Why Sleep Is Foundational to Healing
When a child lives through trauma, their nervous system locks into high alert—flooding their brain and body with stress hormones that make rest feel impossible. Sleep becomes light, broken, or disappears altogether. And even long after the danger has passed, deep, healing rest can remain out of reach.
For mothers and caregivers—many of whom are also navigating their own trauma—the pattern is strikingly similar. Chronic stress, vigilance, and disrupted sleep become the norm, not the exception. And without the chance to rest and reset, both children and adults remain caught in a physiological state of survival.
This isn’t a peripheral issue—it’s a foundational disruption that affects health and healing at every level: physical, emotional, neurological.
Our work focuses on sleep as one of the most urgent—and overlooked—needs in trauma recovery. For years, we’ve developed, delivered, and now begun researching trauma-informed interventions that help restore sleep for children, caregivers, and the frontline workers who support them.
How Trauma Steals Sleep—and Why Restoring It Matters
Children who’ve experienced trauma are at significantly increased risk of chronic sleep disturbances—Including insomnia, nightmares, and fragmented sleep, which are strongly associated with emotional dysregulation and cognitive challenges (Briggs et al., 2017; Gregory & Sadeh, 2012).
Sleep deprivation undermines emotional regulation and impairs the brain’s ability to recover from stress and trauma. It disrupts critical brain connectivity, weakening the prefrontal cortex and over-activating the amygdala. This imbalance reduces impulse control and increases emotional volatility, especially in trauma-affected individuals (van der Helm et al., 2011; Germain, 2013).
REM sleep plays a critical role in emotional processing and PTSD recovery. It supports the brain’s ability to reprocess distressing memories, aiding emotional regulation and long-term psychological resilience (Palmer & Alfano, 2017; Germain, 2013).
Adequate sleep serves as a protective factor. During adolescence, sleep helps buffer the emotional and behavioural impacts of early trauma and supports long-term resilience (Barrett et al., 2025; Gregory & Sadeh, 2012).
Mothers are particularly vulnerable. Maternal sleep deprivation—especially when shaped by trauma—can disrupt emotional regulation, impair bonding, and increase the risk of long-term distress for both mother and child (Lin et al., 2022; Seng et al., 2013).
Caregivers experiencing chronic sleep disruption may also struggle to co-regulate, offer consistent support, or access the emotional resilience needed for recovery.
Sleep disruption also hinders healthy brain development in children. Without deep, restorative sleep, the brain cannot complete key developmental processes like neural pruning, emotional learning, and memory consolidation. For trauma-affected children, this disruption can lead to delayed development, emotional challenges, and long-term impacts on resilience (AIFS, 2018).
Our Work in Action
Dreaming Beyond Trauma is our flagship initiative—advancing trauma recovery through sleep restoration and transforming crisis accommodations across Australia by placing rest, regulation and renewal at the heart of healing. Here’s how we bring that vision to life:
Nourishing Sleep Packs
Designed to soothe the nervous system and support trauma recovery through better sleep, our Nourishing Sleep Packs are provided to women, children, and—where appropriate—frontline staff. Each pack includes a weighted blanket (shown to reduce anxiety and improve sleep), an eye mask and amber light to support melatonin rhythms, a sensory-friendly pillow for comfort and emotional regulation, and our research-backed Sleep Kit for Kids, which includes a calming children’s book, audio track, and caregiver guide (Ackerley et al., 2015; Shechter et al., 2018).
Creating Sleep-Supportive Spaces
The design of a room can either support or sabotage sleep—and the light environment plays a pivotal role. Evening exposure to blue light suppresses melatonin and disrupts circadian rhythms, making it harder to fall and stay asleep. To counter this, we install soft amber clip lights that mimic natural dusk light and support the body’s transition into rest. A randomized controlled trial found that reducing blue light at night significantly improved sleep quality, especially in individuals with insomnia (Shechter et al., 2018).
