June 19, 2026

The thoughts that keep you awake at 2am rarely get questioned. This CBT-I guide adapts Socratic questioning to insomnia: eight questions to test a sleep thought against the evidence, how to rewrite it without promising sleep, and why it belongs in daylight.

It’s 11:20pm and the thought arrives fully formed: tonight is going to be another bad one. It feels like a forecast, not a guess. Cognitive defusion is the skill of unhooking from that thought so it carries less weight, and the research behind it is stronger than you might expect. Here are ten techniques drawn from ACT, popular books, and everyday practice, with guidance on choosing the few worth keeping.