Michelle Carr

Because nightmares very often have very recurring themes.

So if somebody has a nightmare of a tidal wave or a nightmare of being chased, they tend to have these themes that recur over time.

And it's almost like this script that's learned in your mental imagery.

And so imagery rehearsal therapy works with first just a little bit of exposure to the nightmare, like kind of being more comfortable with looking at your nightmares, talking about them, writing them down and not being so aversive to them.

And then changing the nightmare in some way.

So you write a slightly new script or change something so it's not so scary or make yourself more powerful.

And it's a dream, so you can do whatever you want, really.

And then before sleep, you visualize this new, more pleasant or more satisfying dream.

Visualize that for 10 to 20 minutes before sleep each night.

And over time, this...

Yeah, that's definitely very common.

And that moves a little bit into what's called lucid dreaming, which is where you become aware of the fact that you're dreaming while you're still asleep.

So of course, if you're fully aware that you're in a dream, you can control yourself and your own actions, but you can even potentially change the dream environment.

The scenery.

Yeah, exactly.

You can change things around you.

But one thing that I find really interesting is even when you're not

fully lucid like even if you even if you just start to have more agency in your dreams that can be beneficial so kind of like you said maybe you don't realize it's a dream but you you have this thought like oh maybe I don't need to

be afraid of this thing that's chasing me or oh maybe I can just change the scene or like move into a different room or something you start to have essentially just just more of this choice and awareness more awareness in your dream even if you're not fully lucid and that can be helpful for people

Yeah.