Nightmares and How To Manage Them!
Hiya Everyone! 
Me and the lovely @ConnorSmith decided we would collaborate together and talk about nightmares.
Everyone has experienced them at some point in their life, some more than others. Were here to talk through techniques to help reduce the intensity of nightmares and manage them better. 
What is a nightmare? 
A nightmare is indeed a bad dream, with a vivid and disturbing plot that most often wakes the person from their sleep. They are usually based off of real life experiences, or portray a certain emotion a person could be experiencing in their day-to-day life.
Most nightmares occur during REM sleep, when your brain is the most active. Having a nightmare can occur repetitively, this is called a recurring nightmare.
~
The Imagery Rehearsal Technique:-
Imagery Rehearsal Technique is a good, well-known method in reducing the number and intensity of nightmares among people.
In IRT treatment, you are helped to revisualize your nightmares using a different perspective. The goal is to reprogram your nightmares to be less intense.
What Happens in Imagery Rehearsal Technique:
You can work with IRT alone or with the help of a friend. You do not need a professional to allow yourself to do this. (however, it may be beneficial for some)
~ Create detailed, non-frightening endings for nightmares.
~ Write down and rehearse with the new endings.
~ Monitor your nightmares so you know how well the IRT treatment is working.
You can start with one of your less terrifying dreams, to help build your confidence and prevent you from being triggered by the nightmares again as you wake up.
The main objective is to help you see your nightmares with minimum distress. You can think of it as a crawl before you walk approach.
@blossombreathes Personal Experience
Original:-
Im walking in an everlasting meadow, with the sky a beautiful browny orange. Im alone. I turn around and see a black silhouette of a massive tree, with a rope hanging from it. I run towards it, then the rope vanishes. The sky turns a menacing black and comes closer and closer, trapping me in.
New Version:-
Im in a meadow, during the afternoon. The sky's bright blue and Im with my friends. We are talking together and walking around. Theres a massive tree which we climb together. When we get to the top, we look out at a beautiful waterfall in the distance.
~ If you would like to collaborate with either of us, please do not hesitate to PM us! We really enjoyed working together. ~
Have you personally experienced several nightmares or recurring ones? You are not alone! Have you tried this method before? Did it work for you? Or, are you going to give it a go? Do you have any questions youd like us to answer?
Let us know!
Thank you for reading! We hope you are having a lovely day.
Tagging:-
@allnaturalNight50 @Annaxelia @Anomalia @ApplePiney @Avram @BlissfulSummer @Brightheart993 @bunnypants @BurningEmber @colourfulSpring22 @DonaldK @EJGatsby @EllieKB @Emily619 @Emory20 @Erato @EssenceOfHope @freshHug78 @Fuzzyfiz12 @Glue @HarryBarry @HarveyM @imontheoutside @Isha2017 @Istand4peace @Jenna @JessSnow @Joe2017 @jollystrawb @juniperstarfish1 @KingAl @Laura @LittleLotte @Liv @Lucy @Lyra @Moj @No715 @OceansLove @Olala18 @PositiveLenaBanana @PuppyLove13 @RaCat @RideaRainbow @Roisin2016 @RosieGirl333 @RumpleSteeleSkin @sail46 @Sarra @sensitiveShade5337 @SettledBreathing @Starboxxx @sujaypai @TheHuggleMonster @TigressAalia @xDysonx @Yendi @ZizyTheTurtle @QueenAsphodel @AldrichHarrison
*this taglist will NOT be used again*
Helpful Resources:-
Calm - Meditation Techniques for Sleep and Stress Reduction
More Information on Nightmares
7Cups Sleeping Well Self-Help Guide
Actually, about 18 years ago, before all this fancy technology, when I was diagnosed w/epilepsy, I had to stay a week in the hospital and they wanted to test my sleep patterns/dreams to see if that part of my brain was the origin of my seizures. They would give me sleep medicine of course and had a bunch of cords on my head to get the "electrical vibes" .. Anxiety/stress is a trigger for seizures as well as a nightmare so that's why they did that I guess. But they found them coming from the left temporal lobe which is our memory, concentration, and focus section I guess. If you can manage your anxiety and stress levels, it may lower risks of horrible nightmares and reoccuring ones.
Vivid dreams are something I've experienced most of my life. Sometimes my dreams are just telling a story, but they're always intense, claustrophbic and lucid. Other times, I have nightmares that are terrifying and can merge with reality, as I slumber in this half awake/half asleep state. I can wake every half an hour during some sleeps, recovering from a new dream each time. The only thing that helps me is smoking weed before sleeping which seems to put me in a deeper cycle and allows me to dream without it disturbing my sleep and without remembering them when I wake up. I get the feeling they are all my supressed feelings manifesting when I'm unconscious, but it cann get exhausting if not managed. Anyone else have a similar experience?
