Sleep and Rest: Helping Your Nervous System Reset and Rest, especially after violence or trauma.

Jan 8
8 min read

Updated: Jan 8

When you witness a violent traumatic event—either directly in person or indirectly, such as by watching videos—one of the most common things to happen is sleep disruption.

And a quick note, these sleep and rest tips are for everyone, not just with the moments after a frightening experience.

If you've watched someone be killed, whether in person or online, you’ve witnessed a traumatic event. Our brains encodes life threat or life ending as overwhelming. Your nervous system is going to respond to that. No one is immune to this.

Sleep often becomes one of the hardest things to access, and yet it's one of the most important. Sleep is how our brains process traumatic material and how our bodies heal. Without it, we stay stuck in survival mode.

So what can you do to protect your sleep right now?

What Threat Responses Look Like in Daily Life

First, it helps to understand what your nervous system might be doing. You might not recognize that you're in a threat response. It doesn't always look like panic, nor what it looks like in the moment of actual life threat (like running after or away from ‘the bad guy’).

Here's what fight might look like:

Compulsively checking for updates, needing to know everything
Rage that won't settle
Yelling or screaming or making sure people hear you
Feeling urgency without knowing what to do

Here's what flight might look like:

Can't sit still, need to keep moving
Cleaning, organizing, staying busy to avoid feeling
Over-scheduling yourself
Scrolling to distract yourself

Here's what freeze energy might look like:

Feeling paralyzed, can't make decisions
Staring at your screen but not really seeing
Knowing you need to do things but unable to start
Feeling heavy, stuck

Here's what fall/dissociation might look like:

Scrolling and zoning out, hours passing
Feeling nothing—numb, blank, disconnected
Watching disturbing content repeatedly and feeling removed from it
Going through motions but not really present

All of these may be your nervous system trying to deal with witnessing violence. Your brain is trying to reconcile something that doesn't make sense.

Why Sleep Becomes Nearly Impossible

Here's what makes sleep so hard after witnessing violence:

You can't put your phone down. You're either gathering information (fight response) or escaping into scrolling (flight/dissociation). Both keep your nervous system activated.

Your brain won't stop when you lie down. Instead of settling, your mind starts spinning—replaying what you saw, imagining worst-case scenarios, trying to solve problems that probably can’t be solved at 2am.

Intrusive thoughts, memories, feelings show up. This is a normal post-traumatic stress response. Your brain is trying to process something it wasn't designed to witness on repeat.

The reminders continue. Helicopters outside. Sirens. Each one a spike of activation, a reminder that the threat feels ongoing.

Sleeping feels vulnerable. How can you rest when you don't feel safe? Biologically, sleep is a very vulnerable state.

What Your Body Needs First

One thing that is important to do is helping your nervous system recognize that right now, in this moment, you are not literally in immediate danger (so long as that is actually true).

I want to be clear: Your nervous system may be registering this as an immediate life threat to you, when it isn't. (If it is an immediate life threat to you, this guidance doesn't apply—your fight, flight, freeze, fall responses need to be there, these are what our brain is designed to do to escape immediate danger.) For most of us, what happened represents a potential threat in the future, not right now in this room. Still terrifying and something to be dealt with, but not with fight, flight, freeze or fall– these are designed to be short term processes.

The reason this distinction matters: If you're not in immediate danger and your threat responses are activated anyway, your brain is responding to a false alarm. You'll be stuck with only four options—fight, flight, freeze, fall—all of which block you from thinking clearly, being in your values, and actually being in the present moment.

So first, an invitation to the reaction you’re having: Soften around your fear. Your sadness. Your horror. Your devastation.

What would you say to a child who just watched something horrifying? What would you say or do to Bambi when their mom was shot? Now say and do those things to yourself.

Your distress is not weakness. It's your humanity working. When you watch someone be killed, you should feel scared, horrified, devastated, and sad. If you're not feeling those things, you're likely in a protective dissociative fall response.

Techniques to Help Your Body Transition to Sleep

These aren't magic fixes. They're things to try. I use these on a regular basis with myself, my two-year-old, and the individuals I work with.

To see several of these demonstrated you can check out this video.

