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Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep: Solutions to Insomnia for Those with Depression, Anxiety or Chronic Pain
In Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep, two psychologists specializing in sleep and mood disorders show readers with insomnia and often comorbid disorders such as depression, anxiety, and chronic pain proven methods from cognitive behavioral therapy for getting the sleep they need and improving their symptoms in the process.
269 pages, ebook
First published April 1, 2007
102 people are currently reading
788 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
October 16, 2016
I haven't been sleeping well lately, so I checked this out of my local library. It was a really insightful read.
The main piece of advice I'm taking away from the book is to go to bed every night and wake up every morning at the same time. This trains your body that those are the times to sleep and wake, respectively. It may seem innocuous to sleep in on weekends, but that's literally the equivalent of artificially inducing several hours of jet lag on yourself.
Only give yourself as much time in bed as you are currently able to sleep. For example, if you find that you're only getting 6 solid hours of sleep each night, go to sleep at midnight and set your alarm for 6 AM. Lying in bed longer rarely induces more sleep. All it does is reinforce a subconscious connection between lying in bed while awake (bad idea), and make you sleep less the next day. "After being awake for a longer than normal period, you typically sleep longer and more deeply than usual." Essentially, forcing yourself to wake up at 6 AM is a great way to make yourself really, really tired by 11 PM. Additionally, "sleeping in" is usually pretty useless from a sleep quality point of view. Dozing in bed for several hours after you first wake up doesn't have any impact on how well-rested you feel when you finally do get up. All you're doing is reducing how sleepy you will feel when you do go to bed later that night.
On the flip side, going to bed early also sabatoges your ability to get a good night's sleep. You might think you're giving yourself more opportunity to sleep, but if your regular bedtime is 11 PM, and you try to fall asleep at 9 PM, your body is not going to cooperate. It thinks of sleep at 9 PM like a nap. You'll wake up at 10 PM nice and rested, and it will be even harder to fall back asleep even by your usual 11 PM bedtime.
As your quality of sleep improves, you can move your bedtime back by small increments until you are hopefully able to achieve a full night's sleep. (Keeping in mind that it may not be 8 hours! And it may not be the same amount of sleep as you used to get when you were younger, or what you will get when you are older.) If, for example, you need to get up two hours earlier than usual for whatever reason, going to bed early may actually be a bad idea. You're likely to have poor quality sleep in that case, whereas if you went to bed at your normal time and just shortened your sleep by two hours, you'd probably be fine. I know I've had some absolutely terrible seemingly sleepless nights, and then felt completely fine the next day. Not being able to sleep as much or as well as you want is often more frustrating than it is actually harmful.
Here's a fun fact: In a typical night's sleep, you will wake up 12 times for a total of 30 minutes of time awake. (Sleep is fucking weird.)
I've been struggling lately because I often wake up about an hour after initially falling asleep. The more frequently this happens, the more upset I become. I get angry, sad, frustrated, and just lay around moping about the fact that I'm awake.
The problem is, the more frustrated you are about your lack of sleep, the more weight you put on these awakenings. You are more likely to remember them as evidence that you are sleeping poorly, which makes you toss and turn even more as you wallow in your frustration of not sleeping. Or you may wake up as normal in the course of the night and really work yourself into a upset state because of it- waking yourself up even further. If you had just recognized the incident as a normal part of the sleep process and relaxed, you'd have been likely to just fall back asleep. You probably wouldn't even remember it in the morning.
I've been trying these suggestions about setting a rigid schedule and developing my body clock's rhythym and it has definitely helped. Yes, that means I have been setting an alarm for 6 AM on the weekends and actually getting out of bed. I've always found it extremely difficult to just hop out of bed the minute my alarm sounds, but since reading the evidence that all the snoozing is not making me feel well rested, I decided to give it a try. I still struggle, but more or less I've been able to get up without hitting snooze. I find that I am absolutely miserable for about 3 minutes, and then I feel fine. In fact, it's kind of awesome to find yourself awake early on a weekend with the whole day ahead of you and all to yourself. I've been doing a lot of baking!
