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According to WebMD.com, somewhere between 2 percent and 8 percent of adults experience nightmares. The website suggests that people whose lives are strongly affected by nightmares should get help.
Though nightmares are a normal part of life, they shouldn’t be frequent enough to really affect you. If you feel anxious trying to go to sleep, relive the emotions from nightmares during the day, or believe that the dreams are becoming too much to handle, you should seek the help that is available.
There are a few methods of treatment for people who suffer from chronic nightmares.
First, make sure a medical condition isn’t causing the nightmares. Post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, is well-known for causing nightmares. Anxiety and depression can also cause them, but so can more unsuspecting disorders, such as sleep apnea.
If the nightmares are a symptom of another disorder, the best route is to treat the cause.
Second, determine if a change in medicine could be the cause. A range of medications, from antidepressants to blood pressure meds, can alter the state of dreams. If you’ve recently changed drugs—legal, pharmaceutical or otherwise—talk to your doctor about nightmares being a possible side effect.
There are cases where nightmares just crop up on their own, heedless of medicine or other disorders. For those cases, there is still help and there is still hope.
One of the best ways to get rid of bad dreams is something called ‘imagery rehearsal treatment.’ It takes a little practice to get good, but it’s a pretty easy process.
After dreaming badly, try to recall the dream. Take the time to change anything about it that you don’t like. This can take a while; each detail should be focused on and fully scripted.
Before researching nightmare therapy, I instinctively did this. Lying in bed after having woken myself up from a nightmare, I would start to think about the dream. I’d figure out what had scared me, then I’ll try to think of a more pleasant turn of events. When I concentrate really hard about what I want to dream, I’ll often just doze back to sleep. Sometimes my sleep will be interrupted again, but sometimes that’s all I need to finish a night’s worth of sleep.
Nightmares, like so many other anomalies of the mind, shouldn’t be ignored for long. You’re not alone and there are resources available to you.
My goal is to be a resource for help. If you need me, drop me a line.
Read a book, drink some hot tea, take two doses of humor, and e-mail me in the morning.
