Content and Goals of Your Sleep Map

If you have insomnia, you want relief as soon as possible, and you need a path to your own answer. You are aware of your symptoms, your circumstances and your sleep history. Any answer should be tailored to your life and your needs, and you are the best person to make that happen. Your Sleep Map will help you link together a series of decisions and actions to identify the sources of your insomnia, and once you do that, you will be better able to make changes to relieve it.

Organization and Process

The book begins where you are, with symptoms and a history. It moves forward by posing questions about your insomnia. Your answers to those questions will define a path that leads to suggestions for treatment.

There are thousands of possible causes for insomnia Your Sleep Map helps you sort through them to find the ones that matter to you. There are hundreds of possible treatments reported in the press and professional literature. Dr. Harshbarger has selected the ones he judges most likely to be effective for each of the sources of insomnia that might be a problem for you.

Each chapter-map is initiated by a flow chart that organizes its component sections of text. Flow charts are good tools for showing process, for keeping the steps in order, and for emphasizing the decisions you must make in order to resolve your problem.

But flow charts are limited in their ability to show content and detail. That must be done with text. Each point on the flow charts in Your Sleep Map is numbered and linked to a corresponding section of text that explains it in greater detail. You follow the flow chart, and when you need more information, you read the associated section of text. In that way, you individualize the text to suit your own needs. You actually only read a part of the book - the part that matters to you.

This form of organization emphasizes the choices you need to make in order to get better sleep. It fits the book to you, and not you to the book. You use a method or technique that you have chosen because it suits your needs and issues, and you eliminate a lot of techniques that are interesting but irrelevant.

You should be wary of insomnia treatments that are supposed to work for everyone. They are like road maps with only one road. An effective map gives alternative roads to the destination you choose. Your Sleep Map lists many possible obstacles to sleeping well and suggests ways to manage or eliminate them. You decide which apply to you, and you pick reasonable ways to manage the ones you choose.

For more, look at the Overview, pages 3 to 5, to see how the book is organized. The first map begins on page 6.