There's a lot of useful advice and encouragement in this book, but if I had to boil it down to one sentence, it would be: The less you are sleeping, the less time you should spend in bed. Perfectly counterintuitive, but it's backed up with logic and has actually worked for me.
The main piece of advice I'm taking away from the book is to go to bed every night and wake up every morning at the same time. This trains your body that those are the times to sleep and wake, respectively. It may seem innocuous to sleep in on weekends, but that's literally the equivalent of artificially inducing several hours of jet lag on yourself.
Only give yourself as much time in bed as you are currently able to sleep. For example, if you find that you're only getting 6 solid hours of sleep each night, go to sleep at midnight and set your alarm for 6 AM. Lying in bed longer rarely induces more sleep. All it does is reinforce a subconscious connection between lying in bed while awake (bad idea), and make you sleep less the next day. "After being awake for a longer than normal period, you typically sleep longer and more deeply than usual." Essentially, forcing yourself to wake up at 6 AM is a great way to make yourself really, really tired by 11 PM. Additionally, "sleeping in" is usually pretty useless from a sleep quality point of view. Dozing in bed for several hours after you first wake up doesn't have any impact on how well-rested you feel when you finally do get up. All you're doing is reducing how sleepy you will feel when you do go to bed later that night.
On the flip side, going to bed early also sabatoges your ability to get a good night's sleep. You might think you're giving yourself more opportunity to sleep, but if your regular bedtime is 11 PM, and you try to fall asleep at 9 PM, your body is not going to cooperate. It thinks of sleep at 9 PM like a nap. You'll wake up at 10 PM nice and rested, and it will be even harder to fall back asleep even by your usual 11 PM bedtime.
As your quality of sleep improves, you can move your bedtime back by small increments until you are hopefully able to achieve a full night's sleep. (Keeping in mind that it may not be 8 hours! And it may not be the same amount of sleep as you used to get when you were younger, or what you will get when you are older.) If, for example, you need to get up two hours earlier than usual for whatever reason, going to bed early may actually be a bad idea. You're likely to have poor quality sleep in that case, whereas if you went to bed at your normal time and just shortened your sleep by two hours, you'd probably be fine. I know I've had some absolutely terrible seemingly sleepless nights, and then felt completely fine the next day. Not being able to sleep as much or as well as you want is often more frustrating than it is actually harmful.
Here's a fun fact: In a typical night's sleep, you will wake up 12 times for a total of 30 minutes of time awake. (Sleep is fucking weird.)
I've been struggling lately because I often wake up about an hour after initially falling asleep. The more frequently this happens, the more upset I become. I get angry, sad, frustrated, and just lay around moping about the fact that I'm awake.
The problem is, the more frustrated you are about your lack of sleep, the more weight you put on these awakenings. You are more likely to remember them as evidence that you are sleeping poorly, which makes you toss and turn even more as you wallow in your frustration of not sleeping. Or you may wake up as normal in the course of the night and really work yourself into a upset state because of it- waking yourself up even further. If you had just recognized the incident as a normal part of the sleep process and relaxed, you'd have been likely to just fall back asleep. You probably wouldn't even remember it in the morning.
I've been trying these suggestions about setting a rigid schedule and developing my body clock's rhythym and it has definitely helped. Yes, that means I have been setting an alarm for 6 AM on the weekends and actually getting out of bed. I've always found it extremely difficult to just hop out of bed the minute my alarm sounds, but since reading the evidence that all the snoozing is not making me feel well rested, I decided to give it a try. I still struggle, but more or less I've been able to get up without hitting snooze. I find that I am absolutely miserable for about 3 minutes, and then I feel fine. In fact, it's kind of awesome to find yourself awake early on a weekend with the whole day ahead of you and all to yourself. I've been doing a lot of baking!
There's a lot of useful advice and encouragement in this book, but if I had to boil it down to one sentence, it would be: The less you are sleeping, the less time you should spend in bed. Perfectly counterintuitive, but it's backed up with logic and has actually worked for me.
