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.
My nightmares have always coincided with anxiety or stress. Sometimes nightmares are a signal for me that I’m under great stress even though I don’t recognise it because I’m not always very in touch with my feelings. Ever since I overcame some of my mental health issues my nightmares have become significantly less frequent.
Here’s a weird observation I had though: for me if I sleep on my right side I usually don’t remember any dreams at all but when I sleep on my left side my dreams are extremely vivid. So you could try to experiment with different sleep positions.
If you’re desperate you could also try experimenting with active ingredients like CBD. It might lessen your quality of sleep in general, but if it also reduces your nightmares it could still be a net positive.
I am always stressed haha, I do better now that I am no longer a smoker and alcoholic. Running also helps, but "clean living didn’t turn me into a sandal wearing yoga farter.
I know someone who works in a high PTSD medical practice, and they regularly prescribe medications like prazosin for nightmeres. Apparently they are like a miracle cure. That patients come in for the next visit practically in tears because they’re able to sleep for the first time in decades and they’re so grateful. (One of the few people I would trust with such a grandiose sounding story.) It seems to be in the context of PTSD-related nightmares specifically.
If you have been taking any medications or drugs for the duration of the problem, then maybe they could be contributing. Even considering cannabis, tobacco, etc.
Here is a practice guideline (target audience is doctors): https://aasm.org/resources/bestpracticeguides/nightmaredisorder.pdf It reviews various potential treatments and what research has been done on them.
Ace that’s rad. ATM my drug use is like a pinch (literally like 0.1mL volume) of ~10% cbd 2% thc weed maybe every third evening and kava kava a couple of times a week. Pretty mild stuff.
I have a GP that’s pretty on the ball and willing to do some research, and I can roughly appraise lit. That link is very useful, and I might raise these drugs when I see him.
I legit cannot dream if I blaze
I have always had frequent and vivid nigjtmares, but poor indoor air quality has been (for me) correlated with increased frequency and worse nightmares. I figures that out by journaling mg dreams and noticing trends over the years tracking with allergies so that may be a place to start. When I moved into better housing (not moldy, not dusty) my nightmares got noticeably better.
But I still got them.
The other thing I’ve some is that journaling about them has changed my relationship with my nightmares. I used to dread them, but now I value them for the interesting stories they give me and insights into my psyche they provide, which means that even the terrifying ones leave less of a horrible impact upon me.
Air quality might be part of it. I sleep with the door open and have always preferred window open too. I tend to sleep better in summer but it’s peak winter now so window closed it is.
I will try journalling as it’s very easy and quick. My nightmares tend to be pretty repetitive though:
- Being hunted
- Turning into a monster and eating my loved ones then dying in an isolation lab /shrug
I am well adjusted.
I forgot about air quality but always having a window open has improved my sleep as well
For me, it’s almost entirely correlated with temperature. Basically if my legs (really my thighs) get too hot I’ll have a nightmare. I also have that thing where my body is extremely eager to sacrifice my feet and hands to keep my core warm which is … frustrating. So I basically have to fall asleep with cold feet to not get nightmares and not wake up super hot/sweaty. It does consistently work for me though. Idk how common of a trigger it is but that could be part of it for you.
At a certain point in my life, I no longer had any more nightmares and that’s because dream me was very fortunate to internalize this idea:
If shit starts hitting the fan, just say that you’re in a dream and if you keep saying it, your dream will change because you’re actually in a dream
And even if the dream didn’t turn into a fully lucid dream, I’m guessing the sheer mental load of pretending to be in a dream while actually being in a dream fucks with the nightmare generating part of my brain. Usually, I would get teleported to a completely different setting and whatever is scary just gets dropped from the dream never to be seen or referenced again.
I have no idea how dream me got this idea or how this idea would persist through different dreams, but I’m not complaining lol
Similar. I started recognizing patterns or absdurdities, which would make me realize I’m in a nightmare, and then some part of my brain gets me out of there or just snaps me awake. Has about a 95% success rate of working before the panic would set in, so can get right back to sleep afterwards
No idea how to advise other to do the same.
Have you tried lucid dreaming? If you can develop the practice, it could help by giving you control over your dreams. I think even the preliminary steps of training could help in that the first step is learning to realize when you’re dreaming. At first this tends to wake you up.
