Nightmare - Treatment of Nightmares

Treatment of Nightmares

Both Freud and Jung seemed to have shared a common understanding that people frequently distressed by nightmares could be re-experiencing some stressful event from the past. Both perspectives on dreams suggest that therapy can provide relief from the dilemma of the nightmare experience.

Halliday (1987), grouped treatment techniques into four classes. Direct nightmare interventions that combine compatible techniques from one or more of these classes may enhance overall treatment effectiveness:

• Analytic and cathartic techniques
• Story-line alteration procedures
• Face-and-conquer approaches
• Desensitization and related behavioral techniques.

Recurring post-traumatic stress disorder nightmares in which real traumas are re-experienced respond well to a technique called imagery rehearsal. First described in the 1996 book Trauma and Dreams by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett, this contemporary dream interpretation involves the dreamer coming up with an alternate, mastery outcome to the nightmare, mentally rehearsing that outcome awake, and then reminding themselves at bedtime that they wish this alternate outcome should the nightmare recur. Research has found that this technique not only reduces the occurrence of nightmares and insomnia, but also improves other daytime PTSD symptoms.According to Bret Moore and Barry Krakow, the most common variations of Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) "relate to the number of sessions, duration of treatment, and the degree to which exposure therapy is included in the protocol". Another kind of treatment not only helping the reduction of nightmares, sleep disturbance, and other PTSD symptoms is prazosin. There have been multiple studies conducted under placebo controlled conditions. (Am J Psychiatry 2003; 160:371–373)

"A comprehensive model has been put forth by Krakow and Zadra (2006) that includes four group treatment sessions, ~2.25 to 2.5 hr in length. The first two sessions focus on how nightmares are closely connected to insomnia and how they become an independent symptom or disorder that warrants individually tailored and targeted intervention. The last two sessions focus on the imagery system and how IRT can reshape and eliminate nightmares through a relatively straightforward process akin to cognitive restructuring via the human imagery system. First, the patient is asked to select a nightmare, but for learning purposes the choice would not typically be one that causes a marked degree of distress. Second, and most commonly, guidance is not provided on how to change the disturbing content of the dream; the specific instruction developed by Joseph Neidhardt is “change the nightmare anyway you wish” (Neidhardt et al., 1992). In turn, this step creates a “new” or “different” dream, which may or may not be free of distressing elements. Our instructions, unequivocally, do not make a suggestion to the patient to make the dream less distressing or more positive or to do anything other than “change the nightmare anyway you wish.” Last, the patient is instructed to rehearse the “new dream” through imagery and to ignore the old nightmare."

A nightmare arises from one's complex that contains residue from some unresolved issue. Some people may experience recurring nightmares due to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or they may have some other source of anxiety that influences their dreams at night. Whatever the cause, there are treatments available, some of them medical and some psychological. While most treatments are meant for people who have a true disorder, the techniques discussed above will work well for any person dealing with nightmares.