Nightmares, for most, are a disturbing reality that remains well into adulthood. Most of the time you can ignore that uncomfortable feeling, roll over and go back to sleep, but sometimes the haunting of your dreams stays with you in waking life, making it hard to get back to sleep.
What if you could control your dreams and turn them into something else? Doctors and researchers at the Maimonides Center for Sleep Arts and Sciences PTSD Sleep Clinic are doing just that.
People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have nightmares much more often than others. Dreams are more intense and more vivid. The researchers are working with patients who are awake to alter the plot of their dreams. Turn a race car into a frolicking pony, an intense situation into a relaxing one, and your nightmare becomes a dream.
This technique is called dream domain or scripting. As part of imagery rehearsal therapy, it is being used not only to treat people with PTSD, but also everyone who suffers from nightmares.
Although dream mastery does not eliminate nightmares in all patients, it helps reduce the intensity and frequency of bad dreams.
However, not everyone agrees with the technique. Dreams have been heavily researched recently, and scientists have found that they work to archive important memories and discard old ones. Those who oppose dream dominance fear that the content of nightmares, while graphic and disturbing, is necessary for the proper storage of memories in the brain. Jungian psychologists in particular are against scripts because they fear that changing parts of the dream will rob you of the opportunity to read what your subconscious is telling you.
Less than 10% of adults report having nightmares as often as once a week, but those who have had traumatic life experiences, such as soldiers and rape victims, report having nightmares at a much higher rate, 90 %. The goal is not to disturb everyone’s dreams, but rather to allow peace in the night for those whose sleep is regularly interrupted.