Body-Based Practices

Tight Tight Squeeze (AKA progressive muscle relaxation): Squeeze your fists tight, inhale, (tight, tight tight), let go and exhale. Work your way through your feet, legs, face, whole body, whatever feels good. Do it a few times. (This is one I do with my 2-year-old most nights for winding down).

Butterfly Tapping: Cross your arms over your chest or below onto your ribs and tap alternating left-right-left-right. See what pace feels best and do this for a few minutes. You can do this sitting up or lying down as you're trying to fall asleep. You can do it on your kids backs, legs, sides, etc.. The key is to alternate sides of the body when tapping.

Soft Stomach: Place your hand on your belly and soften it intentionally, think to yourself, “soft belly”. We hold so much fear and tension there.

Belly Breathing: Purposefully send your breath into your stomach. You can place a hand on your chest and stomach and breath so you can see the hand on your belly move up and down. FOr kids, you can all lay down and put a stuffy or toy or cup on their belly and have them try to move it up and down with their breath.

Hand on Body. Take a moment and notice if you have any tension or any part of your body that may want some gentle touch, and just place your hand there. Oftentimes this is on a chest, heart, face.

Ear Slide (T-Touch): Gently slide your fingers along the edge of your ear from top to bottom. Do this a few times on each ear. It activates calming pressure points. This technique is used with traumatized animals and it works on humans too. Feel free to try it on your pets, partners, yourself, and kiddos.

Shake and Brush It Off Physically: Put your head down and shake it gently, like you're shaking water out of your hair. Run your hands down your arms, your legs. You're not ignoring what happened—you're giving your body a physical ritual of releasing it for now so you can rest.

Legs Up the Wall: Lie on the floor with your legs up against the wall for 5-10 minutes before bed. This signals safety to your nervous system and helps shift you out of a threat state.

Eye Movement: Look at one corner of your room, move your eyes to the other corner. Keep doing that, counting down from 10.

Mental Practices

Imaginary Containment: Imagine putting what’s stuck in your head—all the thoughts, images, feelings—into a container. A box, a vault, a room with a door. You're not ignoring it. You're purposefully containing it for now so you can rest. You can take it back out tomorrow. You might have to repeat this a few times.

Permission giving: Either say to yourself or write it down: I can put this down. I don’t need to keep thinking about or trying to solve this tonight. This might also be permission to cry, to feel, to lay on the floor.

Brain Dump: Write everything down. Every thought, worry, fear, anger. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Include a "tomorrow I will..." list for all the things your brain is trying to solve right now. This tells your brain "I've got this written down, we can come back to it."

Environmental Support

Hot Packs, Weighted Blankets: Weight and warmth can signal safety. If you don't have these, try extra blankets, a heavy comforter, or rolled towels along your body. Put a hot pad on the bottom of your bed for your feet to be warm.

Cold Water Splash: Splash your face with cold water. Take ice cubes or cold packs and rub them under your eyes.

Sleep Associations: What usually helps you sleep? White noise, fan sounds, rain sounds? Use them. You can have these at very low volume if part of you still wants to stay vigilant. Work with where you are, not where you "should" be.

Let the Lights Stay On: If you or your kids need the lights on, keep them on. If your child wants to sleep in your room, let them.

Walk Outside: Step outside for one minute. In Minnesota right now, take a couple breaths of that cold air. The temperature shift can help reset your nervous system.

Cuddle a Living Thing: Pet, child, partner, stuffed animal. Physical connection and warmth.

For the Little Ones

Everything above applies to kids too, but some specific things to remember:

Explain that their body is trying to keep them safe—they're not broken
Do the techniques together: tight squeeze, butterfly hug, make it a game
Let them keep whatever lights they need on
Consider letting them sleep where they feel safest (based on your judgement and safety)
Read the same comforting book over and over—repetition is regulating
Validate their fear without minimizing: "You saw something really scary. It makes sense that bedtime feels hard right now. It’s okay to rest. I’ve got you."

What's Normal

If sleep doesn't come easily, that's normal. If you wake up repeatedly, that's normal. If you have nightmares, that's normal. If you feel tired but wired, that's normal. If intrusive thoughts show up when you lie down, that's normal.

Your brain and body are responding to something abnormal—witnessing violence, watching someone be killed.

