Sometimes the only dreams we remember are the ones we wish we could forget. Nightmares can be instructive, and most psychologists believe that they are a healthy part of life. But if you are plagued by repetitive nightmares and are losing sleep, sometimes changing your daily habits can reduce nightmare frequency. In general, nightmares can be caused by insufficient sleep, poor exercise and diet, and stress.  The tips below all are aimed at cultivating a healthier sleep and dream life, drawn from my ebook Enhance Your Dreamlife.

1. Don’t go to sleep angry or stressed out. Give yourself time to cool down.

2. Regular sleep patterns = better dreams. Including weekends.

3. Don’t eat right before bed. In particular, foods that take longer to digest, like meats and cheeses, can increase nightmares.

4. Reduce alcohol and caffeine consumption.

5. Cultivate gratitude. If this doesn’t come easy, do a “thankfulness” exercise every day in which you list the aspects of your life that you are thankful for.

6. Reduce exposure to violent images in the media, especially in the evenings. Horror movies can cause lingering nightmares for years.

7. Spend time in nature as often as possible, even if this means sitting in a city park for fifteen minutes every day. Many therapists believe that we all suffer from “nature deficiency disorder.”

8. Don’t sleep on your back. This encourages a special kind of nightmare known as sleep paralysis, in which you feel like you are awake and alert while at the same time you  cannot move. Sufferers also feel breathless and/or sense an “unknown presence” in the room.

9. Start a gentle body practice like yoga, walking, or tai chi. In general, moderate exercise increases the quality of sleep.

10. If you have repetitive nightmares, role-play how you will face your nightmare attackers next time.

11. Keep a dream journal. Often writing it out can dispel a lot of the powerful emotionality.

12. Join a dream-sharing group. Many larger cities have them. If not, start your own.

13. Give yourself some self-love and acceptance. Easy to suggest, but hard to do. I use journaling to remind myself that I am loved. Affirmations — while they can seem cheesy at first — are effective as well. My backlog of journals is essentially a history of pep-talks I’ve given myself over the years… and it still works.

14. Keep fresh flowers or aromatic oils in the bedroom. Research shows that good smells positively effects your dreams.

Note: If you have numerous, repetitive nightmares that are related to childhood scenes or some personal trauma you encountered, I recommend seeing a counselor or therapist. Severe nightmares are  a common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which can be caused by war, devastating personal loss, rape and suffering through a natural disaster. Ministers and priests are also good resources for dealing with nightmares if you attend a church; many are trained in working with the spiritual and traumatic side of dreams.

For more information about getting better sleep and exploring dreams, download my free ebook Enhance your Dreamlife.

Title image: Sweet Dreams by Sekaino Ai.

The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893

This is part two of my series on lucid nightmares. But first we need to take a sweeping look at how the nightmare in general is discussed and treated in contemporary psychology.

Technically, a nightmare is a dream that the sleeper finds disturbing, and is responsible for waking up the sleeper. Nightmares are scary, but biologically they are defined by this sleep disturbance.

The Cause of Nightmares

We know a few things about why nightmares happen. Nightmares are tied to stress levels in waking life. They also occur, as I mentioned, in people who have suffered intense trauma such as assault, war, or a major catastrophe such as surviving an earthquake, or a terrorist bombing. As such, nightmares are a common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Curiously, nightmares also have some physical causes, such as having a fever, not getting enough air while sleeping, and eating before going to bed. In Dostoevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov is told his nightmares are not a real problem, probably “Just a bit of undigested potato.”

The truth is, we actually know surprisingly little about nightmares because we, as a culture, have been so hellbent on killing them dead.

Freud’s Influence on Nightmare Psychology

This reluctance to face nightmares started with Sigmund Freud. His Interpretation of Dreams is a great read, but has little to say about nightmares. Freud first tried to fit nightmares into his theory that all dreams are wish-fulfillment. When is a nightmare a wish-fulfillment” When it’s a sado-masochistic wish fulfillment! Somehow this doesn’t quite hold water, but I suppose my disagreement is only a wish-fulfillment to prove Freud wrong (which is what he often told his patients who had dreams didn’t jive with his theory).

Freud’s student Ernest Jones continued this reasoning in the 1930s. Jones concluded that nightmares represent a clash between a powerful wish and an equally powerful repression. So the content of a nightmare, in this view, is sort of like the dust that rises from the battle between the Id and Ego.

This view may have some merit, as repetitive nightmares do tend to escalate, become increasingly disturbing (and direct) over time. Maybe it takes a nightmare, with us sitting up in bed, heart pounding and cold-sweating, to get the message through our defenses.

Since the 1930s, however, scientists stopped studying the causes of nightmares and became focused on stopping them in their tracks. This trend is related to the rise of behaviorism and, later, cognitive neuro-psychology.

Characteristics of Nightmare Sufferers

One exception to this disturbing trend is psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann, who has dedicated years of research to the nightmare and its triggers, its symptoms, and the profiles of its sufferers. Hartmann focuses on the personality characteristics of nightmare sufferers, and his research is surprising.

For instance, according to Hartmann, nightmare sufferers are not more likely to have suffered trauma! Nor are nightmare sufferers more neurotic, or more defensive (as Jones” suggested). Actually, Hartmann suggests that nightmare sufferers tend to have a comparative lack of psychological defenses.

In other words, people who have nightmares are more open to their feelings and the world around them. In fact, nightmare sufferers are more likely to be creative people and artists. Hartmann calls this trait “vulnerability” because these people have a greater ability to be touched by the world, to experience life and all of its pain. So this vulnerability is a double-edged sword, pointing towards both creativity as well as increased suffering.

