Reoccuring nightmares and how to stop them

[Traumwandlerin]

First of all, reoccuring nightmares are terrible. They steal your sleep. You probably can't sleep anymore, you wake up often, early and feel tired and terrible all day long. Having nightmares all the night effects you in your daily life, you feel miserable, the terror of the night lingers on.

Reoccuring nightmares won't happen without a reason, mostly something traumatic happened in the past or in the present and is relieved (probably in a symbolic way) many nights. Of course it's important to cure yourself from this trauma and the dreams are just hints on the real problem and otherwise is just a symptom. But it's a terrible symptom, it robs your life.

But reoccuring dreams are stoppable quite easily if you use the right technic: Dream Rehearsal. You can do this alone or go visit a therapeut and ask for a dream rehearsal therapy. If you want to do this alone, here is how you do it:

1) Get used to visualization and imagination. You don't need to have crystal clear images in your had or pictures at all. If you are not comfortable with imagination, then just try it until you feel comfortable using it. Maybe imagine a nice story, daydreaming or thinking about your favourite movie. Everyone can do it, you can do it already, but you need to realize you are already doing it.

2) If you have some nice dreams sometimes, relive them with imagination. Just sit or lay down, relax a bit, get calm and then imagine one of your favorite dreams or nice dream or dream you would like. If you feel comfortable go to the next step.

3) Prepare yourself, so you feel relaxed and calm. Think of the nices dreams you had, imagine them. Then think of your reoccuring nightmare, see what's typical about it, the symbols that says to you "the terror is gonna start right now". Don't imagine the whole nightmare, only up to the point just before the terror happens. Then imagine a different ending, a good one, one you would like. You can do this on purpose, deciding how it should end or you could let the story develope it's own life.

Attention: The good ending must be fitting. It's difficult to use this technic when just one dream ends and another stops. If your nightmare occurs in the bathroom and the terror starts when you are entering it, it's not very believable to just be at a nice meadow the next moment, can work, but it's probably easier if another door appears and you go outside it and there is a meadow and as you turn back the door vanishes and there is no connectiona nymore to the bathroom, then add nice feelings. It may even work better, if before you go through the door a mighty wolf appears who is your best friend and will kill off all your enemies.

4) Now do the dream rehearsal part. In this first session, repeat this new dream over and over again. Repeat it in the next days. Repeat it about 3 times a week for about half an hour.

Your nightmares will change to this new dream and then just cease to exist over the time. Have a good night sleep again.

[shadowx]

I would also stress the importance of trying to understand them. If you have suffered all your life then it is likely a psychological or neurological disorder and in fact your doctor might be able to help if they are severe. but if they just crop up every now and then you need to understand the meaning. If you are being chased by a murderer in these nightmares constantly then you need to work out who that person is in real life. Perhaps you feel your partner is hounding you or the tax man is chasing you for money. Once you understand the message the dreams will often stop.

[Traumwandlerin]

It's not always easy to understand the meaning and even if you understood it, some dreams won't stop. Especially if those dreams are connected with traumatic issues and not just the "flavor of the week" like terrible taxes This technic even works in cases, when you were severley abused, got PTSD, now the reason, know what happened, and just relieve this moment every night in your dreams. Some dreams exists, because you are unable to deal with the connected emotions. But if you've realized this deals with your emotions, the dream still won't stop, cause you haven't dealt with those emotions yet The mainmessage of nightmares is that something is or was wrong. After one dream, you've gathered all the information you need, so there is no reason for those to go on any longer.