How ACT Complements CBT-i: Treating Insomnia

The Modern Struggle With Sleep

If you’ve ever tried to force yourself to sleep, you already know how that goes.
The harder you try, the more alert you feel. Your body’s tired, but your mind becomes a commentator — analyzing, worrying, strategizing.

CBT-i (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia) has long been the gold-standard treatment for breaking this pattern. It’s practical, evidence-based, and helps most people reset their sleep within a few weeks.

But sleep isn’t just about behavior — it’s also about our relationship with rest.
That’s where Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) comes in.

Together, ACT and CBT-i create a balanced, compassionate, and sustainable approach to healing insomnia.

What CBT-i Does So Well

CBT-i helps you retrain your body and brain to associate bed with sleep again.

Core strategies include:

• Sleep restriction: building healthy sleep pressure by limiting time in bed

• Stimulus control: re-pairing bed with sleep, not stress or screens

• Cognitive restructuring: challenging unhelpful thoughts like “I’ll never function tomorrow”

• Sleep hygiene: optimizing light, caffeine, and routines

CBT-i works — but it can also feel rigid or frustrating at times.
You might know what to do but struggle to follow through.
That’s because the real obstacle often isn’t the protocol — it’s the emotional resistance that shows up around it: frustration, anxiety, fear of being tired, or self-criticism when sleep doesn’t come.

And this is exactly where ACT complements CBT-i beautifully.

ACT: Learning to Let Go of the Fight

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) isn’t about “thinking positively.”
It’s about developing psychological flexibility — the skill of making space for discomfort while still doing what matters.

Russ Harris, one of ACT’s leading voices, describes this as learning to hold yourself kindly when reality doesn’t match what you want — what he calls “the reality gap.”

ACT teaches six key processes that change your relationship with insomnia:

1. Acceptance – Allowing wakefulness, worry, or fatigue to exist without trying to control them.

2. Defusion – Noticing thoughts as mental events, not facts.

3. Being present – Grounding in the current moment, instead of future catastrophes.

4. Values – Reconnecting with what matters most, even through tiredness.

5. Self-as-context – Remembering that you are more than your thoughts or fatigue.

6. Committed action – Taking meaningful steps that align with your values, not your fears.

This shift — from control to acceptance — is often the missing link in lasting sleep recovery.

Where ACT Strengthens CBT-i

1. Acceptance Over Control

CBT-i asks you to get out of bed during wakefulness; ACT helps you accept the discomfort of that step without adding struggle.
You learn to ride the wave instead of fighting it — finding peace even in wakefulness.

2. Defusion Over Rumination

Rather than arguing with your mind (“I will sleep!”), ACT invites you to notice the thought and let it pass.
A quiet “Thanks, mind — I’ve heard that one before” is often more powerful than hours of mental debate.

3. Values Over Perfection

ACT shifts focus from “perfect sleep” to living a life guided by values — being kind, patient, connected — even on tired days.
Sleep becomes one part of a meaningful life, not the measure of it.

4. Mindfulness Over Monitoring

CBT-i encourages tracking, but ACT ensures tracking doesn’t become obsession.
By noticing sleep patterns mindfully — without judgment — you prevent orthosomnia, the sleep-tracking anxiety described by Jade Wu in Hello Sleep.

How the Two Work Together in Therapy

1. Understanding the Paradox of Sleep
Effort keeps you awake. Acceptance allows rest.
CBT-i teaches structure; ACT teaches surrender. Together, they reset both body and mind.

2. Pairing Behavior With Emotional Flexibility
During “awake windows,” clients practise mindful grounding — Russ Harris’s Drop the Anchor or a compassionate hand on the chest — to stay calm while following behavioral rules.

3. Defusing Sleep Stories
Common thoughts like “Something’s wrong with me” are gently labeled — “Ah, the broken sleeper story” — and released. The goal isn’t to erase thoughts, just to stop letting them run the night.

4. Clarifying Values
“What kind of person do I want to be, even when I’m tired?”
“What does rest help me show up for?”
These questions reconnect sleep work to something bigger than the night — life itself.

5. Maintaining Through Acceptance
Even after progress, bad nights happen. ACT teaches resilience:
“This is just a restless night. My body knows how to sleep; I’ll let it come when it’s ready.”
That mindset prevents relapse and builds long-term peace with rest.

What the Research Shows

Recent studies highlight how effective this integration can be:

• Ong et al. (2012) found that acceptance-based approaches improved adherence and reduced rumination during CBT-i.

• Dalrymple et al. (2020) showed that adding mindfulness and values work led to longer-term maintenance of sleep gains.

In short, ACT makes CBT-i stick — not by changing sleep faster, but by helping clients relate to sleeplessness with calm rather than fear.
That’s what ultimately quiets the nervous system and allows rest to return naturally.

Healing Your Relationship With Sleep

Jade Wu describes sleep as a “friend you’ve been fighting with.”
ACT helps you end the fight.

It’s about approaching yourself — and your nights — with gentleness instead of judgment.
No more proving, striving, or perfecting. Just an honest, kind relationship with rest, where even wakefulness can feel peaceful.

When you stop chasing sleep, you create space for it to find you again.

From Control to Connection

CBT-i teaches you how to sleep.
ACT teaches you how to stop fighting with sleep.

Together, they form a full-circle approach to healing insomnia — one that honours the science of behavior change and the art of self-compassion.

The goal isn’t eight flawless hours; it’s a calmer, more trusting relationship with rest and with yourself.
When you stop measuring your worth by your sleep, you begin to rest in ways that matter most.

If you’ve been lying awake, dreading the night, or feeling defeated by another morning of fatigue, you’re not alone — and change is possible.
I help people all across British Columbia rebuild a healthy, trusting relationship with sleep through CBT-i and ACT-based therapy.

Let’s start helping you rest again — not by forcing sleep, but by learning to let it come naturally.

References

Dalrymple, K. L., Fiorentino, L., Politi, M. C., Possemato, K., & Pigeon, W. R. (2020). Acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia: A pilot study. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 15, 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2019.11.005

Harris, R. (2012). The Reality Slap: Finding peace and fulfillment when life hurts. Boston, MA: New Harbinger.

Ong, J. C., Ulmer, C. S., & Manber, R. (2012). Improving sleep with mindfulness and acceptance: A metacognitive model of insomnia. Behavior Research and Therapy, 50(11), 651–660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2012.08.001

Wu, J. (2023). Hello Sleep: The science and art of overcoming insomnia. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Essentials.