Founded by Inna Khazan, Ph.D. A Harvard-trained Licensed Clinical Psychologist.
Leading Expert in Biofeedback.
84 State St, Suite 570
Boston, MA 02109
Insomnia Treatment in Boston and via Teletherapy
Get the Sleep You Need — With Therapy That Works
At the Boston Center for Health Psychology and Biofeedback, we help clients overcome insomnia and sleep difficulties using personalized, science-based care. Whether you meet with us in person at our calming Boston office or via teletherapy across one of the many states where we are licensed, you’ll receive high-quality treatment grounded in proven methods.
📞 Ready to take the next step? Contact us or call 617-231-0011 to schedule your free 15-minute consultation. As a boutique, private-pay practice, we’re able to offer individualized attention and flexibility that many insurance-driven clinics cannot. Clients often share that this model allows for greater progress, faster results, and more confidence in their care. (You may be eligible for partial reimbursement if you have out-of-network benefits.)
Learn more about our our unique approach, conditions we treat, clinical team, and practice environment.
For the first time in years, I fall asleep easily and wake up with energy.
It’s life-changing.
💭 When Insomnia Disrupts Your Life
Are you unable to fall asleep at night because you’re anxious about tomorrow? Do you feel tired, irritable, and overly reactive to triggers the next day? Maybe you struggle to manage and regulate emotions—you’re quick to snap or respond in anger or get stuck in anxiety. Perhaps you have trouble staying focused or thinking straight. It’s as if your brain is a constant fog, robbing you of the energy you need to be productive at work or around the house.
Whether you’re dealing with depression, anxiety, chronic pain, or any other problems, your lack of sleep probably makes all your symptoms worse. Even your social life may be affected, as you find yourself too tired to go out after work or hang out with friends. You may even resist making plans days ahead of time because you’re not sure how you’ll sleep the night before.
In the midst of your frustration, perhaps you tell yourself: It’s just sleep. Why should it be such an issue? But the reality is that being stuck in an unhealthy sleep pattern can change your entire quality of life. Here, at the Boston Center for Health Psychology and Biofeedback, our goal is to help you break the habits that perpetuate insomnia, get the sleep you need, and wake up more refreshed and rejuvenated as a result.
🧠 Understanding Insomnia
In our fast-paced, high-pressure culture, insomnia is often misunderstood. You might feel like you’re “doing it wrong” when you can’t sleep, or believe there’s something broken in your system. But insomnia is common and treatable. It’s often driven by a combination of behavioral patterns, thought loops, and physiological stress responses that can be retrained with the right tools.
In fact, over time, the struggle to sleep becomes part of the problem — the more effort you put into sleeping, the harder it gets. The key is learning how to step out of that struggle.
🛠️ How We Help: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi)
Here at the Boston Center for Health Psychology and Biofeedback, we recognize how severely insomnia can impact your ability to enjoy life. That’s why we provide a safe, nonjudgmental space where there is no shame in admitting how much trouble sleeping bothers you.
The core approach of our Boston, MA-based practice is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia (CBTi). The goal of CBTi is to change the unhelpful habits that contribute to insomnia. This is done by focusing on the behavioral, cognitive, and physiological aspects of your sleep issues.
Exploring the behavioral aspect of insomnia means looking at the association between bed and sleep. Specifically, we are interested in how this association has been disrupted in your life and how unhealthy habits have trained your body not to relax when you are in bed. For instance, imagine a stretch of time when you can’t sleep well because you’re stressed about an upcoming event. Even when the event passes and your stress goes away, your body learns that getting in bed means worrying, not sleeping. In this way, insomnia often takes on a life of its own even when the stressful event is gone.
Through CBTi, you will learn to re-establish the connection between bed and sleep by reducing the amount of time you lie in bed not sleeping. Initially, this means reducing the number of hours you spend in bed—a process called sleep restriction. While it may sound counterintuitive, sleep restriction can prevent you from wasting long periods of time lying awake and restore the association between bed and sleep. After spending less time in bed for a couple of weeks, you may find that your quality of sleep has improved. You and your therapist will then design a schedule for increasing the amount of time you have in bed. Eventually, after new sleep habits have been established, you will find it easier to sleep for longer periods of time again.
Meanwhile, the cognitive side of CBTi involves retraining your brain to relate to sleep differently. To do so, we will teach you mindfulness-based skills that focus on allowing your body to sleep rather than trying to sleep. That means learning how to disengage yourself from conscious attempts to will yourself to sleep so that your brain can relax when you are in bed.
Finally, the physiological side of CBTi trains your body to reduce activation and prepare for sleep. When you try hard to sleep, the stress-activation part of your nervous system becomes too strong for your body to wind down. Our goal is to help you strengthen the relaxation part of your nervous system so that you can let go of unnecessary stress activation and allow yourself to sleep.
As long as you are willing to follow the steps of CBTi, you can improve your quality of sleep and, most importantly, your quality of life. Oftentimes, when sleep issues are resolved, it becomes easier to address other challenges in your life. Our hope is that maintaining a healthier sleep pattern will empower you to tackle those challenges and live up to your full potential.
🗂️ What to Expect in Therapy
Treatment begins with an in-depth assessment of your sleep habits and concerns. You and your therapist will identify patterns that contribute to insomnia and develop a personalized plan based on your goals.
You’ll learn how to build a healthy sleep routine, reduce unhelpful behaviors and thoughts, and regulate your stress response. You’ll be supported every step of the way by an experienced therapist trained in CBTi and biofeedback-informed sleep care.
❓ Common Questions About Insomnia Treatment…
I would prefer to just take sleep medication.
Sleep medication is often effective in the short term, but after about three months of taking it regularly, the effects tend to wear off. What’s more, sleep medication can’t provide you with any skills. In sleep therapy, you will learn skills, habits, and routines for healthier sleep that can last for the rest of your life.
I don’t want to try sleep restriction. I’m already not sleeping enough.
The idea behind sleep restriction is not about cutting down on how much you sleep, but on how much time you spend trying to sleep. For the first couple of weeks, you may find that spending fewer hours in bed is unpleasant. But when you stick with it for a couple of weeks, your sleep will become more consolidated, you will start feeling better, and you will be able to gradually extend the amount of time allotted for sleep.
I’ve already tried all the recommended sleep hygiene techniques. What will you tell me that’s different?
If you’ve researched tips for better sleep, you probably already know to avoid bright lights, screen use, and having coffee too close to bedtime. All of these strategies are important and give you a head start in sleep therapy. But ultimately, sleep hygiene is not sufficient in and of itself to improve sleep. It often keeps you stuck in the cycle of trying to will yourself to sleep. To truly heal from insomnia, you have to retrain your body and brain to associate your bed with sleep and reframe your mindset so that you’re not constantly trying so hard to sleep.
At BCHPB, clients receive personalized, science-based care delivered by clinicians trained and supervised by Dr. Inna Khazan. Our approach is focused, effective, and built to help you make meaningful progress — in a calm, private setting or from the comfort of your home.
