How Do I Stop Nightmares?
These are the best ways to stop nightmares:
- Realize that you can have a future where you are nightmare-free
- Empower yourself with self-defense dream techniques
- Start examining your dream patterns and triggers
- Tell yourself a different story
A Nightmare-Free Future
The first and best step to stopping nightmares is to understand that you don't have to have them. Many nightmare sufferers are convinced that they'll have them forever, and that there's nothing that can change that.
It's simply not true.
This website details the techniques that you can use to stop having nightmares.
Not just that, but you can start having fun dreams as well, once you stop having nightmares!
Dreams are highly dependent on the expectations of the dreamer. More on that will come shortly, but just know that your expectations about your dreams helps guide the kinds of dreams that you have.
Nightmares can be a vicious cycle: you have a nightmare, and it scares you, which then leads to more nightmares. They happen repeatedly and soon you come to expect them. At that point you're stuck in a loop of stress that makes going to bed a terrifying prospect.
The first step to freeing yourself from nightmares is to open your mind to the possibility that there is a future where you don't have nightmares anymore.
Take Action in the Dream
You have power in your nightmares. You can change the outcome in the moment using basic Lucid Dreaming techniques.
- Any dreamer that is aware that they are dreaming while they are dreaming is a "Lucid Dreamer".
- Lucid Dreaming was scientifically proven in 1962 using brainwave measurements
- Patients made eye movements while awake, then sleeping, and their brainwaves matched
- This opens up countless ways to stop nightmares while in the dream
This technique is easy to learn and can happen almost instantly. Even in the same night it's learned. While much advice exists that can help you avoid nightmares before you fall asleep, this technique is one of the few that you can actually use in the middle of the nightmare.
Upcoming articles will cover this technique in-depth
Understand Your Nightmares and Triggers
In order to banish nightmares, you'll need to get a comprehensive understanding of what kinds you're having.
- Purchase a journal and log every dream you can remember
- Both good dreams and bad dreams
- Identify common nightmares and themes
- The same nightmares, different nightmares, etc.
- What the specific details are, what the ending was
- Start tracking what factors precede nightmares
- Violent media, alcohol/cannabis consumption, stresses in life, etc.
- Sleeping position (side, back, pillows over face)
- Diet prior to sleep
- Any medications that may impact sleep
Logging all of your nightmares will give you a much better understanding of what's happening while you sleep.
External factors such as body pain or diet can lead to nightmares. Conditions such as Sleep Apnea or Restless Leg Syndrome can lead to nightmares on their own.
More importantly, once you've identified your types of nightmares, you can work to change them.
Re-Write Your Nightmare
- Pick on of your nightmares from the list you've logged
- Write out how it normally starts and ends
- Create a new ending for the dream that resolves it, or turns it into a positive one
- Repeated practice of this technique can change the outcome of future nightmares
Let's use an example of a nightmare in which the dreamer is chased by an angry mob. The dreamer typically wakes up after being chased for some time, and is often physically agitated with high heart rate and/or heavy breathing.
Their pattern is to have this nightmare and wake while being chased.
They would take a piece of paper and write out their normal nightmare, but then change the ending:
"I am being chased by a mob of people. I am running from them. As I run, I realize that my body is getting lighter and lighter. Soon I am floating above the ground and am flying away from the mob. I am experiencing a pleasant dream where I am flying and wake up peacefully."
By changing the ending of the dream, the dreamer is increasing the likelihood that the nightmare will change.
Adding in the Lucid Dreaming technique above can increase the possibility of changing the dream while in the dream. These two techniques have the potential to provide relief to sufferers of nightmares.