An effect of trauma
Insomnia
Difficulty falling asleep. Difficulty staying asleep. Nightmares that wake you or that you dread. Sleeping too much as a way of escaping. Sleep that does not feel safe because something happened in the night, or because letting your guard down feels dangerous, or because the dreams come when you close your eyes. Sleep is when the nervous system is supposed to restore itself. For many survivors it has become another battleground.
Sleep asks the body to drop its guard, which is exactly what a survivor's body has learned never to do. Fighting the wakefulness makes it worse, which everyone with this knows by heart around three in the morning. Safety absorbed during the day slowly changes the night. It is indirect, and it is real, and it starts while you are awake.
It can sound like
If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.
Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.
You do not have to carry this alone.
Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.