Good News About Bad Dreams
One of the most common problems I’ve seen people experience—-from friends to clients, to random people I talk to (I talk to a lot of random people) is bad dreams. The most annoying/disturbing ones are the recurring dreams. Not only are those dreams upsetting, but they’re boring. We need some variety in our sleep programming, I think.
While it’s no longer in vogue to talk to therapists about dreams, we actually have exercises you can do that can get rid of nightmares. I took a workshop from therapist and teacher Courtney Armstrong and she described a strategy for dealing with recurring nightmares that I thought, “Oh, that sounds great in theory, but whatever. That’s not going to do anything.” I probably wasn’t quite that cynical, but I had doubts.
Fast forward to a year or two later, a woman came to see me and she was suffering from a recurring dream about her ex. Talk about THE WORST. I don’t know about you, but I love Texts From Your Ex on Instagram, and the underlying message is always the same: a good ex is one that is gone. We don’t want to keep seeing and hearing from them. We definitely don’t want to be sleeping with them.
What is this Devilry?
When we think about, images, smell, and strong emotions tend to be the things that have more of an immediate impact on us than logic because they all involve the emotional parts of your brain. When we engage the emotional brain, that’s when we have a real opportunity to make lasting change. This is challenging in psychotherapy because so much of what contemporary therapists rely on (including me) comes from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which is all logic based. While CBT strategies are helpful, they rely heavily on someone buying into a “more logical” way of looking at a problem and practicing a new behavior. Um, hello: can anyone say Amy hasn’t meal-planned since January 1st even though she knows she should?
Nightmares and recurring dreams are gifts in therapy because they influence our quality of life, and they make terrific targets for emotionally-based therapeutic strategies. They’re rich in imagery and they’re evocative. Also, while I don’t think they predict the future or anything like that, they can tell us a lot about what’s on your mind at the moment. When we’re dreaming, we’re a lot less inhibited, so it doesn’t really take a Harvard PhD to figure that one out.
How is it Done?
To get rid of a recurring dream or a nightmare, we need to do a few things.
Describe the dream/nightmare from beginning to end (even if it doesn’t seem to make sense.)
Identify the part that is the most troubling.
Envision a new outcome—-a new way of handling that part.
Rerun the dream (say it out loud) repeatedly with your desired change until it feels solid for you.
Does this work better with a therapist? Yes. It’s a lot better with a therapist, and if this is a problem for you, I encourage you to call me, but if you can work it out on your own, more power to you!
Sweet dreams!