There are different ways, but here’s what worked for me: every time you think of it, pinch your nose closed and try to inhale through it. Impossible, right? Make this a habit. Do it 20 times a day, and then one day (after a couple weeks) you’ll do it, and you’ll inhale just fine through your pinched nose! That means you’re dreaming.
Worth a shot. I had one lucid dream once, it was interesting. I tried flying and could only control which way I was falling. Still awesome though.
In your situation I’d say it’s worth a shot, but I still feel compelled to weigh in and say that when I first began to successfully lucid dream is also when I first started to experience sleep paralysis.
I’ve had that happen a handful of times. It never really bothered me aside from the waking up. My experience is basically you quickly realise what’s happening, ignore the sensation of not being able to breath and don’t try control it, then enjoy the spooky hallucinations of walls becoming spikes and demons dancing.
I took a lot of drugs in my youth though, and got practiced at “Yep that’s fucking weird, well let’s watch the show and wait”.
Fair enough, then hell yeah give lucid dreaming a go. I was able to get it to start working within about a week of trying, hopefully you’ll get it about as quickly.
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.
Have you tried professional help? Not ghost busters. A psychiatrist maybe?
As a smol bean I was grippy socked and did a year of therapy after getting my freedom.
Therapy helped with many things, although forceful commitment was deeply traumatic and probably did more harm than good. Not nightmares though.
I’ve often wondered if screen time before bed could lead to nightmares?
It harms sleep quality fur shure. There’s indisputable evidence at this point.
I try maintain good sleep hygiene for that reason alone.
Probably some unsorted, repressed trauma. Try to write down your dreams and think what they could symbolize, threat model, so to speak. Then those threats need to be brought to consciousness and addressed. Try to think of these things as scary teachers who really want you to pass this class so you can live a more satisfying life.
Ignore this if you don’t want to hear anything about meditation, but it doesn’t have to take much time, you can do anything ‘meditatively’, with full mindfulness of the moment and your action, and have benefits. You don’t have to sit and do nothing. And if you were to learn proper technique for mindfulness meditation and take just five minutes in the day to practice it could help, you could meditate as you fall asleep and possibly help your mind be in a more neutral state.
For a large part of my childhood I couldn’t sleep without the most violent graphic nightmares, and continued as I got older somewhat less frequently. The last time I remember having what would be a nightmare, while in the dream I began meditating instead of freaking out about being in a plane crashing and had a very pleasant feeling when I woke up. Other similar experiences like that have made me become a bit of a shill for meditation, but I had a Buddhist influenced upbringing so it was sort of easy for me to get into. My gateway was guided meditations posted by the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. Though there are varieties of non-Buddhist mediation I don’t know much about, or more advanced types of Buddhist meditation, that if improperly applied could cause anxiety or other issues.
I have also studied many of the canon teachings of varieties Buddhism to better understand how to meditate. It was a bit of a process and took a while to see solid results, and I still struggle a bit with anxiety and such, but sleeping is much easier for me than before.
I’m not opposed to trying things but I’ve done various mindfulness type things and found them:
- not to generate results that reenforce the practice.
- acutely unenjoyable i.e. doing them is unpleasant.
- time consuming once factoring in the attention switching either side.
As a result habits are impossible to form and it’s more immediately useful to just go for a run in the time or whatever, which you can also do useful work on.
If there are practices of meditation that suck less and are more amenable to modern life I’d be willing to try.
Do you partake in marijuana? Anecdotal, but when I’ve been consuming weed I get no dreams. When I’m off I dream every night. I’m not suggesting getting high all the time, but you could experiment with small doses or CBDs.
Some CBD heavy weed some evenings. Low doses help me relax and sleep a bit yeah, but also inhibit learning a bit. High doses make anxious
Sorry that’s all I can offer. I forget the way it works, but you could try exercises to help you start lucid dreaming?
Im getting high all the time and find that just leads to me having dreams later on in my sleep so I wake up from them 2 hiurs before im gonna wake up or so.
Similar experiences smoking cigarettes vs not doing that. Particularly at moments just after I stopped, I had lots of vivid dreams.
right there with u and sending u love and supportGetting a dream catcher worked for me but I was about 5 so your experience will probably differ.
Yeah given that in my one lucid dream I couldn’t fly only adjust where gravity was I don’t think I’m detached from reality enough for magic spells to work :(
Drugs that stop you from dreaming (don’t do this apparently dreaming is good)
