Sleep Is Different for Trauma Survivors

If you have experienced any type of trauma in your life, you know it affects every single part of your life. From how your brain operates and the chemicals it releases to getting stuck in the flight, fight, or freeze states to how your stomach digests food to the way it changes most if not all of your relationships, including the one with yourself. I would argue this is the most important one, as we only get one body to live in here on earth, and if we can’t care for it in the way it needs, it will often throw a tantrum and breakdown pretty easily.

Now, I am not stranger to trauma. I have been through a lengthy list of noteworthy traumatic experiences, including childhood trauma, burying several friends staring in high school and college. Being diagnosed with several difficult to manage chronic conditions. Going through years of infertility and IVF, having miscarriages, delivering twins too early to survive, emergency spinal surgery, countless months in the hospital, hiatal hernia surgery, bacterial meningitis, 14 weeks of consistent migraines, and a hospitalization for an ectopic pregnancy as well a a ruptured fallopian tube.

I say all this to say that depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have curled up inside of me, from head to toes, rearing its ugly head all too often this time around.

Surviving trauma is only the beginning

I read a great quote by Elizabeth Gilbert from the book Eat, Pray, Love, and it feels right to share here:

"I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it — I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me."

After recently losing a pregnancy, I have struggled a lot with intrusive thoughts and feeling alone. Laying in bed at night, unable to fall asleep has been agonizing because I get lost in my own mind, and then sleep gets pushed further and further away.

Screen time on my phone or my television is sometimes the only thing I can find comfort in. Now, we all know these are less than ideal ideas for sleep hygiene, but as a trauma survivor I have learned that being alone with my thoughts can be more detrimental than falling asleep on my phone or watching the TV.

Coping with insomnia when you are a trauma survivor

Here are a few suggestions that I have found to help (a little) but to be completely transparent, I still have a long way to go in supporting myself and regulating my nervous system after everything that has happened.

• Go to bed listening to something - an audiobook, a podcast, a movie, a TV show. Have an eye mask on so the light doesn't interfere or make it harder to fall asleep, but the sound makes you feel less alone.
• Get a weighted blanket or stuffed animal that helps compress your nervous system and makes you feel safe
• Practice regular breathing techniques like box breathing - inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts, exhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 counts

Remember, you are not alone

I just want to say if you are going through or have gone through any type of trauma, you are not alone, and it is completely normal to have not bounced back (yet, or ever really).