How to Prevent False Awakenings

False awakenings are dreams that seem like waking life… until you get out of bed and fall down a bottomless chasm. True story. False awakenings can be frustrating, terrifying, and may even begin to impact your daily life, especially when they occur 5 or more times in a row.

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Sleep Paralysis Treatment – Dreams of Being Held Down

Sleep Paralysis is a troubling sleep condition that is deeply misunderstood in our culture. Experienced by millions as an incubus attack or being “ridden by a witch,” sleep paralysis (SP) has biological causes that are related to sleep hygiene, stress, and insomnia.

In SP, the dreamer is aware of the body’s paralysis that normally comes with REM (dreaming) sleep.  This paralysis is what keeps us from acting out our dreams: a pretty important evolutionary skill that prevents us from injuring ourselves or our sleeping partners when we are dreaming about hunting tigers and bears.

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Lucid Nightmare Podcast

As promised, here is the recording of my talk this past June about lucid nightmares.

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Nightmares Linked with Multiple Suicide Attempts

A study from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden reports that suicidal patients are more likely to attempt to take their life again if they have nightmares following the first attempt. In fact, the data suggests that gender and psychiatric diagnosis is not a factor in these results.  From the original article,

“Those who were still suffering from nightmares after two months faced an even greater risk. These people were five times more likely to attempt suicide a second time,” says author of the thesis, Registered Nurse Nils Sj str m.

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