I suffered from awful nightmares for years.
If you landed here from a web search, I’ll spare you the details. Chances are you have your own nightmares to worry about and I don’t want to burden you with any fresh ideas for horrible dreams.
I’d wake up gasping with my heart racing. It would take me minutes to calm down, and even when I did, I was by no means relaxed. Going back to sleep felt like a terrible idea, but eventually I had to. Then it would start all over again. Each night I worried I’d have more nightmares, then sure enough, I’d have one like clockwork.
It went on and on like that. I hoped that they would just go away, but they didn’t. In fact, things just got worse and worse.
Finally I’d had enough of it. I went online and searched everywhere I could. The tips I saw didn’t really help me. I already went to bed at a reasonable hour and had good sleep hygiene. I even cut dairy and spicy foods. None of it worked. It seemed like every website had the same exact 500 words copied and pasted.
From there I went through a more intense research phase, reading any book I could get my hands on. In a two hundred page book I might find one or two worthy tidbits. Then, crawling through pages and pages of forum posts, I’d find something worthwhile. Slowly, I began to gain control over my dreams. I ‘flipped the scripts’ on them in the daytime (a technique I’ll cover later), and then used lucid dreaming to make them even better.
On top of all that I discovered a physical issue that was making my dreams worse. Once that was resolved it greatly improved my overall sleep. Since then my dreams are fantastically improved. I have fun and satisfying dreams, some of which keep me smiling all day afterward. When I do have an intense dream it’s not the same chronic nightmare I kept having, and I can recover quickly, knowing I have mastery over my dreams.
It’s a big shift that dramatically improved my life.
After I went through this I experienced a number of powerful conversations with other nightmare sufferers in person. First, was my grandma. After my grandfather died, she was having such awful nightmares that she fell out of bed and hit her head on the nightstand. I couldn’t stand to hear about that from anyone, let alone my 75 year old grandma. I asked her what she dreamed about.
She told me that ever since my grandfather passed that every night she dreamed that she was falling through an endless black expanse, terrified and alone. It broke my heart. I asked her if she wanted them to go away and she said, “Of course!”
I spent thirty minutes telling her what I’d been through and describing basic re-scripting techniques for nightmares (later I found out that technique was called IRT), and also letting her know about lucid dreaming. Nothing too in-depth, but a general overview. I let her know that she wasn’t doomed to have these nightmares forever, and that she could influence them.
The very next day she called me and told me that she had the nightmare again, but when she was falling she closed her eyes and wished to be with my grandpa. She was instantly transported to a lake, riding in a boat with him at one of their frequent vacation spots. She got to talk to him and she told me it was the best dream she’d had in years. Not only that, but it gave her some closure in talking with him after he’d passed.
I was shocked.
All anyone had to do for her was open the door to a new reality in which she had influence and mastery over her dreams. She did the rest, and in an astonishingly short time. It is possible to have this kind of fast result (especially with non-PTSD nightmares), even if it isn’t typical. In the IRT training I took, the trainer mentioned specifically that she’s had many patients improve dramatically after one session, although most need closer to six sessions for lasting results.
Regardless, her improvement stayed with me for a long time. Following that I had two almost identical conversations with other people in my life. One of them was losing weight because she couldn’t sleep. I talked to her for thirty minutes with this same speech and when I ran into her a week later she’d totally forgotten that she was having nightmares at all! She literally didn’t remember that she’d said that she’d been suffering from them for months.
I wished that someone could have helped me like this when I was suffering. Since that can’t happen, I’d like to pass it on to you and other readers.
You don’t have to suffer forever. Things can improve. Not only that, but you could end up having fun and exciting dreams that energize and fulfill you.
Recently I made the commitment to starting this website and examining research papers that study what techniques work best in reducing nightmare intensity and frequency. I’ve been able to see what I did historically, and where it landed within these evidence-based studies.
I’m bringing this content to you and other readers in hopes that you’ll get some relief too, and start having a more relaxed and satisfying dreamscape.
It could happen overnight, but it will likely be a project that you’ll need to work on. If you suffered the way I did, I think you’ll be up for it. This blog will cover things in a more casual way, but this website also features more in-depth coverage of specific nightmare studies.
My hope is that by seeing these studies you will truly understand that you can gain control over your nightmares and that they can improve or go away entirely. Starting to believe this is the first step to improving your nightmares.
If you’re eager to learn more, I’d suggest you start by understanding Why Nightmares Happen.