can affect much more than the moments when you’re asleep. If they happen repeatedly, you may find yourself dreading bedtime, avoiding sleep, waking with intense emotions, or carrying fear, anxiety, or exhaustion into the next day.
For some people, nightmares are connected to trauma or other difficult experiences. For others, the connection may be less obvious. Either way, recurring nightmares can create their own cycle in which sleep begins to feel unpredictable or unsafe.
Therapy can help you work directly with recurring nightmares rather than simply trying to tolerate them. Our sleep-focused work can include structured strategies designed to reduce the frequency and intensity of nightmares and help you feel more comfortable returning to sleep.
Sleep Therapy Can Complement Your Existing Therapy
You don’t necessarily have to leave your current therapist—or start over with someone new—to get specialized help with sleep.
If you already have a therapist you value, you may be able to work with one of our sleep therapists for a focused period specifically addressing insomnia or recurring nightmares, while continuing your ongoing therapy separately.
This can be especially helpful when sleep is one specific piece of a larger picture and you want targeted treatment from a therapist with additional training in sleep-focused interventions.
How Sleep Therapy Can Help
When sleep has been difficult for a while, it can start to feel like something you have very little control over. You may organize your evenings around trying to sleep, your mornings around recovering from not sleeping, and your days around how exhausted you feel.
Sleep therapy can help you step out of that cycle. Rather than simply giving you another list of sleep tips to follow, your therapist will help you understand your particular sleep patterns and identify the factors that may be keeping difficulties going.
Depending on what you’re experiencing, sleep therapy may help you:
Fall asleep more consistently and spend less time lying awake in bed
Reduce waking during the night or difficulty returning to sleep
Feel less anxious, frustrated, or preoccupied with sleep
Develop a more consistent relationship between your bed and sleep
Change habits or routines that may unintentionally interfere with sleep
Respond differently to racing thoughts or worry at bedtime
Reduce the impact of recurring nightmares
Feel more confident handling an occasional difficult night without spiraling into another cycle of insomnia
Improve daytime functioning as your sleep becomes more consistent
The goal isn’t to achieve a “perfect” night of sleep every night. It’s to help sleep feel more natural, predictable, and less like something you have to constantly manage.
Sometimes Sleep Problems Need More Than Therapy
Not every sleep problem is caused by insomnia, stress, or behavioral patterns. Sleep can also be affected by medical conditions, medications, hormonal changes, substance use, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, and other factors.
If your symptoms suggest that something else may be contributing to your sleep difficulties, your therapist may encourage you to talk with your physician or another appropriate healthcare provider. Sleep-focused therapy can sometimes be one part of a broader treatment plan.
Our goal isn’t to assume every sleep problem is psychological—it’s to help you understand what kind of support makes the most sense for what you’re experiencing.
From the Blog
Common Questions About Sleep & Insomnia Therapy
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is a structured, evidence-based treatment specifically designed for insomnia. It focuses on the thoughts, behaviors, routines, and patterns that can contribute to ongoing sleep difficulties.
Rather than simply giving you general tips for better sleep, CBT-I helps you understand your individual sleep patterns and make targeted changes designed to strengthen your natural sleep system and reduce the anxiety and frustration that can develop around sleep.
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Sleep hygiene generally refers to habits that support healthy sleep, such as maintaining a comfortable sleep environment or being thoughtful about caffeine and other factors that can interfere with sleep.
CBT-I goes much further than basic sleep hygiene. It is a structured treatment for insomnia that addresses the behavioral and cognitive patterns that can keep sleep difficulties going. If you’ve already tried improving your bedtime routine, putting your phone away, or following countless sleep tips without much success, that doesn’t mean you’ve “failed” at sleeping.
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CBT-I is designed to be a relatively brief, focused treatment rather than open-ended psychotherapy. The exact number of sessions will depend on your sleep concerns, progress, and individual needs.
Your therapist will talk with you about what treatment may look like for you and continue evaluating your progress together.
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No. You don’t need to arrive with a formal diagnosis or know exactly why you aren’t sleeping well.
You might seek help because you have trouble falling asleep, wake frequently during the night, wake earlier than you want to, feel anxious about sleep, experience recurring nightmares, or simply feel that poor sleep is interfering with your daily life.
