If you experienced some form of childhood trauma or abuse, you likely struggle with getting enough sleep or sleeping well.
Like me, maybe you have trouble falling asleep because of your anxiety. Maybe you frequently experience nightmares, which can startle you awake, making falling back asleep difficult. Or you might be easily disturbed while sleeping, easily waking from pain or triggering sounds.
It’s no surprise that trauma can negatively affect your sleep. Childhood trauma, in particular, can be very damaging. So if you had an abusive parent growing up, it makes sense why you might be struggling to sleep well. But why is that? How are childhood trauma and sleeping issues related?
In this post, I will go more into why and how your childhood trauma may negatively affect your sleep and why resolving it is essential for your health and healing.
My Experience with Childhood Trauma and Sleep
One of the many effects of my childhood trauma is my struggle with sleeping well.
It’s difficult for me to fall asleep despite how tired I can be because my brain is constantly running. And when I do fall asleep, I often get nightmares. On top of that, I get woken up by the slightest of sounds or movements, which sometimes cause me to wake up in a panic. My family says I’m the lightest sleeper ever.
I assume my inability to sleep well is due to many various factors related to my childhood trauma. I can’t say that the abuse I faced for sure “caused” my sleeping issues. But it is undoubtedly related.
For one, my mother loved “waking me up” without actually waking me up.
Examples include stomping up and down the stairs, vacuuming the floor right outside my door, yelling at her boyfriend on the phone, or well, screaming at and/or hitting me while I’m asleep. So just these sleep-related experiences can no doubt cause a trauma response towards sleep.
However, things like mental and physical health issues, a hyperactive fight-or-flight response as a result of the trauma, and other effects of childhood abuse can also play a role in sleeping issues.
The Relationship Between Childhood Trauma and Sleeping Issues
Growing research finds that childhood abuse is a risk factor for long-term sleep problems.
Chronic stress that’s experienced early in life and during sensitive periods of development might alter sleep systems, leading to chronic sleep problems.
One study finds that participants who reported frequent experiences of physical and emotional abuse had odds for clinically relevant levels of sleep issues over 200% higher than participants who reported no abuse.
Many people who experienced childhood trauma may experience sleeping issues such as:
- Insomnia: difficulty falling or remaining asleep
- Waking up often through the night
- Feeling tired and sleepy throughout the day
- Difficulty staying awake during the day
- Sleep-wake cycle imbalances
- Unusual or maladaptive behaviors during sleep
- Nightmares and night terrors
- Sleep disorders such as Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA), Sleep Movement disorders, Parasomnia, Narcolepsy, or Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)
Interestingly, abuse might affect sleep quality more than quantity. The most common sleeping issue reported in the research was sleep disturbances such as pain during the night, feeling too hot or cold, and having bad dreams.
Meanwhile, there doesn’t seem to be any differences in the amount of time spent sleeping between participants who experienced abuse and those who didn’t.
The Role ACEs Play in Sleeping Issues
ACEs are adverse childhood experiences – any potential adverse or traumatic experiences that happened in childhood.
It’s been discovered that the higher number of ACEs an individual has, the higher their risk for health problems. You can learn more about ACEs and its research here.
A CDC study found that adults with a significant amount of ACEs are more than twice as likely to have trouble falling asleep and twice as likely to feel tired after a full night’s sleep in comparison to adults with few or no ACEs. And the effects of ACEs on sleep can last for up to 50 years, with each ACE increasing the risk of insufficient or inadequate sleep as an adult by 20%!
In other words, the more childhood trauma someone experiences, the more likely they are to have sleeping issues, and the higher the amount and/or severity of their sleeping issues.
In regards to insomnia specifically, adults with a high number of ACEs diagnosed with insomnia tend to wake up more often and have more disturbances during the night than those with few or no ACEs.
Childhood Trauma and Insomnia
Speaking of insomnia, it is one of the most common sleep issues related to trauma.
According to Sleep Foundation, insomnia is characterized by an ongoing difficulty in falling or remaining asleep despite wanting to sleep and having enough time to sleep. People with insomnia also tend to experience sleepiness and difficulty functioning during the day.
A 2016 study revealed that adults who struggle with insomnia are more likely to have grown up in traumatic or abusive conditions.
Another study indicated that the greater one’s childhood trauma, the higher their risk for insomnia. So more severe and persistent sleep disorders are usually seen in people with higher levels of post-traumatic stress.
To summarize the research so far, it seems that people with sleeping problems tend to have experienced childhood trauma and people with childhood trauma tend to experience sleeping problems. So there’s no doubt that childhood trauma and sleeping problems are related. But how are they related?
