My entire sentient life I have been prone to nightmares, usually at least one a week. I am in my 30s now and “eh it’ll probably sort itself out” has proven an ineffective strategy.
There is obviously the kumbaya “mediate and reduce your stress” stuff but obviously I live in the real world where time that there is any useful level of executive function is pretty full.
So aside from general “wellness” stuff are there specific interventions for making sleeping brains be less garbage reliably? Missing sleep/fitfull sleep blows.
As a cptsd chronic nightmare haver and once dedicated lucid dreamer, it has helped me in a few ways but also has had unexpected effects.
The ways in which it helped : when I was actively lucid dreaming – which is a skill basically, it was easier to break out of reoccurring flashback nightmares. It also helped me interrogate my mind and process trauma.
The unexpected results : After you stop consciously working on lucid dreaming, for me the ability to be cognizant of the dream while dreaming could go away. But then it started to feel different in my head ; I now differentiate between different dream states. One in which I allow the reigns of the dream to take me, and one in which I am lucid. The lucidity can creep in like a sudden realization “Oh! Im dreaming.”
But then it mixes together, like my dream self says “i know im dreaming but I want to lean into this dream a little.”
Or, like what happened the other night in a weeklong succession of nightmares – the dream itself became meta, a lady told me to stop thinking about having nightmares because it was making the nightmares manifest.
I am happy to report that last night I finally broke my nightmare streak. ANS theory / therapy also helps me in this regard bc of the cptsd.