Training for Emotion Regulation in Patients with Insomnia Disorder. A novel therapeutic in the early stage of development.

As a growing body of literature suggests, insomnia and emotion regulation (ER) are closely linked, and there is a complex interplay between them, possibly bidirectional. Nevertheless, ER strategies have not yet been included or combined with the standard CBT-I programmes, with only a few exceptions. The aim of the chapter is to outline a new therapeutic eight-session protocol that may help the clinician to target sleep difficul- ties in conjunction with emotional problems. Specifically, the first four sessions target sleep difficulties through a standard CBT-I training, including the manualized CBT-I techniques, while the last four sessions provide an add-on or adjunct to CBT-I, focusing upon emotion regulation ability and strategies. The structure of the ER training is presented in detail. Both the CBT-I training and the ER training were preliminary tested for efficacy, showing promising results. A clinical case study is presented of a 54-year-old woman with chronic insomnia of about 20 years duration who underwent the combined training. Future studies should evaluate the efficacy of this eight-session combined training (CBT-I + ER) in reducing insomnia symp- toms and emotion regulation difficulties using randomized controlled trials. However, its brevity, structure and the topics pre- sented allow clinicians and researchers to apply and adapt the proposed protocol to different conditions and populations with a degree of flexibility.