Sexual assault can affect your sleep patterns. In order to sleep properly, you need to feel safe and secure. When you have been assaulted, your ability to trust and feel safe can be effected, which can result in insomnia of fitful sleep.
Constantly thinking about what happened, being fearful of your safety, worrying about what other people think or concern about the future can also keep you awake at night. Sleep is also a time where the brain’s normal defenses are weakened. This means you can experience nightmares which hold the same emotions you felt at the time of being assaulted. Nightmares can occur if you are living in fear of being assaulted again.
Any disruption to sleep can affect your ability to function during the day, it can cause you to become lethargic, have poor concentration, irritable and anxious. It can also reduce your ability to cope with other stresses you are trying to manage.
Sleep disruption is experienced by almost all survivors of sexual assault and abuse, it is a normal reaction to trauma, and with time and support, these impacts can be mitigated. If you are struggling with sleep disruption, you can speak with your counsellor or ring the CRCC crisis line on 02 6247 2525 to discuss some strategies that assist in creating more internal and external safety as well as strategies to increase sleep and help manage the impacts which are causing the disrupted sleep.
The Canberra Rape Crisis Centre (CRCC) is a non-government, Feminist organisation working collaboratively within service provision systems in the ACT and surrounding areas to provide services and programs to eliminate sexual violence in our community.
We provide a crisis support line, information and referral, advocacy and counselling services to victim survivors of sexual violence. Our services extend to provide community support for First Nations survivors, as well as community education and training programs.
The Canberra Rape Crisis Centre acknowledges that we conduct our work on the lands of the Ngunnawal & Ngambri People, Traditional Custodians of the Canberra region. We pay respect to First Nations Peoples and Elders past and present throughout the nation. We recognise the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities, and acknowledge that lands were never ceded.
Canberra Rape Crisis Centre
P.O Box 3805,
WESTON CREEK, ACT 2611
Admin & Business Enquiries:
Business Phone Line (02) 6287 3618
Email crcc@crcc.org.au
Crisis Support & Services Information:
Crisis Phone Line (02) 6247 2525
Crisis Text Contact Only 0488 586 518
Crisis Email Contact crisis@crcc.org.au
Community Education & Training Enquiries:
Business Phone Line (02) 6287 3618
Email cep@crcc.org.au
CRCC is committed to excellence in service provision, intersectional feminism, access & equity, diversity & inclusion.
©2024, Canberra Rape Crisis Centre. All rights reserved.
