Seen At 11: Tortured By Sleepless Nights? Try Sleeping Less

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Everybody sleeps, but some do it better than others. For those tortured by sleepless nights, there's a new therapy that says if you want to sleep more, try sleeping less.

As CBS2's Kristine Johnson reported, getting out of bed might guarantee more shut eye as you learn to sleep.

"When I'd go to bed, I would start and be like, OK, if I go to bed now, I've got eight hours. And then an hour goes by, and it's like OK, now I only have seven hours, then it's six hours, and then it's the morning," Megan Grant said.

That was the unhappy and unhealthy way 20-year-old Megan Grant slept, or tried to sleep at night.

"I would just sort of lay in my bed trying to sleep," she said.

Dr. Matthew Lorber suggested a new therapy that had Megan getting up and out of bed if she was lying awake for more than 30 minutes.

"I was like, what do you mean? Like, that doesn't sound right to me," she said.

It's called restrictive sleep therapy.

"Once you're tossing and turning for 30 minutes, get out of bed, and don't go back into bed until you're tired again," Dr. Lorber explained.

"The concept of just laying there and like resting in bed felt better like than going and doing something else, so I was very, like, reluctant at first," Grant said.

But she liked the idea of drug free therapy -- even as Dr. Lorber prepared her for the discipline the process required.

"When I suggest to someone that if you're up to 3 to 3:30 in the morning get out of bed, get out of your bedroom, they do -- they look at me like I'm crazy first, but I think rationally; intuitively, it does make sense," Dr. Lorber said.

"Admittedly, the first few nights of this will probably be terrible," Dr. Steven Feinsilver added.

Dr. Feinsilver is the director of Lenox Hill's sleep center. He said once patients are out of bed they should simply try reading, no TV, or electronics, no food or alcohol.

"It seems very backwards, kind of counterintuitive, that we ask people to sleep less when we're trying to get them to sleep better," Dr. Feinsilver said.

The idea is to quiet the mind, staying calm as they wait to get tired again.

Dr. Feinsilver added it can take several weeks to re-learn how to sleep.

"Eventually you're going to sleep, and that's a very simple idea, but it really works. It works very neatly," Dr. Feinsilver explained.

"Every night I'm like, love going to bed, it's the greatest feeling. I get in my bed, and I'm cozy, and like ready to go. It makes such like a world of a difference," Grant said.

Experts also suggest taking care of important details for the next day an hour before bed. That way if you wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking about them, you'll know it's all already done, and you can go back to sleep.