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Have you ever had recurring nightmares and wondered where they were coming from?
While you may not have gone to bed anxious, you certainly woke up that way.
Despite the extremity of these so-unwelcome scenarios, you undoubtedly aren’t alone. In growing up, we all experienced emotional disturbances that felt alarming to us. Even those harrowing situations that occurred very early in our development (by now completely forgotten or repressed) may be susceptible to re-emerging, surreptitiously, in a dream characterized starkly by fear, helplessness, or hopelessness.
Here are a couple of explanations for why nightmares are best understood as dreams that struggle but are unable to, offer therapeutic closure for your trauma. Although that is clearly their aim, it’s beyond their capacity to implement.
1. The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD ) directly links nightmares to insufficiently processed trauma.
It’s repeatedly been documented that vividly distressing dreams deal with an individual’s failure to successfully integrate initially shocking memories into long-term memory.
Memory consolidation has yet to take place, so the nightmares, rather than resolving what happened to the person originally, serve only to remind them of it.
As a result, the substance of the bad dream includes either re-experiencing the trauma (though generally in a somewhat disguised form) or re-experiencing the same aversive emotions present in the trauma.
2. Ironically, nightmares warrant being viewed as coping mechanisms.
But in these instances, they’re better understood as defense mechanisms poorly calculated to achieve emotional closure and induce restful sleep.
Deep-seated fears are what nightmares target for cessation, yet these nightmares are overwhelmed by them. Ideally, the repetitive dream’s scary content would facilitate, through habituation, resolution, but ends up being undermined by it.
In a sense, nightmares represent an opportunity lost. The worrisome imagery of its persistently hopeless narrative virtually guarantees that the anxiety chronically tied to the traumatic memory will endure.
Moreover, at its worst, the individual may strive to avoid sleep altogether, since the terror connected to these hair-raising dreams can be as disturbing as the earlier alarming event.
What are some clinical solutions that—with varying degrees of success—have in past decades been tried?
1. Imagery Rehearsal Therapy
Essentially a cognitive-behavioral approach involves rescripting the nightmare’s narrative so that a much more favorable outcome ensues. This positive, regularly rehearsed modification is meant to be practiced before falling asleep.
Therefore, instead of being at the mercy of the frightening dream, it aspires—strategically—to take control of it. And the more this remedial version is rehearsed, the more likely it will feel increasingly viable and real.
2. Exposure Therapy
This technique isn’t employed literally but imagistically. Done in the context of counseling or therapy, it gradually discloses to the patient their irrational or exaggerated thoughts about the trauma, to reduce their dire emotional reactions to it.
Given the amplified sense of safety inherent in this context, it’s likely that over time—simply by focusing their attention on it—they’ll be less and less upset, or “flooded,” by it.
3. Relaxation Techniques
Grounded in the notion that a person can’t be tense and relaxed at the same time, the patient is coached to practice relaxation exercises before falling asleep. Such calming techniques can mitigate pre-sleep anxiety, which has contributed to the occurrence of nightmares.
If you happen to be someone plagued by repetitive nightmares, don’t despair. Whether with or without professional assistance, you should eventually be able to put them to rest . . . and get more rest yourself.
© 2024 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.