December 10, 2021
With a recent bout of acute insomnia, I read this book. Overall, I found it enlightening and have noticed a mental shift in how I view my sleep. It is a workbook with various exercises, some more helpful than others. Some of my key takeaways include not engaging in “safety behaviors” (skipping/cutting back on things after a bad night sleep) because it trains your brain to think you can’t survive without perfect sleep. Also, I was surprised to find that going to bed early after a bad night is counterproductive because your body clock won’t be ready for sleep yet. Additionally, 8 hours is an arbitrary number and it’s best to work within a time window that’s realistic for you at that time (trimming back your time in bed - if you can’t sleep for 8, why would you get in bed early to be there for 10hrs?). I give this four stars because it has really opened my eyes to seeing sleep differently. Has it solved my insomnia? No. Has it made an improvement to my relationship with sleep? Yes. I recommend this book for those that may be struggling with insomnia, but recognize that it won’t be the only resource you need to overcome what you’re going through.
June 18, 2010
I'm not sure what I was expecting but this book brought nothing new to the table that anyone with sleep problems hasn't known for years. Not a bad book, just not overly helpful.
December 24, 2018
extremely helpful and easy to follow even when you are sleep deprived (and that's important)
October 20, 2021
New information to me. Very helpful.
July 7, 2025
tbh might start reading self help books. this book was super insightful 😛
March 30, 2018
Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep: Solutions to Insomnia for Those with Depression, Anxiety or Chronic Pain by (2009) by Coleen Carney and Rachel Manber is a solid book that provides a workbook style approach to getting better sleep.
I had some trouble getting to sleep for a few weeks and the book has helped with suggestions and also a score about whether you really have insomnia or not. I don't. This in itself was quite helpful. The book unfortunately doesn't include anything on sleep tracking fitness watches that are now used by many people to help them track their own sleep. The part of the book on what to do when you wake up and can't get back to sleep was a little disappointing. But perhaps fundamentally because there are no great fixes for this. There are some good suggestions about it though.
There are no miracle cures in the book but it is full of systematic and useful suggestions about what to do to get better sleep. Worth a read for anyone having problems sleeping.
I had some trouble getting to sleep for a few weeks and the book has helped with suggestions and also a score about whether you really have insomnia or not. I don't. This in itself was quite helpful. The book unfortunately doesn't include anything on sleep tracking fitness watches that are now used by many people to help them track their own sleep. The part of the book on what to do when you wake up and can't get back to sleep was a little disappointing. But perhaps fundamentally because there are no great fixes for this. There are some good suggestions about it though.
There are no miracle cures in the book but it is full of systematic and useful suggestions about what to do to get better sleep. Worth a read for anyone having problems sleeping.
Read
November 25, 2023Still reading it, a bit at a time, but: IT'S WORKING! For the first time in over 2 years, last night was the 2nd time in a week when I slept all night with only melatonin as a crutch!! No 4AM benadryl or valerian or CBD: just plain old unmedicated sleep. YES!
February 5, 2011
It was more like a workbook. Didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. Just went into "greater" depth. If you consider 156 pages of mostly workbook to be "in depth."
abandoned
September 11, 2023Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep: Solutions to Insomnia for Those with Depression, Anxiety Or Chronic Pain by Colleen E. Carney and Rachel Manber, Forward by Richard R. Bootzin, Ph.D.
200-page Libby Ebook
Genre: Self-Help, Mental Health, Psychology, Sleep Disturbances
Featuring: Publisher's Note, Insomnia, Quiz, Sleep Log, Graphics, Owl or Lark, Depression, Anxiety, Chronic Pain, Appendix, Resources, Books CONTENTS:
The Scope of the Insomnia Problem
Learning About Your Sleep
Understanding Insomnia and Your Sleep System
Sleep-incompatible Behaviors: Tools for Change
Optimizing Your Sleep System by Changing Your Habits
Quieting Your Mind: Tools for Change
When Thinking About Sleep Gets in the Way of Sleep
Issues With Substances and Medications
When Things Get in the Way of Treatment
Rating as a movie: PG
Quotes: "As is made clear in the workbook, people with sleep disturbances often have unrealistic expectations about sleep and exaggerated concerns about the effects of even a single night of poor sleep."