Then You Move

Here's what I said yesterday and it still applies:

Once you've done these things, or whatever else you know to do to bring both of your feet back into the present moment, then you move. Then you decide your action.

What you risk by not doing this: getting stuck in threat mode, where you only have four options—fight, flight, freeze, and fall. All of which are meant to be short-term interventions to get you out of immediate danger. The goal is to avoid a crash out, a burn out. Keeping the stress from becoming toxic stress. Reducing the chances of you developing PTSD. To help you think clearly, be in your values, and create the possibility of more protection and care.

*If you are stuck in one of these automatic strategies, you are human. That’s okay. You’re witnessing tragedy. And pausing and choosing to try one of these strategies may shift things more than you think.

When to Get Additional Support

If after a week:

Sleep isn't improving at all
You're getting less than 3-4 hours most nights (directly related to this)
Nightmares are so intense you're afraid to sleep
You're relying on non-prescribed substances to try to sleep
Your child is showing signs of significant distress or regression

Reach out for help. It's recognizing when your nervous system needs more support than you can provide alone, because after all healing happens in community.

A Final Note

You don't have to do all of these things. Pick one. Try it tonight. Then try another one.

Your brain is trying to reconcile something that doesn't make sense. Sleeping is a vulnerable time. The intrusive thoughts, the feelings, the memories, the sound of helicopters outside your window—all of it makes sleep extra hard.

When you witness a violent traumatic event—either directly in person or indirectly, such as by watching videos—one of the most common things to happen is sleep disruption.

And a quick note, these sleep and rest tips are for everyone, not just with the moments after a frightening experience.

If you've watched someone be killed, whether in person or online, you’ve witnessed a traumatic event. Our brains encodes life threat or life ending as overwhelming. Your nervous system is going to respond to that. No one is immune to this.

Sleep often becomes one of the hardest things to access, and yet it's one of the most important. Sleep is how our brains process traumatic material and how our bodies heal. Without it, we stay stuck in survival mode.

So what can you do to protect your sleep right now?

What Threat Responses Look Like in Daily Life

First, it helps to understand what your nervous system might be doing. You might not recognize that you're in a threat response. It doesn't always look like panic, nor what it looks like in the moment of actual life threat (like running after or away from ‘the bad guy’).

Here's what fight might look like:

Compulsively checking for updates, needing to know everything

Rage that won't settle

Yelling or screaming or making sure people hear you

Feeling urgency without knowing what to do

Here's what flight might look like:

Can't sit still, need to keep moving

Cleaning, organizing, staying busy to avoid feeling

Over-scheduling yourself

Scrolling to distract yourself

Here's what freeze energy might look like:

Feeling paralyzed, can't make decisions

Staring at your screen but not really seeing

Knowing you need to do things but unable to start

Feeling heavy, stuck

Here's what fall/dissociation might look like:

Scrolling and zoning out, hours passing

Feeling nothing—numb, blank, disconnected

Watching disturbing content repeatedly and feeling removed from it

Going through motions but not really present

All of these may be your nervous system trying to deal with witnessing violence. Your brain is trying to reconcile something that doesn't make sense.

Why Sleep Becomes Nearly Impossible

Here's what makes sleep so hard after witnessing violence:

You can't put your phone down. You're either gathering information (fight response) or escaping into scrolling (flight/dissociation). Both keep your nervous system activated.

Your brain won't stop when you lie down. Instead of settling, your mind starts spinning—replaying what you saw, imagining worst-case scenarios, trying to solve problems that probably can’t be solved at 2am.

Intrusive thoughts, memories, feelings show up. This is a normal post-traumatic stress response. Your brain is trying to process something it wasn't designed to witness on repeat.

The reminders continue. Helicopters outside. Sirens. Each one a spike of activation, a reminder that the threat feels ongoing.

Sleeping feels vulnerable. How can you rest when you don't feel safe? Biologically, sleep is a very vulnerable state.

What Your Body Needs First

One thing that is important to do is helping your nervous system recognize that right now, in this moment, you are not literally in immediate danger (so long as that is actually true).

So first, an invitation to the reaction you’re having: Soften around your fear. Your sadness. Your horror. Your devastation.

