Adult Sleep Hygiene and CBT-I Self-Help: A Free Interactive Companion

Most sleep advice is a list, and lists do not fix insomnia. What does have an evidence base is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia — the treatment sleep medicine and internal medicine guidelines recommend before medication — and its working parts can be run at home. This free companion holds those parts: stimulus control, a short sleep diary, an opt-in and heavily guarded sleep window, circadian light and temperature work, an honest account of what your phone actually does, and counter-arousal protocols for a body that is tired and wired at the same time. Tracks are included for ADHD, autistic and AuDHD adults, PTSD and trauma, shift and first-responder schedules, and athletes.

Why the bed stops working

Sleep runs on two processes: pressure that builds the longer you are awake, and a circadian clock that decides when that pressure is allowed to cash in. Insomnia usually adds a third element — conditioned arousal. After enough nights of lying awake solving problems, the bed itself becomes a cue for alertness. That is learned, which is the good news, because it can be unlearned. Stimulus control is the unlearning, and it is the single most supported behavioural piece of CBT-I.

The diary exists to stop the guessing

Nobody estimates their own sleep accurately, and people with insomnia tend to underestimate it. Seven to fourteen nights of rough numbers gives an average and a sleep-efficiency estimate — the share of time in bed actually spent asleep. Below roughly 85% is the region where the bed is doing the wrong job. Two weeks is the maximum; after that a diary becomes one more thing to score at 2 a.m.

Sleep compression, with the brakes on

Narrowing time in bed is the most powerful lever in CBT-I and the easiest one to misuse. In this companion it is opt-in and locked behind prerequisites: seven logged nights, no breathing or sleepiness red flags, not in a competition week or a night-shift block, no safety-critical duties, and an average of at least five and a half hours. The starting window is your average sleep plus thirty minutes, and it never goes below six hours. Daytime sleepiness rises before sleep consolidates, so the protocol includes the instruction most apps leave out: abort if you cannot drive safely or your mood drops.

The phone, told honestly

The strongest move is distance — the phone charging in another room. Do Not Disturb and a dimmer screen help. Night Shift and similar warm-tint filters are the weakest item on the list; trials have repeatedly failed to show that the tint alone improves sleep, because what keeps you awake is usually the content and the arousal it produces, not the colour temperature. This companion says so rather than repeating the marketing.

Trauma, ADHD, shift work and sport

A PTSD track replaces "leave the room" with a safe chair in the same room, because the standard instruction can be unusable when nights already feel unsafe. The ADHD track deals with revenge bedtime procrastination and the 11 p.m. arrival of interesting thoughts. The shift track uses anchor sleep and strategic naps rather than pretending a rotating roster can be normalised. The athlete track covers sleep banking, and it disables compression during competition weeks.

What this companion will never do

No melatonin doses, no hypnotics, no cannabis or alcohol recommendations, and no diagnosis of insomnia disorder, obstructive sleep apnoea, narcolepsy or a circadian rhythm disorder. Snoring with witnessed pauses, falling asleep while driving, sleep paralysis with cataplexy-shaped symptoms, or a thought that not waking would be a relief are routed to a clinician or to 988 rather than to a breathing exercise.

How to use this tool

  1. Confirm you are 18 or older and read the safety screen before starting.
  2. Choose a week shape (work and study, shift, or athlete) and add any tracks that apply.
  3. Run the check-in and tick any red flags honestly — several of them lock the riskier tools on purpose.
  4. Read the six stimulus-control instructions and commit to a single fixed rise time, weekends included.
  5. Log seven to fourteen nights in the diary to get an honest average and sleep-efficiency estimate.
  6. Work the circadian basics: morning light, dim evenings, a cool room, and a caffeine cutoff you actually test.
  7. Only then consider the guarded sleep window, and abort it if daytime safety or mood suffers.
  8. Use the downshift protocols for a wired body, and read the library and help pages for when to see a clinician.

Common questions

What is CBT-I?
Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia: a multi-component behavioural treatment combining stimulus control, time-in-bed restriction, cognitive work and relaxation. Sleep-medicine and internal-medicine guidelines recommend it as first-line treatment for chronic insomnia, ahead of medication.
Is this app CBT-I treatment?
No. It is psychoeducation and structured self-help built from CBT-I components. It is not delivered by a clinician, it does not diagnose insomnia, and it is not a substitute for seeing a sleep specialist or a therapist trained in CBT-I.
What is sleep efficiency?
The proportion of time in bed that is actually spent asleep, estimated from a diary. Efficiency below roughly 85% suggests the bed has become associated with wakefulness, which is what stimulus control addresses.
Why will the app not let me restrict my sleep further?
Because narrowing time in bed below about six hours raises daytime sleepiness and accident risk, and it is unsafe on top of untreated sleep-disordered breathing, shift work, competition weeks or safety-critical duties. The six-hour floor and the red-flag locks are deliberate.
Does it tell me how much melatonin to take?
No. It gives no doses for melatonin or any other substance. Melatonin as a clock-shifting agent and melatonin as a sedative are different uses at different times, and that is a conversation with a prescriber.
Does night mode on my phone help me sleep?
Much less than the marketing suggests. Trials of warm-tint night modes have generally failed to show a sleep benefit from the tint alone. Distance from the device and the arousal level of what you are reading matter far more.
When should I see a doctor instead?
Snoring with witnessed breathing pauses or gasping, falling asleep while driving or at work, uncomfortable leg sensations at night, sleep problems alongside a head injury, pregnancy or chronic pain, and any thought that not waking up would be a relief. That last one means calling or texting 988 today.
Is anything I enter stored or shared?
No. The diary, plan and notes stay in your own browser using local storage. There is no account and nothing is sent to a server; clearing your site data deletes everything.

Where this fits

This companion is free psychoeducational self-help. It is not therapy, diagnosis, or crisis care, and it does not replace a licensed clinician. Everything you enter is stored locally in your own browser and is never transmitted to a server.

It lives inside FeelingsHelper Adults Mode, alongside more than sixty other free companions for autism, ADHD, PTSD, and trauma.

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