Do you suffer from nightmares?
Most of us experience the occasional bad dream. We might wake startled after dreaming we walked into a meeting at work naked. We might dream an intruder is in the house or we’re being chased through a forest by a giant swarm of tarantula. No matter how fantastical our dream is, when we’re in it, it feels real and very scary and we’re not aware that it couldn’t happen. Nightmares cause us to wake in anxiety, fear, dread or even terror. And we can often sense the physiological remnants of anxiety and fear in our bodies when we wake up.
The occasional bad dream is nothing to worry about and won’t make it difficult for us to go to bed again. It doesn’t require treatment. But some of us experience nightmares on almost a nightly basis and have sleep that is routinely disrupted. For some people, the nightmares can feel worse than what actually happened. They can be so terrifying that going to sleep becomes something to be frightened of. This can cause insomnia and if you regularly experience nightmares, you should know that they can benefit from treatment. They don’t have to lead to an impact on daily functioning.
How common are nightmares?
Around 35-45% people experience at least one nightmare a month. Anything that disrupts our sleep schedule like shiftwork, jetlag and illness can make nightmares more common. But they also occur more frequently in people with certain physical health problems such as asthma and migraines, coronary heart disease, Parkinsons’s Disease, cancer and those living with chronic pain.
Similarly, having certain mental health problems also increases their prevalence. Nightmares are commonly experienced in those with psychosis, mood disorders and PTSD. In fact, 90% of those with PTSD report having disturbing dreams as opposed to 2-6% of the general adult population. And certain medications can cause nightmare as can ceasing to take others. It’s also possible some people are genetically predisposed to nightmares.
Why do we dream?
We dream for more than two hours a night during later stages of sleep. We don’t usually wake up during our dreams so it can be hard to remember what we dreamt about. However, making notes as soon as you wake up is one way to recall them more clearly.
There is still debate about why we dream. Some experts think dreaming is just a way of committing events that have happened to memory. Research demonstrates that sleeping after learning new information helps us store this information and remember it more effectively.
Others believe our dreams act as therapy by helping our brains process unresolved material. It’s also possible that dreams serve as an opportunity to rehearse for threating situations in the future. Dreams may also play a role in creativity.
Psychologists who specialise in treating nightmares, such as Justin Havens, believe that nightmares happen regularly because we run out of ideas about how to resolve a problem. Or we wake up without getting to the end of processing because the dream is so frightening. We end up stuck and unable to use our own built in biological process to discharge trauma from our brains.
Learn how to stop nightmares
There’s no need to suffer through nightmares. Psychologists like Justin Havens have proven that it’s possible to stop them. We have power over our dreams. Havens studied nightmares for his PhD. He suggests that nightmares happen because we’ve run out of ideas about how to resolve a problem. Nightmares are simply stuck dreams.
People often spend time analysing their bad dreams, trying to understand what they mean. Havens suggests this process is unhelpful as it just strengthens the detail of something that might already feel very frightening. Interpreting the content isn’t useful.
Instead, he suggests you can change the outcome of the dream by focusing on the part where you woke up. And then imaging a fantastical solution to resolve it. A solution that would always win. It doesn’t need to be realistic. For example, if you’re dreaming you’re being chased by someone very violent, you could imagine you can fly and drop acid on the person pursuing you that dissolves their body. Or that you have the power to transform into the Hulk and beat them in a fight. The solution has to feel more powerful than the problem you’re facing in your dream. And needs to make you feel good, powerful, like you’re in charge.
By spending time dwelling on your solution before you go to bed, you plant in your mind ready-made solutions that you can draw on when you encounter a nightmare. If it doesn’t work, then refine it until you find something that’s more effective.
Learn more about how to do it here:
Try it and see if it works. Share your experience in the comments. Inspire others on their healing journey.