Embodied Trauma, Sleep Disruption, and Survival Among Displaced Palestinian Women in Gaza

This qualitative study explores how genocidal violence, forced displacement, and the collapse of social infrastructures shape the traumatic experiences of displaced Palestinian women in Gaza. Drawing on 28 in-depth testimonies collected in overcrowded shelters, the study examines trauma as an embodied, relational, and structurally produced condition rather than an individual clinical disorder. Thematic analysis identified six overarching themes: (1) Between Night and Numbness: The Displaced Mind’s Search for Rest, describing insomnia as ethical vigilance within ongoing annihilation; (2) The Body in Ruins: Somatic Memory and the Weight of Displacement, revealing how physiological dysregulation becomes a living archive of violence; (3) Dreams in Ashes: The Psychopathology of Fear and Memory under Genocide, illustrating the collapse of boundaries between waking and dreaming; (4) Breath, Hunger, and the Disintegrating Self: The Physiology of Siege, highlighting starvation and breathlessness as political grammars of survival; (5) Shattered Minds and Silent Screams: The Psychosomatic Collapse of Gaza’s Women, showing linguistic breakdown and psychosomatic deterioration as testimonies of extreme suffering; and (6) The Edge of Sanity: Resilience, Madness, and the Ethics of Survival, depicting creative, relational practices that blur the line between resilience and madness. Findings demonstrate that trauma under genocidal conditions is inseparable from structural violence, spatial destruction, and collective memory. The study calls for trauma frameworks that center sociopolitical context, decolonial perspectives, and community-based approaches capable of addressing the ethical and material dimensions of survival documented in these narratives.