And also madness. It is true that nightmare sufferers tend to be more creative, but they also have a greater chance, statistically speaking, of being prone to mental illness (schizophrenia). This is the opposite of neurosis – which is having too many psychological defenses in play. Having few defenses is like leaving the barn door open throughout the night, and anyone or anything can wander in and make a mess of things.

Treating Nightmares

In general, a good nightmare is a dead nightmare. At least that is the perspective of many cognitive psychologists and clinical neuroscientists. At heart, this perspective is fueled by an honest desire to end the suffering of millions of dreamers, especially those who endure repetitive nightmares due to personal or collective trauma.

Funded research these days focuses on how to disrupt the neural pathways that activate traumatic memories, therefore preventing access to the root of the trauma. Unfortunately, scalping nightmares through desensitization and psychiatric drugs may leave untouched the original issue that is asking for healing.

And that is the perspective that I take, that a nightmare is a loud call for healing. One of my favorite dream workers Jeremy Taylor shares this view when he writes, “You are having nightmares” Lucky you!” By this, he means that the nightmare is pointing the way towards what needs attention, work, and healing.

One successful approach to working with nightmares is a narrative approach. The dreamer imagines the nightmare and re-writes the story-line. This approach is effective and shows the power that our personal mythologies have over our lives. The dreamer may then re-enter the dream and have the power to get out of the paralyzing fear.

Another approach is desensitization, which is a way to separate the feelings from the imagery so dreamers can move on from a repetitive theme. Eye Movement Desensitization is one popular and effective technique that helps build new thought habits that are constructive and affirming.

Finally, a successful technique is to become aware you are dreaming, and exert willpower in the dream. I’ll discuss this more next time.

Facing the Shadows

Nightmares are not well understood in contemporary Western civilization. And neither are the traits of nightmare sufferers: vulnerability and creativity. Nightmares are a clue to that neglected imaginal realm, and they represent so much more than our greatest fears, but also our greatest strengths, and possibly our genius. That’s why the only thing that is scarier than nightmares is the drive to eradicate them.

Next time, I’ll move deeper into how lucid dreaming and nightmares intersect at the Dark Side of Lucid Dreaming.

Here’s the link for NPR”s Anatomy of your Nightmare.

Also, I”m noticing that a lot of people find my site looking for information on children and nightmares. Be sure to check out my dream research resources, and here’s a quick primer on nightmares in children from familydoctor.org.

This study backs up Ernest Hartmann‘s research with nightmares; over twenty years ago Hartmann catagorized nightmare sufferers not as neurotic people, but people with “thinner boundaries.” Interestingly, Hartmann has also suggested that nightmare sufferers are more likely to be creative and artistic people as well. The Canadian research, led by Dr. Tore Nielsen, combined with Hartmann’s widely approved findings, basically pushes the inception of anxiety and thinner boundaries (and possibly creativity along with it) back into early infancy.

Nielsen gave some helpful hints for parents who want to lessen the likelihood that their colicky baby will be plagued by bad dreams throughout their childhood. From the Reuters Health article by Amy Norton, Nielsen suggests:

“A good starting point would be to improve children’s early bonding, or “secure attachment,” with their parents. For older children who are having distressing dreams, Nielsen said he and his colleagues have found that having the children “draw the dream” and share it with their parents can be helpful.”

By the way, Nielsen is the keynote speaker this summer at the annual conference for the International Study of Dreams in Montreal.

Further reading:

Interview with Dr. Ernest Hartmann

More dream research by Dr. Tore Nielsen

With the approaching solstice, the dreaming is stronger, if for no other reason than the nights are long. In pre-electric times, and traditional societies today, this is nature’s ways of saying go ahead and sleep in.

Meanwhile, hundreds of folks in Brittany will converge on the major megalithic sites for a time-honored solstice celebration. Stonehenge is open to the public. And, in Ireland, a lucky few will no doubt witness the shaft of light that makes it inside the Newgrange tomb, as it does every winter solstice without fail.

The solstice is the most ancient of holidays, and is the root of many winter festivals, from Brumalia and Saturnalia to the D ngzh Festival and, of course, Christmas. But the best description of why we celebrate the longest night comes from a more modern voice:

“They say the darkest hour is before the dawn.”
- Bob Dylan

Solstice is a time of facing the shadows of life. A harsh midwinter appraisal of how many potatoes are in still in the cellar. Solstice is also the traditional time to listen to what our nightmares have been telling us, those voices we usually push away. The long nights of winter lean towards them without mercy, but remember those dark forces are only trying to get our attention.

As the daylight turns its back on us, we have the blessed opportunity to turn toward the shadows and be attentive to their whispers. Bringing these voices out of the root cellar of consciousness is the real reason for the season.

As Carl Jung wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Further studies:

Carl Jung (1989), Memories, dreams and reflections.
David Lewis Williams (2005), Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods.
Bob Dylan (1975), Blood on the tracks.

Times like this, it’s good to remember that the Int”l Association for the Study of Dreams still offers its free nightmare hotline. This service is staffed by professionals with decades of experience with frightening dreams and nightmares.

Here’s what the IASD suggests before making the call:

Nightmares and their associated feelings are normal reactions to non-normal, traumatic events. The Nightmare Response Line’s experienced dreamworkers offer debriefing, not counseling.

Research shows that a conscious focus on nightmares once they”ve occurred (just telling them to someone) can speed up coming to grips with the trauma and have a positive effect on an individual’s well being. Under “nightmares,” Cyberdreamwork loosely classify all dreams with strong overtones of fear, devastation, overwhelming shame, guilt, humiliation, or mutilation, as well as dreams of falling, burning, and so on. Calling the hotline, you’ll have the opportunity to tell your nightmare safely and anonymously.

Trick or treat!