tried counting sheep or told if I laid in bed long enough, I was bound to pass out.

Even at that young age, I remember being deeply offended by those suggestions. I mean, of course, I’d tried both of these things, as well as avoided naps during the day, went to bed at a reasonable hour, forced myself not to look at the clock when I woke up in the middle of the night—and every other age-old sleep tactic you could imagine. But as I got older, sleep continued to evade me and what I didn’t know at the time was that it would take me decades to find a solution.

How My Insomnia Progressed

Sleepless nights have been a part of my make-up since I was just an infant. At first, my parents chalked it up to me being a particularly restless child. But by the time I was six, I was staying up an average of one night a week, and by staying up I mean I wasn’t sleeping at all—not even for a second. By the time I was in middle school, one sleepless night a week turned into two and that carried on through high school.

If you’ve ever lost sleep because of stress or pulled an all-nighter for work, you likely have an idea of how you’ll feel the next day: tired, grumpy, and a bit out of sorts. But the long term effects of sleep deprivation are no walk in the park. Insomnia, by definition, is a sleep disorder where you struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep. Some people struggle with short-term insomnia that lasts days or weeks, and then there are people like me with chronic insomnia that lasts for an extended period of time. (Related: Why Insomnia Makes Your Blood Pressure Skyrocket)

Slowly but surely, the impact of my insomnia began seeping through to other parts of my life. I struggled to think clearly, started having trouble with my memory, and concentrating became a real task. There were days I couldn’t focus in class and doing my homework became increasingly difficult. I also ran track and my performance began to suffer—and there were times I needed to skip meets entirely because of sleep deprivation.

Then, in 2008, during my sophomore year, I didn’t sleep for three nights in a row—for the very first time.

At this point, I had been to several therapists, and nothing they said seemed to work. I had also tried melatonin and was disappointed again. Feeling short on options, my parents and I decided to visit a sleep study center for some more vigorous testing.

The goal was to find out if there was something physically wrong that was causing me not to sleep. They tested me for everything including sleep apnea, narcolepsy, and sleepwalking. I came back negative for everything. Disheartened and at a loss, we were back to the drawing board once more. (Related: The Best Sleep-Better Products to Finally Help Cure Your Insomnia)

The Decision to Start Medication

For the next few years, I pushed through my insomnia. Every week, I laid awake one or two nights in a row—and on occasion, I’d go through a three-night stretch, which was always a nightmare. In college, my insomnia was made worse by anxiety. Adjusting to university life is hard enough, but not sleeping made it that much harder. The more stressed I was, the more it affected my sleep and within a year, I started noticing my insomnia transform. (Related: Can’t Sleep? 6 Weird Reasons You’re Still Awake)

When I was younger, on the nights I could sleep, I slept for a solid eight hours. On the nights I had insomnia, I couldn’t sleep at all. But in college, I struggled to sleep every night, and even on a “good” night, I got maybe four hours of sleep. And I still had nights where I wasn’t sleeping at all. I was at a loss. There were days when I actually felt like I was going insane. Any negative emotion I felt was multiplied exponentially because of my exhaustion. I no longer had the mental capacity to function normally and by the time I was a junior in 2013, I entertained the idea of trying medication.

This was a huge step for me because up until that point, I really believed a natural solution was out there. My whole life I had felt like my inability to sleep was linked to my emotions. I thought that if I continued talking to therapists and working through those thoughts and feelings, I’d somehow be able to sleep normally—but it became increasingly clear that that was wishful thinking. (Related: The Best Therapy and Mental Health Apps)

So, instead of going to see a mental health professional, this time, I went to a general practitioner explained my history with insomnia and asked for medication. I walked away from that appointment with two prescriptions in hand: an anti-anxiety medication to help calm my thoughts and Ambien, a sedative, to help me fall asleep.

Coming Across Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT-I)

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ambien, it’s an intense drug. It comes with a plethora of side-effects including confusion, agitation, hallucinations, memory loss—the list goes on. It’s why my doctor advised me to use it in times of utter desperation, which for me meant losing sleep for at least 72 hours straight. When I did pop a pill, it would knock me right out—to a scary degree, but at least it was getting the job done. (Related: This Is the Actual Definition of a “Good Night’s Sleep”)

I kept taking the sleeping pill for four more years. By then, I was 24-years-old and my insomnia was still very much there. Yes, the Ambien helped me sleep, but there were still nights I couldn’t sleep for hours, and nights I didn’t sleep at all. I felt like the meds weren’t really a long-term solution, they were just a crutch to make my insomnia more bearable. I started debating if I should go off of them, and then heard of some new studies that linked the prolonged use of Ambien to Alzheimer’s. I took my concerns to my doctor and ultimately made the decision to stop taking both medications (the anti-anxiety and Ambien) and start back at square one.