Trauma-Informed Staff Training
Shelter staff often work under conditions of vicarious trauma and chronic stress—while also experiencing sleep loss themselves. Our training equips frontline workers with practical, evidence-based strategies to restore their own sleep, regulate their nervous systems, and model calm for the families they support. By addressing sleep, we help reduce burnout and strengthen the capacity for compassionate, sustained care (Sarionder-Kreinath, 2019; Maslach & Leiter, 2016).
Why It Works
Everything we offer is:
- Informed by neuroscience – Built on a clear understanding of how trauma alters the brain and nervous system, and how sleep supports regulation, recovery, and resilience.
- Grounded in research – Backed by peer-reviewed studies in sleep science, trauma recovery, and mental health—not just theory, but real-world evidence.
- Refined by lived experience – Continuously shaped by frontline feedback and real-life needs of children, caregivers, and crisis support staff.
This isn’t wellness for comfort—it’s a paradigm shift in trauma recovery, where sleep is recognised as essential infrastructure for healing.
Because when sleep returns, it’s not just about feeling better, it’s about reclaiming capacity.
Sleep restores what trauma disrupts: Emotional regulation. Memory and learning. Connection with others. A sense of safety in one’s own body
And in that restoration, something extraordinary becomes possible:
Not just recovery, but renewal.
Not just surviving, but beginning again.
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References
Ackerley, R., Badre, G., & Olausson, H. (2015). Positive effects of a weighted blanket on insomnia. Journal of Sleep Medicine & Disorders, 2(3), 1022. Read the study
Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS). (2018). The effect of trauma on brain development in children. Read the report
Barrett, E., Coote, T., & Grummitt, L. (2025). Sleep duration in adolescence buffers the impact of childhood trauma on anxiety and depressive symptoms. BMC Public Health, 25, Article 437. Read the study
Briggs, E. C., Amaya-Jackson, L., Putnam, K. T., & Putnam, F. W. (2017). Trauma exposure and sleep disturbance in a sample of youth from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network Core Data Set. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 30(5), 522–530. Abstract available here
Germain, A. (2013). Sleep and REM sleep disturbance in the pathophysiology of PTSD: The role of extinction memory. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 112, 17–23. Read the study
Gregory, A. M., & Sadeh, A. (2012). Sleep, emotional and behavioral difficulties in children and adolescents. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 16(2), 129–136. Read the study
Lin, X., Zhai, R., Mo, J., Sun, J., Chen, P., & Huang, Y. (2022). How do maternal emotion and sleep conditions affect infant sleep: A prospective cohort study. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 22, Article 237. Read the study
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103–111. Read the study
Palmer, C. A., & Alfano, C. A. (2017). Sleep and emotion regulation: An organizing, integrative review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 31, 6–16. Read the study
Sarionder-Kreinath, C. (2019). Secondary traumatic stress in domestic violence shelter workers (Master’s thesis, Wichita State University). Read the thesis
Seng, J. S., Sperlich, M., Low, L. K., Ronis, D. L., Muzik, M., & Liberzon, I. (2013). Childhood abuse history, posttraumatic stress disorder, postpartum mental health, and bonding: A prospective cohort study. Journal of Midwifery & Women’s Health, 58(1), 57–68. Read the study
Shechter, A., Kim, E. W., St-Onge, M.-P., & Westwood, A. J. (2018). Blocking nocturnal blue light for insomnia: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 96, 196–202. Read the study
van der Helm, E., Yao, J., Dutt, S., Rao, V., Saletin, J. M., & Walker, M. P. (2011). REM sleep depotentiates amygdala activity to previous emotional experiences. Current Biology, 21(23), 2029–2032. Read the study
Virginia Department of Social Services. (2015). Vicarious trauma in the human services workforce: Focus group report. Read the report
Zarchev, M., Kamperman, A. M., Hoepel, S. J. W., Hoogendijk, W. J. G., Mulder, C. L., & Grootendorst-van Mil, N. H. (2024). The association between childhood maltreatment and multidimensional sleep health in a high-risk adolescent population. Read the report