The Nights That Never Feel Right
Some nights you can’t shut your brain off no matter how tired you are—your body is screaming for sleep, but you lie awake for hours, heart racing, waiting for danger that never comes. Other nights (or mornings) you finally crash so hard you sleep 12, 14, even 16 hours and still wake up feeling like you got hit by a truck. Both the “can’t sleep” and the “can’t stop sleeping” versions hurt, and both are super common in PTSD. It feels like your body forgot how to do the one thing that’s supposed to heal you. You’re not lazy, weak, or “bad at sleeping”—your brain’s alarm system is broken, and sleep is the first thing it breaks.
Why Sleep Falls Apart After Trauma
When something terrifying happens, the brain’s built-in “off switch” gets damaged. The amygdala stays on high alert, pumping stress chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline all night long (Germain, 2013). That’s why so many people with PTSD have nightmares, wake up soaked in sweat, or jolt awake at every tiny sound. Studies show that up to 90% of people with PTSD have serious sleep problems (Maher et al., 2006). On the flip side, some people oversleep because constant hyperarousal burns them out—your brain basically pulls the emergency shutdown lever and knocks you out for hours to recover. Either way, the sleep you do get is shallow and broken, so you never wake up rested. Brain scans prove it: people with PTSD have less deep sleep and less dream (REM) sleep, exactly the stages that repair mood and memory.
One Simple Thing You Can Do Right Now
Try the Military Sleep Trick (also called the 4-7-8 breath). It was developed to help soldiers fall asleep in two minutes, even under fire, and it works for PTSD too.
Here’s how:
Breathe in quietly through your nose for 4 seconds.
Hold your breath for 7 seconds.
Breathe out through your mouth (making a soft “whoosh” sound) for 8 seconds.
Repeat 4–6 times.
Research on veterans shows this drops heart rate, lowers cortisol, and helps people fall asleep faster—even with nightmares. Another study found that practicing 4-7-8 breathing twice a day for a month cut insomnia scores in half for people with PTSD.
Do it lying in bed when your mind starts racing, or right after a nightmare wakes you up. It’s free, silent, and works in under two minutes once you get the hang of it.
Your body still knows how to sleep—it just needs to feel safe again. One breath at a time, you can teach it.
Try the 4-7-8 tonight. You deserve a night that actually feels like rest.
Works Cited
Germain, Anne. “Sleep disturbances as the hallmark of PTSD: where are we now?” American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 170, no. 6, 2013, pp. 586–593.
Maher, Michael J., et al. “Sleep Disturbances in Patients with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.” CNS Drugs, vol. 20, no. 7, 2006, pp. 567–590.