Your therapist can help you better understand what you’re experiencing and whether sleep-focused therapy is an appropriate fit.
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Yes. Sleep-focused therapy can potentially be used as short-term, adjunctive treatment while you continue working with your existing therapist.
This can be a good option when you value your ongoing therapy relationship but want focused support from a therapist with additional training in treating insomnia or other sleep concerns. We can discuss your individual situation and whether this arrangement makes sense for you.
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Yes. Recurring nightmares can affect both the quality of your sleep and how you feel about going to bed in the first place.
Sleep-focused therapy may include structured strategies for working directly with recurring nightmares, with the goal of reducing their frequency or intensity and helping sleep feel less distressing or unpredictable. Your therapist can determine which approach is appropriate based on what you’re experiencing.
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Sleep difficulties can sometimes be related to medical conditions, medications, hormonal changes, sleep disorders such as sleep apnea, substance use, or other factors that psychotherapy alone may not address.
If your therapist believes another issue could be contributing to your sleep difficulties, they may recommend that you also speak with your physician or another appropriate healthcare provider. Sleep therapy can sometimes be one part of a broader treatment plan.
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No. You don’t have to wait until sleep problems become severe to ask for help. If difficulty sleeping is causing distress, affecting your days, or leading you to spend a lot of time worrying about sleep, it may be worth exploring.
Sleep-focused therapy can help identify patterns early as well as address sleep difficulties that have been happening for a longer time.
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Yes. Balanced Awakening offers telehealth therapy for clients who are physically located in Illinois at the time of their sessions, as well as in-person therapy at our Chicago offices.
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Our therapy rate for the first two sessions is $250. After that, 55 minute sessions are $225.
Most of our therapists are in network with United Healthcare/Optum, BCBS PPO and Aetna insurance.
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You can explore our sleep therapists above and schedule an appointment directly with a therapist who feels like a good fit.
Not sure who to choose? Complete our matchmaking form and tell us a little about what you’re looking for, your availability, and any preferences you have. We’ll help connect you with a therapist whose experience and availability may be a good fit.
What Our Clients Are Saying
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During our first session Hannah was proactive in creating a plan of action to properly diagnose me and address my concerns. Detailed. Office is beautiful. Love the decor, relaxing ambiance and free tea.
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She was very kind and thorough during intake and the entire office looks like something out of a lifestyle magazine.
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The office is lovely and welcoming, the in-take paperwork helped me prepare for what I wanted to talk about and gave me a starting point.
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Dr. Yang is warm and empathic, and made me feel comfortable from the very beginning.
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Emma has been very supportive through major life changes for me. Her sweet and gentle nature made it easy for me to feel safe to open up to her. I am very grateful for her support and kindness.
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It was my first visit and she made me feel so safe. I opened up right away!
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You Don’t Have to Keep Losing Sleep Over Sleep
When sleep becomes difficult, it can start to feel like your nights—and eventually your days—revolve around whether or not you’ll be able to rest.
You don’t have to keep trying more sleep tips or figuring this out on your own. Whether you’re struggling with insomnia, anxiety about sleep, recurring nightmares, or another sleep concern, focused therapy can help you better understand what’s happening and work toward a healthier relationship with sleep.
When you’re ready, we’re here to help.
Schedule Your 1st Appointment
Sleep & Insomnia Therapy Across Chicago
We offer sleep and insomnia therapy at our Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Andersonville, and Loop offices, as well as telehealth throughout Illinois.
It is no mystery that Covid-19 has greatly affected many facets of our lives and for many of us, sleep is one of them. Researchers have begun to examine the impact of Covid-19 restrictions on sleep patterns as many of our routines have been disrupted. As compared to pre-pandemic sleep patterns, individuals have reported significant changes to sleep including later bedtime and wake time, reduced overall night-time sleep, increased napping, and overall poorer sleep quality (1, footnote). Other symptoms of poor sleep include difficulty falling asleep and/or staying asleep, waking up earlier than expected, and experiencing anxiety or worry about not sleeping. If any of these symptoms sound familiar to you, know that you are not alone and there is hope!