The Traumatized Brain and Sleeping Issues
Evidence in research suggests that multiple overlapping brain regions are associated with both trauma and sleep problems.
Childhood trauma seems to affect regions of the brain like the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and insular cortex which are also involved in regulating sleep.
Studies also found that individuals with PTSD have a faster heart rate while sleeping. This suggests an enhanced fight-or-flight response that keeps them in a permanent state of hypervigilance. And alertness and hyperarousal by the body’s stress response often take part in the symptoms of insomnia.
Childhood is a sensitive developmental period. Facing chronic abuse, especially at an early age, creates a constant overactivation of the HPA axis, also known as the body’s stress response system. And an overactive HPA axis prevents the brain from maintaining normal sleep patterns, thus increasing sleeping issues.
Restorative sleep and the deeper phases of sleep like the REM (rapid eye movement) stage appear to be the most affected according to research.
Unsurprisingly, trauma changes how the body moves through various sleep cycles and stages. It seems to cause sleep to stay in the lighter phases and REM sleep to be more limited.
So in the end, people who experienced childhood trauma tend to have more disturbed sleep including more stage-one light sleep, less restorative slow-wave sleep, and fragmented REM sleep.
Other Factors of Childhood Trauma that May Affect Sleep
There are many long-lasting effects of child abuse even years or decades after childhood has ended. As mentioned earlier, some of these effects also play a role in affecting sleep.
As the ACE study suggests, childhood trauma is a major risk factor for illnesses and poor quality of life. Thus, it is likely for individuals who experienced childhood trauma to have other types of physical and/or mental health problems. And these problems can cause or exacerbate sleeping issues or disorders.
For instance, health problems like chronic pain are likely to interfere with sleep. Or take me for example, my anxiety, GI issues, and hormonal imbalances can definitely make sleeping difficult even without my triggers around sleep.
And like my experience, sleeping or anything associated with it like the bed, bedroom, nighttime, or darkness, may also be associated with someone’s childhood trauma, possibly making the act of sleeping itself triggering.
How Childhood Trauma Causes Sleeping Issues
As you can see, many possible factors due to childhood trauma might’ve caused sleeping issues. If you had abusive parents growing up, your current sleeping problems are likely related to your experiences with them.
Like me, maybe you have an idea of the possible reasons for your sleeping issues. Maybe your sleeping problems are a result of a hypervigilant fight-or-flight response, triggers revolving around sleep, or any of the other things mentioned in this post,
But if you have trouble determining where your sleeping problems come from, that’s okay.
A lot of research suggests that sleeping problems occur more in people who experienced childhood trauma because of the chronic stress they experienced over time. Sleeping problems are just one of the many effects of the chronic stress your body is put through when you experience abuse and trauma, especially as a child.
Experts suggest that although our stress response systems are well equipped to handle stressors, constant activation of the system is likely to damage it, thus resulting in poor health outcomes.
Abuse that happens regularly over long periods, especially starting at an early age, is likely to significantly damage healthy development including your ability to sleep well.
In the end, the important thing isn’t really why or how your sleeping problems came to be, but why you should resolve them and how to do so.
Why Resolving Your Sleeping Issues is Essential
The thing with sleeping problems is that it isn’t just one problem or a few problems only related to sleep. Being unable to sleep well leads to a bunch of other problems like irritability, memory problems, trouble concentrating, chronic fatigue, lack of energy, and so on.
Many biological processes happen during sleep. Sleep is essential for your health and well-being in general. Getting quality sleep can provide many benefits such as:
- Immune system boosts
- Increased energy and focus
- Improved mood
- Better heart health
- Stress relief
Additionally, research suggests that getting adequate sleep after trauma can reduce intrusive trauma-related memories and make them less distressing.
On the other hand, sleep problems can exacerbate trauma symptoms. A lack of sleep or constant inadequate sleep interferes with the brain’s ability to process memories and emotions, which can slow the healing process for trauma survivors.
So better sleep is not just essential for your health, but also for your healing.
How to Resolve Sleeping Issues and Improve Sleep
Sleep issues can be distressing and frustrating. But learning how to sleep better after trauma can perhaps help resolve some of those problems, or at least improve them.
In other words, focusing on resolving sleep issues can help you begin healing. Please refer to this in-depth post about how you can improve your sleep after childhood trauma.
I am still struggling with sleeping well. But the changes I’ve made in my life so far in an attempt to improve sleep and my health, in general, have seemed to help. Of course, things aren’t perfect, but I’m making progress.
When you’re struggling with sleep, it can be tough to feel well-rested, thus affecting your daily life and healing journey. So try to make changes where you can to slowly resolve your sleeping issues and improve your sleep. A little change can go a long way.