Insomnia associated with Trauma and PTSD
Traumatic experiences can impact on the quality and quantity of sleep. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and/or traumatic experiences can lead to nightmares, disturbed sleep and heightened anxiety around bedtime. The traumatic experience may be in the past but you may be left with disturbed sleep, or you may be still be suffering from flashbacks and other difficult memories of the trauma which affects your sleep. If you think that a traumatic event in your past is affecting your sleep, we can work with you to understand your symptoms and design a treatment plan to help you achieve better sleep. We can also offer specialist evidence-based therapies that help people to overcome trauma, such as Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).
I was knocked off my bike just before Xmas last year and suffered what would have been a fatal brain injury if it wasn’t for the pretty much immediate attention of medical colleagues of mine. I was referred to Maja because of significant and protracted insomnia but also to deal with considerable PTSD symptoms.
Maja’s approach was friendly, sympathetic and incredibly worthwhile when dealing with sleep issues; either face-to-face or via Zoom with my wife included. This can still be a problem, but nowhere near what it was before and I now have several strategies to cope with it.
For the PTSD (secondary to ‘fabricated’ images of the accident – I have no actual memory of it at all) Maja used EMDR. We dealt with the impact on me, my family and also my friends and work colleagues. The last EMDR session was utterly mind blowing and facilitated an almost unbelievable amount of processing of what was a truly traumatic ‘memory’. I am eternally grateful Maja!!