Over the next two years, I did my best to keep my insomnia at bay through natural methods. I tried everything. I worked on keeping my stress levels low by managing my time better and talking about my feelings. I tried avoiding screen time 30-minutes before bed. I also switched my workouts to the morning so I wasn’t hyped up on endorphins close to bedtime. Nothing worked. Then, in 2019, a reader from Cupcakes and Cashmere—the lifestyle blog for which I’m the VP of Content—suggested that I try something for my insomnia that I’d never even heard of: cognitive behavioral therapy, specifically for insomnia (CBT-I). She said that it had helped cure her insomnia naturally, which was music to my ears. (Related: How to Stop Insomnia, According to a Functional Life Coach)

Before this point, I had never heard of CBT-I, but I was so desperate for a solution that I was willing to try anything. So I decided to do some preliminary research and became very intrigued. Turns out, CBT-I is considered an effective, evidence-based treatment for managing chronic insomnia sans-sleeping pills, according to the National Sleep Foundation. I also learned that it’s the recommended first line of treatment for chronic insomnia by the National Institutes of Health, which blew my mind since no therapist or doctor had ever mentioned it to me before. So one night, when my insomnia had me awake at 3 a.m., I decided to Google ‘cognitive-behavioral therapists’ in my area. I clicked on the first person that popped up, a psychologist/sleep medicine specialist, and booked an appointment. (You can also search for a behavioral sleep medicine provider through the directory online at the Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine.)

How CBT-I Transformed the Way I Slept

My first CBT-I session focused on teaching me about sleep, particularly the two processes that regulate sleep and wakefulness: The homeostatic process, which regulates sleep intensity, and the circadian process, which regulates the time at which you need to fall asleep. As I began to understand, if both these processes are in sync, sleep quality increases significantly.

To help both these processes align, my therapist sent me home with a sleep journal (vs. a worry journal, although experts say that too can help with sleep). For the next week, I was told to stick to my normal schedule and jot down when I got into bed, how long it took me to fall asleep, how many times I woke up in the middle of the night, and how long I stayed awake during those periods.

When I went back for my second appointment, the therapist calculated my sleep efficiency based on what I had recorded by plugging it into an equation. Turns out, I was averaging six hours of sleep per night (vs. the seven-to-nine hours recommended by the Mayo Clinic), based on the nights I didn’t sleep at all and on the nights I slept a solid eight hours. That meant my sleep efficiency was 72 percent. A recommended sleep efficiency is 90 percent or higher, according to my therapist. (Related: New High-Tech Bandage Could Soon Diagnose Sleep Disorders)

Those numbers then set me up for the next step in the process: Sleep restriction. This method is a crucial part of CBT-I and is used to improve sleep efficiency by limiting the amount of time you’re allowed to be in bed at night.

Since I was averaging six hours of sleep, I was restricted to only spending six hours in bed each night—regardless of whether I actually slept during that time or not. The goal? To teach my body to get as much sleep as possible in six hours. Once I could do that, six hours would turn into six and a half, then seven, and so on until I found the exact hours of sleep I needed to function optimally.

With that, I also had to follow some rules around sleeping recommended by my therapist. For starters, I had to completely change the way I thought about my bed so it was no longer a place of stress and anxiety. It needed to become a place where I slept and was intimate. That’s it. So I worked on making my bedroom a restful, distraction-free, and minimalistic space. Now, there’s not much else in my bedroom except for my bed, which TBH is as zen as it gets. (Related: Orthosomnia Is the New Sleep Disorder You Haven’t Heard Of)

If I wanted to do something to wind down before bed, like read a book, or chat with my fiancé, it had to happen outside of my bedroom. The same went for waking up in the middle of the night. Instead of just laying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I had to get up and go elsewhere. A part of that was to help make the bed less worrisome, but it also accelerated my sleep drive, aka my biological need for sleep.  Now, instead of spending hours in my bed awake, I got out of bed, read a book in dim lighting, and started feeling sleepy much faster. (Related: The 5-Minute Yoga-Meditation Mash-Up That Relieves Insomnia)

For the next month and a half, I followed these rules to the T and to my absolute surprise, started seeing progress on a weekly basis. In just six weeks, I was sleeping eight hours a night, on most nights, which seriously improved my quality of life.

Looking Ahead

Now nearly six months since starting CBT-I, I consider my insomnia cured. I still go to therapy once every three-to-four months, but now it’s mostly to just check in on how I’m doing.

But there are still things that trigger my insomnia—like drinking. If I have a glass of hard alcohol a few hours before bedtime, I almost always wake up in the middle of the night. (Which, btw, is a common occurrence regardless of whether a history of insomnia is present, as alcohol decreases REM sleep—the most restorative phase of sleep—in addition to wreaking havoc on other parts of sleep too.)

Working out too close to bedtime can also do some serious damage to my ability to score meaningful shut-eye. So, I try to exercise early enough in the day so that I’m not too hyped up to fall asleep. (Cardio in the morning helps ensure that my body is tired enough to fall asleep that night.) And, not shockingly, screens—be it my phone, computer, or TV—also trigger my insomnia. So, I try to start unwinding (meaning no devices) at least an hour before I need to be asleep, which can help make falling and staying asleep a bit easier. (Related: 3 Ways to Prevent Post-Workout Insomnia)

The biggest trigger for me, though, are my emotions. Recently, since Los Angles, where I live, issued a shelter-in-place order for the coronavirus, my anxiety is heightened. My days aren’t as structured, I’m exercising less, so I’m not as tired, and in general, sleeping just hasn’t been easy. I’ve also been waking up in the middle of the night more often, and have struggled to have positive thoughts. All of this has made sleep more challenging, but I know it’s all a part of the process. I know there will always be times where my sleep is compromised because life will always have its ups and downs.

But even though my recovery hasn’t been linear, I still haven’t had a single entirely-sleepless night since I started CBT-I. In short, I’ve slept better than I have my entire life—and for that, I couldn’t be more thankful.