This therapy I am doing now is similar to EMDR but has more to it than just EMDR. A lot of people that struggle with PTSD complain of having sleep issues. It's hard to go into a deep sleep when your body is stuck in hyper vigilant mode. A person is a lot more sensitive and has a tendency to suddenly produce a lot of cortizol which basically keeps the body "ready" for flight.

I had them a lot myself and ended up having to sleep with the TV on so if I woke up all confused at least the TV would be on so I could realize where I was faster. Actually, my husband got so he did not like sleeping with the TV on so now we sleep in separate rooms which is fine with me because my husband is a challenge to sleep with anyway because he tends to move around too much during his sleep and would hit and kick me in his sleep. It got so I was waking up with a large pillow as a sheild near the bottom of the bed trying to get away from him in my sleep.

The reason I also ended up having the TV on was to avoid thinking about the trauma while trying to drift off to sleep and instead fall asleep listening to something on the TV. I tried to find things I could listen to that would not cause me to want to look at the TV. Some people listen to talk radio or even listen to books or music, anything that helps their mind relax. It was not until I read how if you do something that is mundane like coloring in a coloring book for instance, the brain realized "oh, no emergency so I can stop pumping cortizol" and that is how the mind starts to calm down so the person can feel some kind of "normal".

For myself, it helped me to learn about what my brain is actually doing that is confusing me so much.