How can I relieve myself of nightmares?

To relieve yourself of the nightmares that you are experiencing, it is important to identify the possible causes of these nightmares. In some instances, a new prescription for a different drug may be enough to get rid of your nightmares. Cutting down on excessive alcohol intake may also reduce the occurrence of nightmares. These reliefs, however, may only be effective if your nightmares are induced by chemicals or drugs.

Nightmares that are psychologically induced may be more difficult to treat. In some instances, you may not be aware of the psychological causes of your nightmares. It may be a repressed memory from your childhood or an external stimulus that you are unaware of. Many victims of child abuse, for instance, often proceed with their lives without any conscious recollection of their abuse. This is especially true when the repressed memory is of something that happened during early childhood between the age of one to five years. Some nightmares can be caused by your subconscious trying to surface a repressed memory or to confront an unidentified anxiety stimulus. If you have not encountered any personal crisis in the recent past yet continue to suffer from persistent and intense nightmares, it may help to seek professional treatment to uncover the possible cause of these nightmares.

If the cause of your nightmares is easily identified, such as when you’ve recently experienced a traumatic incident or a personal crisis, there are several methods that you can try to relieve yourself of your nightmares. One such method is imagery rehearsal treatment.

Imagery rehearsal treatment, in a nutshell, consists of practicing your response to these nightmares. When undergoing such a treatment, you will be made to recount your nightmares, imagine them, and come up with a realistic response that would resolved the nightmare if it happened in real life. In other words, you will confront your nightmare while you are in a waking state and have full control of the situation. Constant imagery rehearsal will help build up your cognitive response to the nightmare scenario and will consequently reflect in your dreaming state so that when the nightmare occurs again, it will be resolved in the manner that you imagined it to be resolved.

Another important and promising method that can help relieve you of your nightmares is lucid dreaming. With lucid dreaming, you take control of your nightmare not by imagining it during a waking state, but by actually taking control of your dreaming state. Lucid dreaming takes place when one enters into sleep with a conscious mind. While there are those who may be naturally gifted to be lucid dreamers, the skill can also be acquired through persistent and patient training.