How to Sleep Better with Anxiety: CBT-I for Racing Thoughts & Insomnia
Anxiety & Sleep – A Vicious Cycle
Ever lie in bed, exhausted, but your mind won’t stop racing? You’re not alone. Anxiety and sleep problems are deeply connected—when you're anxious, your body is on high alert, making it nearly impossible to fall asleep. At the same time, lack of sleep worsens anxiety, creating a vicious cycle that many struggle to break.
If you’ve been searching for “how to sleep with anxiety” or “how to stop racing thoughts at night”, you’re in the right place. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is a proven, medication-free treatment that helps retrain your brain for better sleep, even if anxiety keeps you awake.
In this post, you’ll learn:
✔ Why anxiety prevents sleep
✔ How CBT-I can help stop nighttime overthinking
✔ 5 practical techniques to calm anxiety and fall asleep faster
Let’s dive in.
Why Anxiety Keeps You Awake
1. Anxiety Activates Your Stress Response (Fight-or-Flight Mode)
When you feel anxious, your brain perceives a threat, even if none exists. This triggers your fight-or-flight response, releasing cortisol and adrenaline—stress hormones that increase heart rate, body temperature, and alertness. This is helpful when you need to react quickly to danger, but terrible when you’re trying to sleep.
🔹 Common signs of nighttime anxiety:
Racing heart or restlessness
Tightness in the chest
Feeling “on edge” even when tired
Constantly replaying conversations or thinking about tomorrow’s to-do list
2. The Overthinking Loop: “I Need to Sleep Right Now!”
One of the most common sleep-disrupting thoughts is worrying about sleep itself. People with anxiety often get caught in a negative loop:
💭 “I have to wake up early—why am I still awake?”
💭 “If I don’t fall asleep now, I won’t function tomorrow.”
💭 “I always have trouble sleeping. What if I never fix this?”
This performance anxiety around sleep increases arousal, making it even harder to drift off.
3. The Brain Associates the Bed with Stress
For many people with insomnia and anxiety, the bed becomes a place of frustration, not relaxation. When your brain associates lying in bed with stress, it automatically triggers wakefulness.
How CBT-I Helps Reduce Anxiety & Improve Sleep
CBT-I is the gold standard for treating insomnia, and it’s especially helpful for those struggling with anxiety. Here’s how:
1. Cognitive Restructuring: Changing Unhelpful Sleep Thoughts
CBT-I helps identify and challenge negative thoughts about sleep, replacing them with realistic, calming beliefs.
🔹 Example of Thought Reframing:
❌ “If I don’t get 8 hours of sleep, my whole day will be ruined.”
✅ “Even with less sleep, I can still function. My body will adjust.”
By breaking the cycle of catastrophic thinking, you remove mental barriers to sleep.
2. Sleep Restriction Therapy: Resetting Your Sleep Drive
When you have anxiety-related insomnia, you may try going to bed early or lying in bed for hours, hoping you’ll eventually fall asleep. Ironically, this makes insomnia worse.
CBT-I uses sleep restriction therapy to:
✔ Limit time in bed to increase sleep efficiency
✔ Strengthen your body’s natural sleep drive
✔ Reduce time spent tossing and turning
This trains your brain to associate the bed with deep sleep, not wakefulness.
3. Stimulus Control: Breaking the “Bed = Stress” Connection
If you spend hours in bed scrolling, watching TV, or worrying, your brain learns that the bed is a place for thinking, not sleeping.
CBT-I retrains your brain by following these rules:
✔ Go to bed only when sleepy
✔ Get out of bed if you can’t sleep after 20 minutes (sit in a dimly lit space and do a quiet activity)
✔ Use your bed only for sleep (and intimacy)—no phones, work, or TV
Over time, this rebuilds a strong bed-sleep connection.
4. Relaxation Training: Calming the Nervous System
People with anxiety often struggle to “turn off” their brains at night. CBT-I incorporates relaxation techniques to prepare the mind and body for rest.
✔ Deep breathing exercises (slows heart rate, reduces stress hormones)
✔ Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) (releases tension stored in the body)
✔ Guided imagery (mentally shifting focus to calming scenes)
These techniques help lower nighttime arousal so sleep comes naturally.
5 Practical Techniques to Sleep Better with Anxiety Tonight
💤 1. Use the "Worry Window" Method
Instead of bottling up stress, set aside 15-30 minutes during the day as your designated “worry time.” Write down everything on your mind. When anxious thoughts arise at bedtime, remind yourself: “I’ll think about this during my worry time tomorrow.”
💤 2. Stop Checking the Clock
Watching the time fuels sleep performance anxiety—leading to even more stress. Turn your clock away, and remind yourself: "My body knows how to sleep without me tracking the hours."
💤 3. Get Out of Bed If You Can’t Sleep
Lying awake for hours reinforces wakefulness. If you’re not asleep after 20 minutes, get out of bed and do something relaxing (read a book, listen to soft music) until you feel drowsy.
💤 4. Try "Cognitive Shuffling"
Cognitive shuffling is a mental trick that helps disrupt anxious thinking. Pick a random word (like “apple”) and think of unrelated words that start with each letter (A = astronaut, P = piano, P = pumpkin…). This prevents ruminating and lulls the brain into a relaxed state.
💤 5. Use Guided Imagery for Sleep
Instead of focusing on worries, visualize a peaceful scene (floating on a lake, walking through a forest). Guided imagery redirects the brain’s focus and triggers relaxation.
Ready for Restful Sleep? Try CBT-I Today
If anxiety keeps you up at night, you don’t have to rely on medications or temporary fixes. CBT-I is a science-backed, long-term solution that helps retrain your brain for deep, restorative sleep.
📌 At Everwell Behavioral Health, I offer expert-led online CBT-I therapy in 42 states. If you’re ready to break the cycle of sleepless nights, let’s work together.
📅 Schedule a free 15-minute consultation today to start your journey toward better sleep—without medication!