What would you say to a child who just watched something horrifying? What would you say or do to Bambi when their mom was shot? Now say and do those things to yourself.

Your distress is not weakness. It's your humanity working. When you watch someone be killed, you should feel scared, horrified, devastated, and sad. If you're not feeling those things, you're likely in a protective dissociative fall response.

Techniques to Help Your Body Transition to Sleep

These aren't magic fixes. They're things to try. I use these on a regular basis with myself, my two-year-old, and the individuals I work with.

To see several of these demonstrated you can check out this video.

Body-Based Practices

Tight Tight Squeeze (AKA progressive muscle relaxation): Squeeze your fists tight, inhale, (tight, tight tight), let go and exhale. Work your way through your feet, legs, face, whole body, whatever feels good. Do it a few times. (This is one I do with my 2-year-old most nights for winding down).

Soft Stomach: Place your hand on your belly and soften it intentionally, think to yourself, “soft belly”. We hold so much fear and tension there.

Hand on Body. Take a moment and notice if you have any tension or any part of your body that may want some gentle touch, and just place your hand there. Oftentimes this is on a chest, heart, face.

Shake and Brush It Off Physically: Put your head down and shake it gently, like you're shaking water out of your hair. Run your hands down your arms, your legs. You're not ignoring what happened—you're giving your body a physical ritual of releasing it for now so you can rest.

Legs Up the Wall: Lie on the floor with your legs up against the wall for 5-10 minutes before bed. This signals safety to your nervous system and helps shift you out of a threat state.

Eye Movement: Look at one corner of your room, move your eyes to the other corner. Keep doing that, counting down from 10.

Mental Practices

Permission giving: Either say to yourself or write it down: I can put this down. I don’t need to keep thinking about or trying to solve this tonight. This might also be permission to cry, to feel, to lay on the floor.

Brain Dump: Write everything down. Every thought, worry, fear, anger. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Include a "tomorrow I will..." list for all the things your brain is trying to solve right now. This tells your brain "I've got this written down, we can come back to it."

Environmental Support

Hot Packs, Weighted Blankets: Weight and warmth can signal safety. If you don't have these, try extra blankets, a heavy comforter, or rolled towels along your body. Put a hot pad on the bottom of your bed for your feet to be warm.

Cold Water Splash: Splash your face with cold water. Take ice cubes or cold packs and rub them under your eyes.

Sleep Associations: What usually helps you sleep? White noise, fan sounds, rain sounds? Use them. You can have these at very low volume if part of you still wants to stay vigilant. Work with where you are, not where you "should" be.

Let the Lights Stay On: If you or your kids need the lights on, keep them on. If your child wants to sleep in your room, let them.

Walk Outside: Step outside for one minute. In Minnesota right now, take a couple breaths of that cold air. The temperature shift can help reset your nervous system.

Cuddle a Living Thing: Pet, child, partner, stuffed animal. Physical connection and warmth.

For the Little Ones

Everything above applies to kids too, but some specific things to remember:

Explain that their body is trying to keep them safe—they're not broken

Do the techniques together: tight squeeze, butterfly hug, make it a game

Let them keep whatever lights they need on

Consider letting them sleep where they feel safest (based on your judgement and safety)

Read the same comforting book over and over—repetition is regulating

Validate their fear without minimizing: "You saw something really scary. It makes sense that bedtime feels hard right now. It’s okay to rest. I’ve got you."

What's Normal

If sleep doesn't come easily, that's normal. If you wake up repeatedly, that's normal. If you have nightmares, that's normal. If you feel tired but wired, that's normal. If intrusive thoughts show up when you lie down, that's normal.

Your brain and body are responding to something abnormal—witnessing violence, watching someone be killed.

Then You Move

Here's what I said yesterday and it still applies:

Once you've done these things, or whatever else you know to do to bring both of your feet back into the present moment, then you move. Then you decide your action.

*If you are stuck in one of these automatic strategies, you are human. That’s okay. You’re witnessing tragedy. And pausing and choosing to try one of these strategies may shift things more than you think.

When to Get Additional Support

If after a week:

Sleep isn't improving at all

You're getting less than 3-4 hours most nights (directly related to this)

Nightmares are so intense you're afraid to sleep