@aWallflower07 YES! I never get into the deep sleep phase, I only ever seem to sleep for short periods of time (after spending hours trying to get to sleep in the first place) which means I just visit the dream state and have lots of highly vivid and evocative dreams, some very, very disturbing. Weed helps me a bit too but I don't have regular access to it.
@aWallflower07
I have gone through such nightmares, the one which I often have is - some people are running behind me. I don't know why. as it continues for a long time where I run the whole city escaping from them. As I continue to run I reach to bridge which is connected to reach the other end of the water fall. I continue to run on the bridge to hide from them. As I reachn in the middle of the bridge I get hit on my leg and I fell from the height. Shouting loudly and asking for a help I reach the ground thinking that I will die now and suddenly I wake up for my the nightmare for very few seconds and the fall asleep again in seconds, this for every half an hour to an hour. While I had to manage such nightmares and overcome from it. I came across a reinvented meditation method which helped me a lot, which is SOS method (Meditation reinvented) and I don't have such horrible nightmare. You can check out this one here: http://sosmethod.co/ rather then going with the weed buddy!
@blossombreathe
@blossombreathe
Thank you for tagging me.
I do expereicne nightmares, every night. I'll try the IRT. Thank you for this
@No715
Awe, I'm sorry to hear that you experience nightmares frequently! I really do hope that this technique helps you out. Let us know! Wishing you all the best.
@blossombreathe thank you
Hehe, I actually had a nightmare last night! If only I read this then :3 well done, lauren!
OMG
I've had nightmares every damn night from as far as I can remember. Most of them don't even impress me anymore. Last night I dreamed I was stalked by a putrified dead girl that jumped from heights breaking all her bones and than ran unnaturally fast to get me. Every time I fled, I saw this thing falling down from somewhere else and then running towards me. It was scary, but kind of cool to think about it. I have more problems with nightmares that are way more personal and disturbing
Oh, right: 4-5 years ago, my dreams became more and more lucid, which means that I knew I was in a dream. So sometimes I'm able to try this strategy directly inside my dream.
Some info about dreams: often, especially if recurring, they are an attempt of your brain to process emotions or facts it can't make sense of and has a hard time coping with. So it tries to re-inact them. When the emotion is processed, by dreaming or in real life, the recurring nightmares should go away.
And that's interesting, because in my nightmares, although I know I'm in a dream and I try to make it go my way, I can't. Yep. Both because what I try to make happen doesn't happen, or because the situation that generates the emotion that has to be processed finds it's way to return in another way. It has to be processed, no way you're going to miss it.
For exemple: in the dead girl dream, I tried to make a good spirit appear, so that it would fight the girl, but nothing. It didn't appear or it lasted for half a second before vanishing. I tried to make the girl slow down: damn it, my dream my rules. She's got all her bones broken, it's not realistic that she can run so fast! But no way. She ran as she pleased.
But actually, in some dreams, I managed to make them end better, and what I did (I don't always remember this while I'm dreaming) was drastically reducing my fear of the situation, and becoming confident that I could manage it, instead of trying to change the dream. Two examples:
I dreamed that I found myself enlisted in the army, because a war was coming and we had to defend the front. Our division had army uniforms, guns that looked like toys and a transceiver that I didn't know how how to turn on. We were all recruits. When the enemy arrived, they blinded us with gas granades and then it was a massacre. I knew I was in a dream, and at one point I thought "what do I have to loose? Our commander clearly left us here to die, we have no hope to win, but I can try to lead a retreat and hope some of us will survive" that's where things started to go better. It was a mess, but I managed to escape with other 3 recruits. We were the only ones to survive, we stole some equipment and true weapons from dead enemies and we were walking in the woods, feeling stronger and talking about what to do next.
Another example: I was in a white empty room with Gollum. Yep. It could have ended so bad... I tried to look for an escape and thinking about a strategy to fight him, but then I though "I'm in a dream. How dangerous can be Gollum in a dream? In the worst case, I'll wake up" so I sat on the floor and greeted him. Next thing I remember, there were light gray branches on the floor, and I was trying to build a home, with Gollum, as you would do at the beach, talking nicely and trying to persuade him we were in a dream.
So I was thinking, when possibile, instead of thinking how to CHANGE the dream, couldn't we think about how to manage ourself in that situation, without removing the emotion we have to process? I found it way more useful. Just a tuought