Good ways of dealing with nightmares

What you got?
We've got:
-martial arts and physical fitness. Sometimes hard to translate into dreams, but it's still a great tool. We've beaten up our ab*sers loads of times in our dreams.
-live with and surround yourself with we*ponry, even toy g*ns like water p*stols and stuff. They're always near by, so when it kicks off in dreamland, we're always armed.
-understand your environment. So you know where's what and where, so you can run, hide, climb, chillout etc. It translates into the dreamland. And come to learn your dreamland too, if there are consistencies in each dream.
-pray to the Lord everyday. In dreams, the Lord protects you when you pray and prayer scares the baddies. Also there is no need to fear anything when God is your bodyguard.

So, what d'ya think of ours? And what helps you?

What we do is:
- have a predictable bedtime routine, in which you wind down for at least an hour before bed
- listen to the same audio-recording every night while falling asleep (rain)
- do the same breathing exercises every night during the falling asleep, and then going to the same imaginary safe place
- going to bed & to sleep at the same times every day
- if extra upset before bed, don't force going to sleep/bed. Write a fairy tale story and make a special drink of milk with honey and cinnamon (& hug plushie)
- orient in time and space: remind yourself of the year & how old you are. Try to find elements of your environment that are unique to the NOW. To this house, where it's safe
- lock the door
- when waking up after a nightmare, get up and make sure you get completely woken up. Turn on all the lights, take a shower, do yoga. Until you feel more calm and oriented. Only then, try to sleep more

Techniques that I haven't been able to implement, but seem like good ideas:
- imagine a special person to be with you in your dream. A person who would protect you and/or make sure nothing bad would happen. It can also be a special creature, like a unicorn or dragon or maybe a very powerful magician
- write out your nightmares and rewrite the story so that it wouldn't be scary and you would feel in control/safe

We take medicine for the bad stuff and it's useful af. Even though i hate medicine.
Whatever. I do as im told by the others.

We also meditate, and spray a mix of lavender and like other oils onto our bed before we sleep

prazosin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's some good stuff to think about (much of which I do or do something similar to). Thanks for sharing.

BeccaBee wrote:prazosin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was very close to mention that in my last blog post

- using anchors: items to keep around the bed that are connected to here/now and help with grounding
- sleep hygiene
- getting fully oriented and grounded when one occurs and we wake up from it to keep it from coming back or being emotionally stuck in it
- also using distractions and fantasy for the Littles

we don't have a lot of nightmares. More stress dreams. I bet that journaling a decent time before going to bed could solve those...