"Our approach doesn't require that you stop whatever therapy you're currently receiving."
My rating: DNF on page 54
My thoughts: 🔖Page 17 of 200 Ch. 1 The Scope of the Insomnia Problem - This is boring, putting me to sleep. 😴 It works!
🔖54 six pages into Ch. 3 Understanding Insomnia and Your Sleep System - This book reads like a textbook and since I have determined I don't have insomnia I'm not sure it's worth continuing, but on the other hand, I don't have anything else to read, well I do but I'll have to look for it.
Why I quit: This book started to feel like a chore and was becoming burdensome to read. It was not going to be beneficial enough for me to continue. I was bored out of my mind. I could read 10 books and in time it would take me to finish these 200 pages, so I'm moving on.
Recommend to others: Sure. If you have these issues the information is there.
200-page Libby Ebook
Genre: Self-Help, Mental Health, Psychology, Sleep Disturbances
Featuring: Publisher's Note, Insomnia, Quiz, Sleep Log, Graphics, Owl or Lark, Depression, Anxiety, Chronic Pain, Appendix, Resources, Books CONTENTS:
The Scope of the Insomnia Problem
Learning About Your Sleep
Understanding Insomnia and Your Sleep System
Sleep-incompatible Behaviors: Tools for Change
Optimizing Your Sleep System by Changing Your Habits
Quieting Your Mind: Tools for Change
When Thinking About Sleep Gets in the Way of Sleep
Issues With Substances and Medications
When Things Get in the Way of Treatment
Rating as a movie: PG
Quotes: "As is made clear in the workbook, people with sleep disturbances often have unrealistic expectations about sleep and exaggerated concerns about the effects of even a single night of poor sleep."
"Our approach doesn't require that you stop whatever therapy you're currently receiving."
My rating: DNF on page 54
My thoughts: 🔖Page 17 of 200 Ch. 1 The Scope of the Insomnia Problem - This is boring, putting me to sleep. 😴 It works!
🔖54 six pages into Ch. 3 Understanding Insomnia and Your Sleep System - This book reads like a textbook and since I have determined I don't have insomnia I'm not sure it's worth continuing, but on the other hand, I don't have anything else to read, well I do but I'll have to look for it.
Why I quit: This book started to feel like a chore and was becoming burdensome to read. It was not going to be beneficial enough for me to continue. I was bored out of my mind. I could read 10 books and in time it would take me to finish these 200 pages, so I'm moving on.
Recommend to others: Sure. If you have these issues the information is there.
July 5, 2025
A few helpful tidbits here and there, some things I've heard many times already, and some pieces of advice I simply disagree with. The idea of getting up or leaving the bedroom when unable to sleep is just something I'm not gonna do, because IMO I find it better to lie there and rest my eyes and fall into a semi wakeful state, then being fully awake. This book also doesn't account for shift workers who CANNOT maintain a predictable schedule. While no doubt this book has helped some people, I got little out of it l.
September 2, 2023
Have a few strategies to try when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep:
Get out of bed and leave the bedroom after 20 minutes of not being able to fall back asleep
Find something to do that is pleasant and calming but not too interesting, like wring in a notepad. (This will be a challenge)
Repeat the word THE a million times.
Build a castle room by room in my mind.
Get out of bed and leave the bedroom after 20 minutes of not being able to fall back asleep
Find something to do that is pleasant and calming but not too interesting, like wring in a notepad. (This will be a challenge)
Repeat the word THE a million times.
Build a castle room by room in my mind.
April 30, 2025
It’s always nice to read a self help book but didn’t teach me much new. Basically don’t have stigma around sleep, only go to bed when tired, create a good sleep hygiene routine.
This has a lot of exercises and info to help you pinpoint what is making you not sleep and how to fix it.
