Quote:
Originally Posted by Xynesthesia2
Anne, can I ask how therapy helped you with nightmares? I have had recurring nightmares that I can very easily relate to a form of anxiety I tend to have but have not been able to eliminate them stably. They tend to surface when I procrastinate or otherwise slack with my discipline and then worry about tasks, so it is not trauma-related or maybe related to traumas I sometimes caused myself not dealing with practical things consistently. The themes of my dreams is always very similar and predictable and I don't care too much as they only cause discomfort when I am asleep and for a short while after waking, but would love to get rid of them somehow. I talked with quite a few people about them but that does not seem to do anything, only my dealing with things better does.
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I wish I had a better answer for you, but my nightmares were trauma related. So after I started digging into the details and dynamics of that, I noticed the nightmares started to diminish. Perhaps this makes sense within a theoretical framework where the mind tries to resolve what is not resolved during the day; so nightmares are being "resolved" by the brain at night. When you deal with it consciously, then the brain doesn't need to engage in nighttime resolution. At least it seemed that way to me, seemed to work that way for me. I'm not sure whether this would apply to you.
If there's an analog to your situation, I wonder if it is what it means to you to not "deal with things better." If there is something underneath your anxiety (which I also share) when the practical stuff slides behind other priorities. For me I think my anxiety is a kind of Henny Penny thinking, where the "sky is falling" if there is any disturbance in my workday or the "taking care of business." In other words, I wonder if you can break the association between doing X or whatever and feeling anxious about it, maybe that will eliminate the dreams as well.