Behavioral Sleep Medicine
In-person in Orlando & online across FL, NY & NJ.
Align with your body’s natural rhythm.
Have sleep conversations with your doctor hit a dead end?
You want to take getting good rest seriously, but the 3 question screener at the doctor’s office isn’t cutting it.
You’re ready to take a thorough look at your sleep, but . . .
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There just isn’t time at your annual physical.
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You wonder if they’d know the right questions to ask (other than, “do you snore?” which you’ve been asked a hundred times already).
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You're thinking, “if my doctor isn't worried about it, I shouldn't be either.” Except you are.
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They jump to offering you a sleep med before you've even identified the problem.
Together, we can look at the bigger picture.
Behavioral Sleep Medicine (BSM) is a sub-specialty within the field of Sleep Medicine that incorporates the complex roles of psychology, behavior, and emotion into the medical assessment and treatment of sleep disorders.
BSM works from the perspective that each person is a whole human with unique biological traits, and unique personal factors that impact sleep health.
When sleep issues show up, they aren’t functioning in a vacuum. They are intricately connected with both your biology (genetic predisposition, unique sleep need, natural circadian rhythm) and your life circumstances (anxiety, high pressure career demands, eating & social schedules, thought patterns, family responsibilities, learned behavioral patterns, coping skills, traumatic life experiences).
In working with a BSM provider, you know you’re getting specialty feedback that looks at the whole picture of your experience.
What is a BSM Provider?
A Diplomate in Behavioral Sleep Medicine (DBSM) is a licensed medical, dental, or mental healthcare provider who is board certified in behavioral sleep medicine by the Board of Behavioral Sleep Medicine. The certification process requires a minimum of 500 hours of supervised training and clinical experience, and passing a specialty BSM certification examination.
Put simply, working with a DBSM means you aren’t just seeing a general therapist who read a blog post about sleep, or a primary care physician who heard a lecture on mindfulness once.
It means your provider, whether a doctor or a therapist, has specialty training in the evaluation and treatment of sleep disorders from both both medical and psychological perspectives.
According to the Board of Behavioral Sleep Medicine, “The DBSM represents a standard of specialty competence in behavioral sleep medicine by which the public, government and regulatory agencies, and health care organizations can identify skill and expertise.”
Behavioral Sleep Medicine is innately interdisciplinary, meaning I will confidently collaborate with all of your specialty providers to make sure we’re addressing your sleep concerns from all angles. A BSM provider can help you navigate the combination of medical and psychological support needed to find the right mixture of treatment approaches for optimizing your success.
Does this mean that as a DBSM, I can “do it all”? No, but it does mean I know how to help YOU do it all.
Complete a sleep evaluation to identify any present sleep disorders, and assess for medical symptoms, psychological symptoms, and life factors that are playing a role in your sleep.
Teach you to evaluate your own sleep patterns using specific data points, re-align your sleep with your body’s intrinsic sleep rhythms, and re-train your body and brain for sleep.
Provide behavioral treatment of certain sleep disorders and concerns like insomnia, hypersomnia, narcolepsy, nightmares, parasomnias, nocturnal panic attacks, phobic response to CPAP.
What I can do:
What I can help you do:
Navigate creating a sleep specific medication plan with your prescriber that will work in tandem with our behavioral treatment plan.
Connect with additional diagnostic sleep testing such as polysomnogram, CPAP titration study, multiple sleep latency test, maintenance of wakefulness test.
Advocate for sleep-related accommodations with your work or school.
How It Works
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Assess
Behavioral Sleep Medicine treatments are very active! We’ll start with an assessment phase where you take an active role both in session and outside of session in observing and documenting your own sleep patterns.
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Treat
Then we’ll move into a treatment phase where you’ll be making specific adjustments to your daily routine based on our treatment plan. Then when you’re feeling good about your progress, we’ll review what worked well for you and make a plan for how you can continue progressing on your own.
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Celebrate
We’ll end by reviewing what worked well for you and celebrating your wins together! You’ll know I’m always here for a check in, tune up, or extra encouragement if life ever shakes things up for your sleep regimen in the future.
What to expect:
At the start of our work, I’ll share my recommendations for what treatment approach I think would best suit your concerns and a general timeline for what that might look like. BSM treatments are often short term, sometimes as few as 4-6 sessions if your condition is fairly straightforward or uncomplicated.
Sometimes the process can take longer depending on your goals. For example, tapering off of a sleep medication is usually done very slowly over an extended period with ongoing support and collaboration with your whole treatment team.
You may find while working on your sleep that the principles we’re learning apply to other areas of your life that you’d like to spend more time working on.
This is one of my favorite parts of the job,
when the changes we make impact so much more than your sleep, and new doors open for us to explore together.
Behavioral Sleep Medicine can help you . . .
Understand your own sleep patterns
Identify what’s getting in the way of healthy sleep
Re-train your body and brain for rest
Re-align your sleep schedule with your body’s natural rhythm
Create new thinking and behavior patterns that support your best rest
Feel confident in your body’s ability to sleep