Quick and easy read, some good tips but nothing mind blowing.
This has a lot of exercises and info to help you pinpoint what is making you not sleep and how to fix it.
Quick and easy read, some good tips but nothing mind blowing.
February 13, 2023
This book was written for people with insomnia because of "depression, anxiety, or chronic pain," which, thankfully, I don't have. So I'm not its intended audience. But I did pick up some good direction for improving my sleep. Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia.
July 16, 2018
This is the first book on sleep advice that I have read, and I really enjoyed it - lots of insightful tips and strategies to help with sleep!
June 1, 2018
Good solid CBT-I information...
January 14, 2021
good tool for helping adults with managing sleep issues, worksheets were helpful compliments
September 10, 2021
It’s a very dry book. Some of the things discussed were new and others I’ve heard before. We’ll see how it goes. Some of the worksheets are great, but others just seem like a waste of paper.
October 9, 2021
Nothing new.
June 15, 2023
a great read for those struggling with insomnia
March 5, 2024
Very helpful tips and the science/ thought process behind them.
May 23, 2024
Straightforward and helpful.
January 2, 2025
Helpful and well written! Non-alarmist for people with sleep problems that may worsen anxiety. Recommend!
May 16, 2025
Este libro debería enseñarse en las escuelas
Want to read
June 25, 2025Recommended on:
Overcoming insomnia: improving sleep hygiene and treating disordered sleep with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia | Ashley Mason, Ph.D.
The Peter Attia Drive
Overcoming insomnia: improving sleep hygiene and treating disordered sleep with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia | Ashley Mason, Ph.D.
The Peter Attia Drive
June 28, 2025
I've been trying to improve my sleep for years and have made slow progress. I was surprised that this book held some new things to try...or at least said them in a way that I was willing to try them!
August 25, 2025
On my journey into self help books 😂 honestly a really nice validating read
March 16, 2017
This book is immensely helpful!
Over the past decade that I've dealt with and attempted to treat insomnia via theropy, medications, mindfulness, etc, this book is easily the most helpful of anything I've ever read. It incorporates many techniques proven to help eliminate insomnia and sleep troubles and guides you through every step. I highly recommend it if you cannot find a good CBTI therapist near you.
Over the past decade that I've dealt with and attempted to treat insomnia via theropy, medications, mindfulness, etc, this book is easily the most helpful of anything I've ever read. It incorporates many techniques proven to help eliminate insomnia and sleep troubles and guides you through every step. I highly recommend it if you cannot find a good CBTI therapist near you.
January 17, 2024
Great advice and information, but incredibly hard to put into practice on your own.
Read
November 5, 2024I enjoyed the workbook format of the book, even while reading it through the Libby app. I expect the worksheets would have been more useful in a hard copy. Perhaps I could have made hard copies from the ebook.
I found the summaries at the end of each chapter quite useful. I expect they would be even more useful to someone who is depressed, anxious or in chronic pain.
I have occasional insomnia rather than chronic insomnia, so I'm not currently committed to implement many of the suggestions. Nevertheless I did find them useful, and feel they gave me some insight into what someone dealing with insomnia on a regular basis is dealing with. The sleep driver concept is one I need to think about more.
Read again in November 2024. Internal body clock. Sleep driver, balancing awake and active time with sleep time. The less time you spend awake and out of bed, the more diminished your drive to go to sleep. Get up at same time daily. Get morning sunshine whenever possible.
I found the summaries at the end of each chapter quite useful. I expect they would be even more useful to someone who is depressed, anxious or in chronic pain.
I have occasional insomnia rather than chronic insomnia, so I'm not currently committed to implement many of the suggestions. Nevertheless I did find them useful, and feel they gave me some insight into what someone dealing with insomnia on a regular basis is dealing with. The sleep driver concept is one I need to think about more.
Read again in November 2024. Internal body clock. Sleep driver, balancing awake and active time with sleep time. The less time you spend awake and out of bed, the more diminished your drive to go to sleep. Get up at same time daily. Get morning sunshine whenever possible.
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