How to Overcome and End Nocturnal Frights: 9 Science-Backed Methods to Reclaim Your Sleep

More than just bad dreams, nightmares can be amazingly real to the person experiencing them; one can be heart-pounding, sweaty, and rattled even when long past actually waking from them. While most people have only infrequent sleep disturbances called nightmares, frequent ones disrupting one's life might mark the presence of PTSD. As many as 90% of people with PTSD experience recurring, distressing nightmares that interfere significantly with daily functioning. If you’ve been struggling with nightmares, you’re not alone, and there are ways to find relief.

In this blog, we’ll explore 9 evidence-based techniques to treat nightmares, including a powerful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) method called the Imagery Rehearsal Technique (IRT). We’ll also dive into why nightmares may actually be a sign that your brain is asking for healing and how sleep plays a crucial role in emotional processing.

1. The Nightmare Cycle: There Is No Way Out

This can be some sort of cyclic stuff, especially in those who suffer from PTSD. The possibility of going through another nightmare may easily lead one into sleep avoidance behavior, hence the sleep deprivation. The less one sleeps, the more his nightmare gets strong, therefore deepening the cycle even more.

This creates a cycle of worsening daytime functioning that can lead to dangerous coping through substance use or avoidance. Fortunately, the cycle can be stopped, and research has pointed out that treatment of nightmares can hasten the tempo of the process of healing in PTSD.

2. Nightmares are a Manifestation of Unresolved Trauma

Commonly, the PTSD sufferer has nightmares with traumatic storylines like what happened and replays in the mind. This isn't your brain torturing you, it's just trying to work out its way through the emotion which hasn't been resolved and experienced. Scientists theorize that with sleep our brains are developing an ability to process our emotions, especially during REM cycles when most of our dreams occur.

In PTSD, sleep doesn't lower the level of adrenaline enough to allow the normal emotional processing of the experience. Your brain keeps replaying the incident instead of processing and resolving it.

3. Imagery Rehearsal Technique: A Really Effective Approach

One of the best treatments for nightmares would include imagery rehearsal technique. The imagery rehearsal technique on a backbone of CBT will help you in reprocessing your nightmares by changing the story of your nightmare. In this technique:

1. Step 1: Describe your nightmare in all possible details: what happened, how you felt, how your body reacted.
2. Step 2: Now rewrite the nightmare, only this time rewrite the ending or some other part of the dream so the dream is no longer upsetting, or even pleasant.
3. Step 3: Practice the new version of the dream first through rereading, then through rehearsal of relaxation techniques.

The research has proved that IRT decreases nightmares related to PTSD, at a response rate of 60 to 72%. This will retrain the brain for better management of nightmare contents and therefore will reduce the intensity of the nightmares, which in turn reduces PTSD symptoms in general.

4. Practice Good Sleep Hygiene, Avoiding Nightmares

Good sleeping habits can help a great deal in attempting to avoid nightmares. A few of the ways to improve the quality of sleep include:

• This simply means going to bed and getting up at approximately the same time each day.
• Sleep better by creating a sleep-friendly environment; keep your room cold, quiet, and dark.
• Drugs to avoid: caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol before bedtime.
• At least one hour before bedtime, exposure to screen devices should be limited.

These small things save one from sleep disturbances and further reduce the chances of nightmares.

5. Process Trauma During the Day

One interesting thing the research into PTSD revealed is that daytime emotional avoidance can be translated into the expression of avoided emotions in nightmares at night. So if you're dodging the painful memories or strong emotions, it's essentially using your dreams to force the processing by your brain.

That may be key: process those emotions and traumas during the day. Perhaps it is with journaling, talking with a therapist, or going to some sort of placed mindfulness techniques that may help while one works through some tough feelings. Having them in the daytime really cuts down on the intensity of nightmares at night.

6. Practice Grounding Techniques After a Nightmare

The immediate feeling following waking up from a nightmare is that one is still in danger. Use sensory objects to have a talk with your body about being safe after having a nightmare:

• Bring tranquility into the present with the sweet scent of a lavender pillow or soft blanket.
• Keep around you something that reminds you of the present-a certain object or a sound.

Reorienting yourself with reality will minimize the residual effect of the nightmare on you, therefore further making it easier to return to sleep.

7. Change Your Attitude Towards Nightmares

Sometimes, the worst is not the nightmare itself but the attitude one develops towards them to make them worse. Try changing the sleep fears with an empowering narrative. For example, if you are really scared, with just one more nightmare probably happening, remind yourself: "I have survived every nightmare so far; I will survive this one, too."

Other affirmations can be:

• "That is uneasy, and yet I am not in danger."
• “I can handle this. I’ve been through hard things before.”

Wherewith, with this procedure, if one practices these modes of thinking, then sleep anxiety will not be experienced after having a nightmare.

8. Medical Causes of Nightmares Must be Treated

Sometimes, nightmares can be symptoms of an underlying sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome, or a side effect of medication that one is taking. If nightmares are moderately frequent for you, it is worth seeing a doctor to rule these out.

Such sleep disorders as sleep apnea, in which one stops breathing for short periods during one's sleep, can produce such sensations of suffocation that nightmares arise. Antidepressants and some blood pressure medications tend to increase the frequency of bad dreams. Generally, the improvement of sleep quality can be achieved by treating such medical disorders as reducing nightmares.

9. New Therapies for Nightmares

With new solutions, technology is taking the lead in enabling people to face nightmares. Probably one of the most promising devices is a smartwatch app observing one's sleep and giving minor interference during nightmare moments with vibrations. The reason: it was invented by the son of a veteran for his father, who had to suffer from repeated nightmares due to PTSD.

Though still clearly experimental, it just might prove to be quite an arsenal in the war on nightmares - a non-invasive remedy to improve sleep.

Final Thoughts: It Is Possible to Overcome Nightmares

If you do, do not lose hope. From PTSD to just flat-out distressing dreams, treatments such as IRT, improvement in sleep hygiene, and trauma processing are but a few ways in which you can take back your sleep. These nightmares prove absolutely nothing about your weakness. On the contrary, they actually serve to show that your brain heals.

Sometimes, once you work through the nightmare cycle yourself, it puts your dream mild enough to get the restful sleep you have been dreaming about.

Do you or your friend have nightmares? Try these techniques, then pass them along to your friends so they can help others sleep sounder.