Have you ever wondered how to stop recurring nightmares? Nightmares and recurring dreams are sad or disturbing dreams. Studies show that more than 50 percent of adults report having nightmares from time to time. However, some people have more frequent nightmares. These are called recurring nightmares. Recurrent nightmares are more common in children than adults. In this paper, we will see how to stop having the same dream.
Not all recurring nightmares are the same every night. Many nightmares have similar themes and motifs but may differ in content. Regardless, these nightmares often cause feelings of anger, sadness, guilt, anxiety when you wake up. These thoughts and feelings can make it difficult to sleep again. Recurring nightmares often have an underlying cause. If you’re wondering how to stop having recurring dreams, keep reading.
5 Ways Of Reducing Recurring Dreams
Nightmares can occur for several reasons. In most situations, addressing recurring nightmares entails treating the underlying issue. Let’s see how to stop recurring dreams.
1. Meditation and Medicine
Recurring dreams can sometimes make a person feel very stressed. Therefore, meditate and do stress-relieving breathing exercises every day. There are also some medications that are designed to block the part of sleep where dreams occur. Therefore, such drugs are recommended to overcome recurrent dreams as well.
2. Sleep Pattern
It’s advice as old as time, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. Choose a bed and wake time based on your routine and make sure you stick to it even on the weekends. When you set a fixed wake and sleep time, your body gradually gets used to a healthy sleep routine.
It allows you to relax and stay away from recurring nightmares when you take a warm shower before sleep.
3. Sleep Conditions
Sleep apnea, breathing machines, medications, and lifestyle changes also cause recurring dreams. Being treated and having a suitable place to sleep prevents recurrent dreams.
4. Analyze the Dream
How to stop recurring bad dreams? The next step is to analyze dreams. For this, you can talk to a dream interpreter, a counselor, or a psychiatrist who can guide you better. Otherwise, you can try to gauge for yourself what the dream is trying to tell you.
Do you have the dream over and over again because of a traumatic event that happened in your life recently or perhaps in your childhood? It could be the end of an important relationship, setbacks in professional life, not taking advantage of an opportunity, neglect or abuse in your childhood, abuse by someone, death of a family member.
5. Image Rehearsal Therapy
Imagery rehearsal therapy, which is commonly used for those who have nightmares as a result of PTSD, includes modifying the ending of the nightmare you remember while awake so that it is no longer terrifying. Then you rehearse the new ending in your mind. This method can help to minimize the frequency of nightmares.
You can also use dream diaries to analyze your dreams. Nowadays, online dream diaries are highly preferred due to their easy accessibility. One of them, Dreambook, not only provides easy accessibility but also helps you find the meanings of dream symbols, classify them, and set reminders for you to analyze your dreams. You can explore using many more features. You can analyze your dreams. Now you know how to stop repetitive dreams!
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I wanted to stop my recurring dreams but I didn’t know what to do. There is a lot of section to stop them but dream journaling and analyzing them helped me a lot. Because I write them down and learned their meanings. It is my lifesaver actually.