Using Dream Control to Cope With Nightmares

There is no question that nightmares can be disturbing regardless of your age and position in life. No matter whether you dream that the world is ending, that a loved one will die, or some other traumatic event, it is bound to leave you upset for quite some time. Individuals that must cope with nightmares on a nightly basis often wind up suffering from sleep disorders, as well as other problems. If you happen to be caught in this type of cycle, taking control of your dreams may be of advantage. In fact, once you learn how to conquer whatever happens in your dreams, you may just find yourself looking forward to each challenge as it arises.

Before you begin trying to overcome nightmares with dream control, it is essential to understand that your dreams may be trying to provide you with valuable information or insights. Under these circumstances, it will be to your advantage to stop seeing your unconscious mind as an "enemy". Once you begin to see every dream as a puzzle instead of a threat, then you can determine how best to control the dream in order to produce a better outcome.

Activating Guardians or the Will to Conquer

At least some of managing nightmares with dream control begins long before you fall asleep. Among other things, when you wake up each morning, you should take a moment to be grateful if you did not have a nightmare the previous evening, or if you successfully overcame it. Before you go to bed, it is also very important to relax and feel safe. You should also focus your mind on activating any guardians that you feel will help you. It will also be of some help to remind yourself that you are strong enough to fight, and that anything you need can, and will come to you in the dream space.

Trigger Points Within the Dream

One of the hardest things to do is stay awake and be asleep at the same time. Many people that need to learn how to set up triggers that will wake them up, or take certain actions tend to find it difficult to dream and have a separate awareness at the same time. As a general rule of thumb, you will need to practice this skill by recording nightmares, and then making notes about where you want to awaken, or take some other action. Each night, you may want to remind yourself of those actions, as well as when they will trigger in the dream space. Oddly enough, if you approach the matter with some degree of humor, or a sense of being relaxed, you will have a better chance of seeing the appropriate mechanism manifest when needed.

Diet, Nutrition and dream Content

Chances are, you may have heard of "stale cheese dreams", or other dreams that seem to occur each a specific kind of food. If you notice that nightmares occur at a specific time of night, it may be of some use to look to your diet. Among other things, if the dreams tend to occur in the early morning, you may only need to have a snack before bedtime in order to boost blood glucose levels. Alternatively, you may need to drink extra water, or consume some other type of food to help stave off the nightmares. At the very least, if you set your alarm clock to awaken you before a time range when you tend to have nightmares, you can find out if you have hunger pangs, or tend to feel thirsty. Once you rule out food and nutrition based cause for your dreams, it will be much easier to manage any other nightmares that come up.

Even if your nightmares turn to to not have any meaning in terms of future events, they can still give you a lot to think about. If you are certain that you want to control your nightmares, it is best to think about how you will transmute the events under question. If you decide to do battle with the "villain", negotiate some type of win for yourself, or simply change the scene, your answers will be unique to your own psyche. Needless to say, before you automatically believe that your mind is the sole cause of your nightmares, it will always be of benefit to make sure that you are not dealing with hunger, or some other purely physical issue.