Welcome to Part 3 of Sleep. We may be able to implement many of the environmental and habitual/routine changes in Part 1 & 2 but ultimately, it can feel we have no control over what happens if and when we get to sleep, which is what makes Part 3 so frightening: Nightmares.
Nightmares can feel tortuous; reliving our trauma (or the themes of our trauma) and experiencing vividly intense emotions making the nightmare feel incredibly real, not like a typical dream in which there is some separation of reality and fantasy.
We wake reeling, reexperiencing our trauma, dreading the thought of subjecting ourselves again the coming evening. No wonder so many of my clients fear sleep.
Until they begin to process their experiences in the counselling room, many clients have spent their waking moments actively trying to distract themselves from what happened to them; for them sleep is anything but a restful experience, but one of forcibly reliving the feelings or event they have been so desperately avoiding. On repeat. Another loss of control.
In this post, we are going to look at two techniques to manage our nightmares, no matter where we are in our trauma process.
Trauma Processing & Nightmares
I had the same two recurring trauma nightmares, from early childhood up until I was 42 years old; I would wake up shaking viciously in cold sweat, shook to my core with their realness. The symbolic themes of these dreams: existential fear and extreme terror, utter destruction and annihilation, murder and vicious rape and sexual assault; most distressingly of all, they were my fault.
As I began my mental health training in 2016, I came to better understand the meaning of my trauma dreams. These nightmares were my brain’s way of processing my childhood trauma; they were messages from my subconscious telling me “This happened, please can you listen, please can you help”. I like to think of them as my younger self or parts, communicating to me through my dreams.
So what made them stop? Well firstly, a lot of processing over a number of years which made them drop in frequency and intensity. Facinatingly, after some Trauma Focused CBT where myself and my therapist went back into the trauma and reprocessed it: we 're-wrote it' weaving in new themes and beliefs so that I could process it in a different way - I haven't had one since.
Trauma Informed Pacing
Trauma is a personal journey which needs to be taken at an individual pace.
This post will provide techniques to manage nightmares, understanding that it is the processing of trauma that will ultimately prevent the nightmares from occurring but respecting that not every survivor is at that stage yet.
These techniques will become part of the toolbox built up over this blog series to help you stabilise and regulate, build up your sense of self, your resilience and strength so that when the time is right, you can feel ready to process your trauma.
Managing Nightmares
Let us accept that trauma nightmares are part of our healing journey, and rather than getting stuck in the fear and terror of them, or avoiding sleep, we can choose to face them so we can begin to feel in control. Before we introduce the tools, let’s remind ourselves of simple breathing & grounding & physical strategies we can use to bring us back to the present moment and manage our emotions and bodies when we have woken from a nightmare. We need to be able to feel confident in our regulation skills so that we can use the two dream tools.
Technique 1: Re-Directing Your Nightmare
In this technique we view our dream as if it were a screenplay from a movie and we are the director. We have the power to change the story, characters and script as we please.
Recurring Nightmares
Trauma nightmares can get stuck in a loop and it is not uncommon for us to have recurring nightmares with the same sequence or events. They may be a literal play by play repeat of the traumatic event (like watching a movie or reading a book of what happened to you) or a symbolic replay, where features of the event or themes take place which are clearly linked to your trauma but don’t look exactly the same.
To combat recurring nightmares, we can use a technique called Image Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) where we change the script of the nightmare to make it less distressing and have a positive ending. It is similar to the first technique, however, the difference is we consistently rehearse it whilst we are awake to help it become embedded in our subconscious. This means the changes occur to the structure of the nightmare itself; it’s a preventative measure to change the dream we have.
We frequently rehearse our edited dream whilst we are awake so that it becomes really familiar. As it becomes known it will seep into our subconscious and the new version will start to replace the original nightmare. Give yourself a minimum of 10 days; it can be helpful to keep a dream journal to note any small changes to help evidence it’s success.
It is really important that you feel confident as these techniques requires focusing on the details of your trauma nightmare. You may feel safer doing this with the support of a trusted therapist.
Image Rehearsal Therapy (IRT)
So now you have two tools to add to your regulation toolkit that you have built over this blog series. I wish I had known about these tools for the decades I was plagued by my two recurring trauma nightmares however, I use these skills when I expereince anxiety dreams or random nightmares - and, to varying degrees, with my boys when they have bad dreams.
Let me know whether these two tools have supported you with your trauma nightmares - or even if you've been able to use them with your own family and friends!
This post and its images are protected by copyright © Emma Cumberland. Please do not copy or reuse without permission.
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